CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Joseph Whitmore Barry 
 dramatic library 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 TWO FRIENDS 
 
 OF Cornell University 
 1934 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PQ 1803.A6 1903 
 
 La Bruyere und Vauvenargues: 
 
 3 1924 027 288 921 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924027288921 
 
SELECTIONS FROM THE CHARACTERS, 
 
 REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS OF 
 
 LA BRUYERE AND OF VAUVENARGUES 
 
LA BRUYERE AND 
 VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Selections from the Characters 
 
 Reflexions and Maxims 
 
 Translated with Introductory 
 
 Notes and Memoirs by 
 
 ELIZABETH 
 
 LEE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. DUTTON & CO 
 
 1903 
 
Bdtler & Tanner, 
 
 The Selwood Printing Wohks, 
 
 Frome, and London. 
 
 4 (f^^zz 
 
 1 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 LA BRUYERE 
 
 Characters 
 
 The Absent-minded Man 
 The Rich Man 
 The Poor Man 
 The Enthusiastic Collector 
 The Man of Letters i > 
 
 The Drawing-room Pedant "^V4^ W\K 
 The Man of Universal Knowledge 
 The Man who will be Comfortable 
 Newsmongers: Pessimist and Optimist 
 The Man of Caprice 
 The Title "Great Man" 
 The Parvenu 
 
 The Bourgeois : Then and Now 
 .The Money-grubber 
 The Affected Talker 
 The Perfect Woman 
 The Coquette 
 . jr-n The Fashionable Dandy "" j 
 
 ^ The Egoist ^ lyu^ tJlX, .^>^ 
 
 /0~^ The Man of Convention H/ ^^^ '^-^. 
 The Residuary Legatee 
 Fools 
 
 The Great Cond6 
 Fontenelle 
 La Fontaine 
 A Good King 
 
 5 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Jiefiexions 
 
 The People 
 Pictures of Nature 
 
 The Town's Ignorance of the Country- 
 Realism and the Stage 
 Time 
 Brief Reflexions on Men and Things 
 
 VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Characters 
 
 Clazomenes, or Unfortunate Virtue 
 
 Pherecides, or Ambition Deceived 
 
 Cyrus, or the Unquiet Mind 
 
 Titus, or Energy 
 
 Phocas, or False Eccentricity 
 
 Theophilus, or the Profound Mind 
 
 Varus, or Liberality 
 
 Acestes, or Young Love 
 
 The Man of the World 
 
 The Proficient in the Art of Dealing with Mankind 
 
 Dialogue 
 
 Brutus and a Roman Youth 
 
 Reflexions and Maxims 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 " There are two kinds of wisdom : in the one, every age in 
 which science flourishes, surpasses, or ought to surpass, its 
 predecessors ; of the other there is nearly an equal amount in 
 all ages. The first is the wisdom which depends on long 
 chains of reasoning, a comprehensive survey of the whole of 
 a great subject at once, or complicated and subtle processes of 
 metaphysical analysis; this is properly Philosophy. The 
 other is that acquired by experience of life, or a good use of 
 the opportunities possessed by all who have mingled much 
 with the world, or who have a large share of human nature 
 in their own breasts. This unsystematic wisdom, drawn by 
 acute minds in all periods of history from their personal 
 experience, is properly termed the wisdom of ages ; and every 
 lettered age has left a portion upon record." — J. S. MILL. 
 
 T is the unsystematic wisdom, as con- 
 tained in "Characters" and "Maxims," 
 that we offer in this volume of selections 
 from La Bruyere and Vauvenargues. 
 Philosophy, properly systematic, is, to the most 
 of men, a sealed book, which they have neither 
 the leisure nor the inclination to open. But 
 as the years pass by and bring with them 
 their varied experiences of mind, heart and 
 action, men form for themselves, in many cases 
 almost insensibly, a kind of rough philosophy of 
 life that becomes their guide. Thus the unsys- 
 
 7 
 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Introduction tematic philosophy which has found literary ex- 
 pression appeals to and interests all those who, 
 without being students of systems of philosophy, 
 have observed men and manners and given heed 
 to all sorts of human experience. Let that fact 
 then serve as an apologia for presenting these 
 samples of two of the greatest unsystematic 
 philosophers the world has known, 
 
 II 
 
 " We know nothing, or almost nothing, of the life of La 
 Bruy^re. ... If there is not a single line of his unique book, 
 which since the first moment of publication did not come 
 into the full light and remain there, there is, on the other 
 hand, scarcely a single well-authenticated detail known about 
 the author. All the light of the age fell upon each page of 
 the book, but the countenance of the man who held it open in 
 his hands is hidden."— SAINTE-BEUVE. 
 
 " I live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind than 
 as one of the species." — ADDISON. 
 
 Any attempt, however modest in aim, to write 
 a biography of La Bruyere bristles with difficul- 
 ties. His latest editor, M. Servois i owns that 
 La Bruyere, the man, is the most unknown of 
 all the great writers of his epoch. His life, it 
 seems, was hidden even from his contemporaries, 
 and the information that they have to give us is 
 vague and scanty. We are thus compelled to 
 construct the man's personality from his work, 
 
 ' Cf. CEuvres de La Bruyfere par M. G. Servois. 3 vols. 
 Paris 1885. 
 
 8 
 
LA BRUYERE 
 
 aiding ourselves by such facts as we know to be Introduction 
 most authentic. 
 
 Jean de la Bruyere was born at Paris in 
 August, 1645, of a good middle-class family. 
 His father, Louis de la Bruyere, was Comp- 
 troller-General in the Financial Department of 
 the H6tel de Ville. Little is known of Jean's 
 childhood and education. He graduated in law 
 at the University of Orleans, and for eight years 
 practised, or attempted to practise at the Bar in 
 Paris. In 1673 he abandoned law for finance, 
 his father purchasing him a post in the Treasury 
 at Caen. After going through certain formalities 
 there he continued to reside in Paris, leading a 
 life in which he had the free use of his time, 
 the free choice of work and recreation, a life 
 in which he was the sole arbiter of what he 
 did or did not do. Notwithstanding, he held 
 his post in the Treasury until 1686. Two 
 years earlier he had been appointed one of 
 the masters entrusted with the education of 
 the young Duke of Bourbon, grandson of the 
 Great Conde. Although in accepting the tu- 
 torial office he gave up his liberty, he gained 
 so vastly in knowledge of men, that his entry 
 into the house of Conde may be fitly described 
 as the decisive event of his life. The task of 
 teaching the sixteen -year- old duke was no easy 
 one ; he had been spoiled and flattered from 
 
 9 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Introduction babyhood, and was not the pleasantest of pupils. 
 La Bruyere had to instruct him in history, geo- 
 graphy, the institutions of France, even in mytho- 
 logy and heraldry, and, despite manifold difficul- 
 ties, he performed his duties most conscientiously. 
 It is told how, on one occasion, Bossuet being 
 present when a lesson on Descartes's "Princi- 
 pia" was going forward, pronounced himself 
 well satisfied with the teacher. It seems strange 
 that La Bruyere should have sacrificed his liberty 
 for such an office. Perhaps he did so con- 
 sciously in order to gain the wider experience of 
 men necessary to his work ; or the obtaining of 
 that experience by a lucky chance, as it were, 
 may have helped to fix the character his work 
 was to take, and have insured it something it 
 must otherwise have lacked. We who are his 
 heirs can only rejoice that the experience should 
 have been his, and we fully concur with Sainte- 
 Beuve when he writes : " What would he have 
 been without the unexpected opening of that 
 window on to the great world, without the 
 corner seat which he occupied in a grand tier 
 box at the great spectacle of the human life and 
 high comedy of his time ? He would have been 
 like a hunter who lacks game, big game, and is com- 
 pelled to content himself with a poor hare whom 
 he encountered on the plain. La Bruyere, with 
 only the middle class, or only the literary class, 
 
 10 
 
LA BRUYERE 
 
 for the range of his observation, would have Introduction 
 
 reaped a harvest there ; but with nothing else to 
 
 observe, he would certainly have lost much, and 
 
 we should have lost it with him." When the 
 
 young duke's education was finished, La Bruyere 
 
 remained in the service of his father, probably 
 
 as librarian or secretary. 
 
 The earliest mention of La Bruyere's great 
 work occurs in a letter from Boileau to Racine, 
 May 19, 1687 : — " Maximilian (i.e., La Bruyere) 
 came to see me at Auteuil, and read me some of 
 his ' Theophrastus.' " The next year, 1688, 
 there appeared at Paris " Les Caracteres de 
 Theophraste Traduits du Grec avec les Carac- 
 teres ou les Moeurs de ce Siecle." The book 
 was published by Estienne Michallet, chief 
 printer to the King. A pleasant little story, that 
 one would like to think true, was told at Berlin 
 by Maupertuis, and incorporated by Formey, 
 Secretary to the Berlin Academy, in one of his 
 speeches. It is to the effect that La Bruyere 
 was in the habit of going every day to Michallet's 
 to look at the new publications, and of playing 
 with Michallet's little girl, for whom he conceived 
 a great affection. One day he drew a manuscript 
 from his pocket and said to Michallet : " Will 
 you print this (i.e., the ' Caracteres ') ? I don't 
 know if it will pay you, but in case of success let 
 the profit be my little friend's dowry." Michallet 
 
 II 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Introduction took the risk, and before long the book was worth 
 two or three thousand francs. It is known that 
 Michallet's daughter made a very good marri- 
 age. The book which brought its author such 
 sudden fame was a slim duodecimo of some 360 
 pages. It went through five editions in less than 
 two years ; each successive edition was revised 
 and considerably augmented by the author. This 
 is in accordance with the practice of all char- 
 acter writers from Overbury and Earle onwards. 
 In his preface to the edition of 1689, La 
 Bruyere wrote: "The orator and the author 
 cannot overcome the delight they have in being 
 applauded." We are not then surprised to find 
 La Bruyere applying, in 1691, for admission to 
 the French Academy. That application was 
 not successful, and it was 1693 before he obtained 
 the much coveted distinction, when he succeeded 
 to the chair of the Abbe de la Chambre. In the 
 speech made by him at his reception he praised 
 those academicians, who, like Bossuet, La Fon- 
 taine, Racine, Boileau, and F6nelon, had great 
 reputations ; those of lesser distinction who were 
 his friends, he likewise praised ; but his enemies, 
 no matter what their standing or attainments, 
 he ignored. And, to add to his sins, he 
 depreciated Corneille at the expense of Racine. 
 That kind of thing was unpleasing to the illus- 
 trious forty and contrary to all their most 
 12 
 
LA BRUYERE 
 
 cherished traditions. They tried, therefore, to Introduction 
 
 prevent the publication of La Bruyere's discourse. 
 
 It appeared, however, separately, in 1693, and 
 
 was incorporated next year in the eighth edition 
 
 of the " Caracteres," with a preface, being a reply 
 
 to his detractors. 
 
 La Bruyere never married, and there is no 
 certain evidence that he was ever any woman's 
 lover. But it is difficult to believe that the two 
 chapters in his book, entitled respectively " Of 
 the Heart" and "Of Women," are not, in a 
 large measure, the outcome of personal ex- 
 perience. Such a remark as " the sound of the 
 voice of one we love is the sweetest melody in 
 the world," such an exquisite portrait as that of 
 Arthenice,! point to something beyond mere 
 imagination. However that may be, there is 
 little doubt that immunity from an absorbing 
 passion for the other sex left him more time for 
 friendships with his own. When we remember 
 that among his friends were such men as Boss- 
 uet, Fenelon, Racine, Boileau, besides others 
 less known to fame, it is more than surprising 
 that references to him in the memoirs of the 
 time should be so scanty and unimportant. We 
 gather in a general sort of way that beneath the 
 calm exterior, beneath the contemplative and 
 inactive life, there lay a passionate nature, sen- 
 1 Cf. p. g6. 
 13 
 
LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Introduction sible of wounds to his self-love, and capable of 
 generous indignation. Saint-Simon writes of 
 him as a very agreeable man, pleasant company, 
 simple, with nothing of the pedant about him, 
 and entirely disinterested. La Bruyere died 
 suddenly in May, 1696, at Conde's house in Ver- 
 sailles, of an attack of apoplexy, while occupied, 
 so it is said, on a new work, " Dialogues on 
 Quietism." He was buried at Versailles in the 
 Church of St. Julien.i 
 
 III 
 
 ■■ If it is true that Theophrastus, so to speak, created La 
 Bruyere, it must be confessed that therein lies his greatest 
 fame and his greatest work." — (One of La Bruyfere's critics.) 
 
 " If these characters do not find favour, I shall wonder; 
 if they do, I shall wonder no less." — (The concluding words 
 of La Bruy^re's book.) 
 
 La Bruyere was occupied with the composition 
 of the " Characters," from about 1670 until their 
 publication in 1688, and thence until 1694 with 
 tbeir development and revision. So that if we 
 except the time devoted to teaching the Duke of 
 Bourbon, and that devoted to the posthumous 
 " Dialogues on Quietism," thought by some 
 to be apocryphal, it is correct to say that the 
 " Characters " formed the unique work of La 
 Bruyfere's life. 
 
 The first edition of the "Caracteres" (1688) 
 
 ' Pulled down in 1797. 
 14 
 
LA BRUYERE 
 
 bore the title "The Characters of Theophrastus, Introduction 
 translated from the Greek with characters or 
 manners of the Age." Two other editions were 
 called for the same year, and they each contained 
 420 articles. Other editions which La Bruyere 
 revised, and to which he greatly added, appeared 
 in 1689, 1690, 1691, 1692, and 1694, the last con- 
 taining 1,120 articles. The ninth edition was the 
 last printed in La Bruyere's life-time, and is 
 usually considered the best text. It was pub- 
 lished a few days after his death in 1696. With the 
 translation of Theophrastus we are not here con- 
 cerned. Suffice it to say that it was approved by 
 La Bruyere's learned contemporaries. Lack of 
 faithfulness to his original, a circumstance great- 
 ly blamed by modern scholars, was no bar to the 
 success of a translation in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, when a considerable amount of license was 
 regarded as a translator's right. Those who 
 are interested in La Bruyere's views on that 
 subject can read the " Discourse on Theophras- 
 tus " he prefixed to his translation. 
 
 La Bruyere took the title and idea of his 
 '« Characters or the Manners of the Age " from 
 Theophrastus, but with La Bruyere, the word 
 character ^ became a synonym for portrait, and 
 
 * Littr6 defines caractire as that which distinguishes one 
 person from another morally. The best " character " writers 
 may perhaps be said to have aimed at a happy mean between 
 individual and generic portraits. 
 
 15 
 
LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Introduction his aim was to describe the manners of his age in 
 a collection of portraits. With such portraits, 
 however, he mingled a great many reflexions 
 or remarks. He sets forth this object and in- 
 tention of his book in the motto prefixed to it, 
 and in the preface. The motto — " Our purpose 
 is to warn, not to bite ; to be useful, not to 
 wound ; to do good to manners, not hurt to 
 men " — is taken from the letter of Erasmus to 
 Martin Dorpius, in which he replies to the latter' s 
 criticism of his " Praise of Folly." In the pre- 
 face he writes : — " The subject of the following 
 sheets being borrowed of the public, it is but 
 justice to make restitution to it of the whole 
 work, such as it is, throughout which the utmost 
 regard has been paid to truth. The world may 
 view its picture drawn from life, and if conscious 
 of any of the defects which I have delineated, 
 let it correct them." He then requests his readers 
 to keep the title of the book in view, " and to 
 bear in mind that I describe the characters or the 
 manners of the age ; for though I frequently take 
 them from the Court of France and men of my 
 own nation, yet they cannot be confined to any 
 one court or country without greatly contracting 
 and impairing the compass and utility of my 
 book, and destroying the design of the work, 
 >^ which is to paint mankind in general. . . . 
 To conclude, what I have written is not designed 
 i6 
 
LA BRUYERE 
 
 for maxims ; they are like laws in morality ; and Introduction 
 I have neither genius nor authority for a legis- 
 lator. I know that I should have sinned against 
 the law of maxims, which requires short and 
 concise phrases, like unto oracles. Some of my 
 remarks are of this kind, others are more diffuse. 
 I think of things differently, and express them in 
 a turn of phrase equally different — by a sentence, 
 an argument, a metaphor, a simile, or some 
 other figure, by a story at length or a single 
 passage, by a description or a picture, whence 
 proceeds the length or shortness of my reflexions. 
 They who write maxims set up for infallibility ; 
 I, on the contrary, allow anybody to say my 
 remarks are not always just, provided he will 
 make better ones himself." 
 
 The book contains sixteen chapters with the 
 following titles: "Of works of genius — Of per- 
 sonal merit — Of women — Of the heart — Of society 
 and conversation — Of the goods of fortune — Of 
 the city— Of the court — Of the great — Of the sove- 
 reign — Of the state — Of man— Of judgments — Of 
 fashion, — Of custom — Of the pulpit— Of free- 
 thinkers." In these chapters portraits, observa- 
 tion of manners, and general maxims follow each 
 other without connection. La Bruyere never had 
 the intention of writing a regular work ; what he 
 desired was a large supple frame in which he 
 could include things that a more rigorous plan 
 
 17 B 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Introduction would have excluded. He well knew wherein 
 lay the novelty of his book. In the prefatory 
 discourse concerning Theophrastus he charac- 
 terizes the work of Pascal and La Rochefoucauld 
 thus : "The first makes metaphysics subservient 
 to religion, explains the nature of the soul, its 
 passions and vices, discusses the most prevalent 
 motives to virtue, and endeavours to make man 
 Christian. The other is the production of a 
 mind thoroughly acquainted with society who 
 has arrived at the conclusion that self-love in 
 man is the source of all his errors, who attacks 
 it unceasingly wherever he finds it; and with 
 him this one thought is so happily diversified in 
 a thousand ways by the choice of words and the 
 variety of expression that it always has the 
 charm of novelty." La Bruyere desired to do 
 neither of those things. His work was less 
 sublime than the first, less delicate than the 
 second ; it was his aim to make men reasonable, 
 the means to that end being to examine and 
 describe them. To define well, to paint well, 
 were, according to La Bruyere, the whole duty 
 of a writer. His "characters" are certainly 
 real and picturesque, and possess the quality of 
 something "seen." Notwithstanding the lack 
 of regularity, when we have read one of his 
 chapters we feel that we have been looking at 
 a complete picture, we have a profound impres- 
 i8 
 
LA BRUYfiRE 
 
 sion that everything on the subject treated has Introduction 
 been said.^ 
 
 We shall leave aside the question of the 
 " keys " to the different characters ; it is treated 
 fully by M. Servois, and those who are interested 
 may study it in his volumes. We prefer to 
 regard the matter from La Bruyere's own stand- 
 point. He said : " It is true that I have painted 
 from life, but it was not always my purpose to 
 paint this man or that woman. ... I have 
 taken one feature from one, and another from 
 another, and have formed from these different 
 features probable portraits." There is little 
 doubt that in nearly every case La Bruyere had 
 real persons in his mind, and in describing 
 some of them, Fontenelle (Cydias) and Conde 
 (^milius)^ he was surely guided by his personal 
 feeling towards them ; but while describing his ' 
 contemporaries. La Bruyere painted mankind, 
 as far as he had the means of observing it, in 
 general, and in that, and not in isolated portraits 
 of this or that individual, lies the value of his 
 work as a moralist. 
 
 And what splendid opportunities La Bruyere 
 had for observing all classes of society. Be- 
 longing to an old bourgeois family, himself a 
 barrister and a treasurer of France, nephew of 
 
 1 Cf. the chapter " Of the Court." 
 ' Cf. pp. 104 and 106. 
 
 19 
 
LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Introduction a financier and of a secretary to a king, almost 
 everybody who at that time formed the town, so 
 to speak — tradesmen, men of independent means, 
 lawyers, magistrates, manipulators of the public 
 funds — came under his view. 
 
 As a guest in Condi's house at Chantilly or 
 Versailles, he associated with all those of the 
 court, the army, the church, and the magistracy, 
 reckoned as the most illustrious men of France. 
 Men of letters he knew likewise, and is often 
 justly indignant at the low opinion held of them 
 by the great in his day. An author was mostly 
 regarded as something a little above the jester 
 or buffoon, something to provide distraction and 
 amusement for his betters. It was a period 
 when the pope would ask the king for the loan of 
 his poet, much as we might ask a friend to lend 
 us his horse or his dog. We do not know if 
 La Bruyere knew much of the country gentle- 
 men or of the yeomen of the period, but he 
 laughs at the cockneys who think all begins and 
 ends at the gate of their town ; he shows 
 acquaintance with agricultural subjects, and 
 signs of an appreciation of the beauties of ex- 
 ternal nature. In addition to his great oppor- 
 tunities for observing mankind, he had nothing 
 to distract his attention, no absorbing avocation, 
 no large fortune to administer, no family to bring 
 up, no imperious passions to yield to or with- 
 
 20 
 
LA BRUYERE 
 
 stand. Except during the two years in which Introduction 
 he was teaching the Duke of Bourbon, La 
 Bruyere enjoyed the leisure of the sage. Obser- 
 vation was the great business, the sole occupation 
 of his life. When his friends accused him of 
 doing nothing, of wasting his time, he replied, 
 "I am opening my eyes and looking, opening my 
 ears and listening." He was of those contem- 
 plative spirits whom the rush and hurry of 
 modern life seem to have killed, men who live 
 without ambition, unenvious of their fellows, yet 
 interested in all that concerns their kind. 
 
 Some critics refuse La Bruyere a place 
 among the originals. He said nothing new, they 
 argue. If an author is to be judged solely by 
 the new things he says, we should be compelled 
 to eliminate most writers from the ranks of the 
 immortals. To thoughtful persons the great 
 moral truths when expressed in words inevi- 
 tably present something of the obvious. But, 
 like our own poet, Alexander Pope, La Bruyere 
 possessed, in a supreme degree, the art of rivet- 
 ting attention, and if he says nothing that is 
 new, when once he has said the things that are 
 old, we never forget them. He has said them, 
 so to speak, for all time. It must also be re- 
 membered that La Bruyere made no attempt to 
 trace human feeling to its source, or to discover 
 its cause ; it is rather the outward physiognomy 
 
 21 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Introduction of the passions that held attraction for him. 
 Yet in some few points it seems to us that L,a 
 Bruyere can claim originality. As a thinker, he 
 was in many ways in advance of his time, and 
 was by no means inaccessible to new ideas. 
 He was not, it is true, agitated or dominated by 
 them to the extent of being inspired with revolu- 
 tionary passions or Utopian dreams. But he 
 was irritated by the vanity, and the insolence, 
 and the cruelty of the nobles, and did not hesi- 
 tate to express his irritation, and he was pained 
 by the misery and poverty and downtroddenness 
 of the people, and gave them freely of his sym- 
 pathy. In that way he touches hands with 
 Voltaire, Rousseau, and Beaumarchais, the 
 precursors of the Revolution. He was almost 
 the first among French writers to describe the 
 people, the toilers of the earth i who labour 
 without reaping the fruit of their toil. Yet his 
 reason always held sway, and his recognition of 
 the vices of the nobility never prevented him 
 from seeing the faults of the people. We find, 
 too, in La Bruyere, as we shall find presently in 
 Vauvenargues, a feeling for nature and natural 
 scenery that was rare in seventeenth century and 
 early eighteenth century writers. His description 
 of the little town which seems to him as it 
 painted on the slope of a hill,^ of the park of 
 
 » Cf. p. III. 2 Cf. p. 112. 
 
 22 
 
LA BRUVeRE 
 
 Chantilly,! and the comparison of the king Introduction 
 and the shepherd,^ are interesting examples. 
 He had, too, a love of places that is entirely 
 modern. He writes — " There are some places 
 which we admire, others which we love, and 
 where we could wish to pass our days," a sen- 
 tence which contains the germ of what after- 
 wards blossomed into fruit ih the work of Rous- 
 seau, Bernardin de St. Pierre, and Lamartine. 
 
 We have already pointed out that La Bru- 
 yere's chapters follow no regular plan. Some- 
 times he gives us short dialogues, sometimes 
 rhetorical apostrophes to a fictitious auditor, 
 sometimes a fairly well developed narrative 
 which is almost an apologue or a short story ; 
 he well understood the art of telling an anec- 
 dote to illustrate a character. With these are 
 mingled brief sentences or longer maxims. We 
 have chosen some of all sorts for this volume, 
 and have been guided in our choice by what 
 seems most permanent and most likely to interest 
 the general reader. The student of the history of 
 the age of Louis XIV would, of course, approach 
 La Bruyere's work from another point of view. 
 But he should bear in mind that the historical 
 portraits, like those of Louis XIV, the great 
 Conde,William of Orange, are among the weakest 
 which La Bruyere has drawn. The portraits ot 
 » Cf. p. 112. 2 cf. p. no. 
 
 23 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Introduction the secondary personages of the time, like those 
 of Fontenelle, La Fontaine, or Lauzun, are, on 
 the other hand, of great excellence. The general 
 characters, like those of the ambitious man, the 
 hypocrite, the egoist, the wit, or the miser, are 
 fair of their kind, but as he always seems to have 
 before his eyes some original, his type is of an 
 age rather than for all time, and so, perhaps, 
 misses that stamp of universality which all great 
 and enduring work of the kind should bear. Un- 
 doubtedly, La Bruyere's greatest genius lay in 
 the representation of narrow detail. Wide im- 
 pressions were not possible to a man of his 
 temperament, and as we read him we come to 
 the conclusion that his best work as a character 
 writer is to be sought in his many admirable 
 portraits of the more or less harmless and trifling 
 eccentricities of men. His portraits of the 
 dilettante collector with a mania for books which 
 he never reads, or for medals or prints, or for 
 tulips or plums, of the absent-minded man, the 
 newsmonger, the man who thinks he knows 
 everything, and similar personages, have pro- 
 bably never been surpassed in any literature. 
 
 It is not easy to describe or classify La Bru- 
 yere's literary style. His French critics, and 
 they ought to know, find his style too laboured, 
 an example of a too earnest seeking after the 
 right word. " Among all the different expres- 
 24 
 
LA BRUVeRE 
 
 sions," he wrote, " which can render a single Introduction 
 one of our thoughts, there is only one which is 
 the right one. Everything which is not it is 
 feeble, and does not content an intelligent man 
 who desires to make himself understood." He 
 dutifully followed the rules accepted by all the 
 great French prose writers of the seventeenth 
 century, but, in so doing, did not disdain to traverse 
 roads from which they had turned aside, and 
 which it was still possible to traverse again, or 
 to throw open roads to be traversed for the 
 first time. His vocabulary was very rich, richer 
 even than that of La Rochefoucauld, Bossuet, 
 or Madame de S6vigne. He used a number of 
 technical words borrowed from the law, from 
 the military arts, from agriculture, even from 
 heraldry, the merchant's office, or the artisan's 
 workshop. The best characteristics of his style 
 are to be found in its variety, in its conciseness, 
 in his original way of illustrating an abstract idea 
 by some physical detail which at once material- 
 izes it, as when he writes : " Thirty years are 
 required to think of one's fortune ; it is not made 
 at fifty ; a man commences building in his old 
 age and dies when it is time for the painters and 
 glaziers to begin their work." In this feature of 
 his style La Bruyere was curiously modern, not 
 to say curiously English, for some modem Eng- 
 lish philosophers use the method largely and with 
 
 25 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Introduction admirable effect. But let us not forget that both 
 they and La Bruyere are following no less a pre- 
 cedent than that of Dante. It may justly be said 
 that La Bruyere brought light and colour into 
 French prose. In many ways he belongs to both 
 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for 
 while the strongest bonds attach him to the 
 former, he foreshadows the methods of Voltaire 
 and of Montesquieu, especially in the Lettres Per- 
 sanes. Lesage, Regnard, and Destouches owe 
 him something. Among English writers it is 
 Addison who perhaps owes him most. Both led 
 quiet, contemplative lives, and were spectators 
 of mankind, not themselves men of action ; both 
 were silent and retiring, wanting probably in that 
 outward grace of manner that so readily confers 
 an indiscriminate popularity. 
 
 Despite the fact that between 1605 and 1700 
 fifty- six books of Characters were published in 
 England, it would not seem that English char- 
 acter writers owe anything to La Bruyere. 
 Casaubon's Latin version of Theophrastus pub- 
 lished in 1592 gave the impulse to such writing 
 here. The first book of English characters, 
 The Fratemitye of Vacabondes, by John Awdeley, 
 appeared in, or possibly before, 1565, and was 
 followed by Thomas Harman's Caveat for Coin- 
 men Cursetors, Vulgarely Called Vagabones, in 
 1567. Then came Joseph Hall's Characterisms of 
 26 
 
LA BRUY6RE 
 
 Vertues and Vices, 1608 ; Sir Thomas Overbury's Introduction 
 Wife now a Widow, Whereunto are added Many 
 Witty Characters, 1614 ; Nicholas Breton's Charac- 
 ters upon Essays Moral and Divine, 1615 ; and The 
 Good and the Bad, 1616. The most notable book 
 of the kind in English literature, John Earle's 
 Microcosmographie, or a Peece of the World Dis- 
 covered in Essay es and Characters, was published 
 in 1628. Earle dealt with all types. His portraits 
 are drawn with animation and sympathy; but 
 his method differs considerably from that of La 
 Bruyere. The two manners may be best com- 
 pared in the portrait of the Poor Man as drawn 
 by each. Earle describes the treatment which 
 the poor man receives from his fellows, La Bru- 
 yere describes the manner in which the poor man 
 himself behaves. The historians. Clarendon and 
 Burnet, may both be styled writers of Characters, 
 for the value of their works lies chiefly in their 
 admirable portraits of the historical personages 
 of the times with which they deal. Character 
 writing in our literature forms a kind of link be- 
 tween the comedy of manners and the novel. 
 It was handed on fresh to the novelists by peri- 
 odical essayists such as Steele and Addison, who 
 simply revelled in character writing. 
 
 Our character writers can scarcely be placed 
 beside such authors as La Bruyere and Vauven- 
 argues, who use the form as much for conveying 
 
 27 
 
LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Introduction their philosophy of life, and their estimation of 
 mankind, as for describing the men of their time 
 or of all time. 
 
 La Bruyere took his mission as a moralist very 
 seriously. Pascal made metaphysics serve reli- 
 gion, and strove to make men Christians ; La 
 Rochefoucauld's observation of men led him to 
 attribute the cause of all their weaknesses to 
 self-love, and so he attacked mankind, and actually 
 slandered it wherever he came in contact with it ; 
 Vauvenargues restored to humanity its virtues, 
 and was tolerant towards its sins and vices ; 
 while La Bruyere's system, so far as he had 
 one, differed from all these. Less sublime than 
 Pascal, less subtle than La Rochefoucauld, he 
 aimed at making man reasonable, and his means 
 to that end was to examine and describe him at 
 various ages, under various conditions, taking 
 note of his vices, weaknesses, and eccentricities. 
 
 IV 
 
 " Courage is the light of adversity."— VAUVENARGUES. 
 
 " Vauvenargues was one of the most admirable of men ; and 
 certainly of all the great sages the most unfortunate. When- 
 ever his fortune hangs in the balance, he is attacked and 
 prostrated by cruel disease; and notwithstanding the efforts 
 of his genius, his bravery, his moral beauty, day after day he 
 is wantonly betrayed, or falls victim to gratuitous injustice ; 
 and at the age of thirty-two he dies, at the very moment 
 when recognition is at last awaiting his work." — MAETER- 
 LINCK. 
 
 28 
 
VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues, Introduction 
 was born at Aix, in Provence, 6 August, 1715, 
 of an ancient and honourable but poor family. 
 His father, Joseph de Clapiers, Seigneur de 
 Vauvenargues, was created marquis by royal 
 letters patent in 1722, partly in recognition of the 
 devotion which he had shown two years pre- 
 viously, when alone among the magistrates of 
 the city he remained at his post in Aix during 
 the terrible plague of 1720. Of Vauvenargues' s 
 early youth and education we know little beyond 
 the fact that his studies were interrupted by the 
 weak health that pursued him as long as he lived. 
 About the age of sixteen he came across Plu- 
 tarch's Lives, and, as with so many boys, the 
 book thoroughly impressed his imagination. 
 Years afterwards he wrote in a letter to a 
 friend : — " I wept for joy when I read Plutarch's 
 Lives; there was no evening that I did not converse 
 with Alcibiades, Agesilaus and others. I went 
 down into the Roman forum to discuss with the 
 Gracchi, to defend Cato from the stones thrown 
 at him. Do you remember how Caesar, wishing 
 to pass a law too greatly in favour of the people, 
 that same Cato, desiring to keep him from pro- 
 posing it, put his hand on his mouth to prevent 
 him speaking ? Such methods, so contrary to 
 ours, made a great impression on me. At the 
 same period a Seneca fell into my hands, by 
 
 29 
 
LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Introduction what chance I know not; then the letters ot 
 Brutus to Cicero when he was in Greece after 
 the death of Caesar. Those letters are so full of 
 dignity, elevation of soul, passion and courage 
 that it was impossible to read them and preserve 
 my coolness. I mingled the three books and 
 was so moved by them that I only contained 
 what they put into me." He must have read 
 his classics in translations, for he does not seem 
 to have known either Latin or Greek. 
 
 At that period the only professions considered 
 worthy the attention of a young man of good 
 family were the church and the army. From 
 his earliest boyhood Vauvenargues had a passion 
 for military glory, and at the age of eighteen he 
 entered the army as sub-lieutenant in an infantry 
 corps. In 1733 he accompanied Marshal Villars 
 into Lombardy. He returned to France in 1736 
 to a monotonous garrison life, to much idleness, 
 and some dissipation. Now and again he would 
 isolate himself from his companions for the pur- 
 poses of study and reflexion. His comrades 
 evidently liked him and recognized his superior 
 parts, for, young as he was, they were in the 
 habit of styling him pere. 
 
 The first, perhaps, to discover Vauvenargues's 
 
 originality was the Marquis de Mirabeau, father 
 
 of the famous Mirabeau of the Revolution. The 
 
 young men were about the same age, and their 
 
 30 
 
VAUVENARGUES 
 
 correspondence, which extends from July, 1737, Introduction 
 to August, 1740, serves as a history of Vauven- 
 argues's intellectual development. Mirabeau 
 urged Vauvenargues to go to Paris and to take 
 up the profession of letters. As yet, however, 
 the profession of arms seemed to him the most 
 noble and desirable, and he held no high opinion 
 of men of letters. The following passages from 
 the correspondence will best illustrate his attitude 
 of mind at this period : — " You will easily under- 
 stand that it is not from choice that I spend my 
 youth among persons who do not touch my heart, 
 whom I have no desire to please, who drive me 
 from society by the little taste and interest I find 
 in intercourse with them. You would like me, 
 compelled to live in solitude, to attempt to fill it 
 with literature, to cultivate my reason, being un- 
 able to follow my heart, and to steep myself in 
 writing for lack of conversation, so as to keep 
 myself in the world by that road at least, and to 
 communicate my soul. That is a good thought, 
 nothing could be better said ; but I know myself, 
 I know how to do myself justice, and to prove 
 that I do not boast, I will not hide from you 
 that I have neither the health, the genius, nor 
 the taste necessary for writing, that the public 
 does not want to know what I think, and that if 
 I told them, it would be without either effect or 
 profit .... there is neither proportion nor 
 
 31 
 
LA BRUY^RE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Introduction propriety between my strength and my desires, 
 between my reason and my heart, between my 
 heart and my circumstances. . . . But although 
 I am not happy, I stand by my inclinations and 
 cannot renounce them, I make it a point of 
 honour to protect their weakness. I only consult 
 my heart. I do not wish it to be the slave of the 
 philosophers' maxims nor of my circumstances. 
 I do not make vain efforts to compel them to 
 conform with my fortune, I wish rather to form 
 my fortune on them. Doubtless that will not fulfil 
 my desires ; everything that would please me is a 
 thousand leagues away, but I will not put myself 
 under compulsion, I would rather yield my life ! 
 It is only on those conditions that I preserve it, 
 and I suffer less from the griefs that my passions 
 bring me than I do from the trouble of continually 
 crossing them. I am not ignorant of the advan- 
 tages of pleasant intercourse ; I have always 
 greatly desired it, and I do not hide in solitude. 
 But I set less store by men of letters than you 
 do. I only judge by their works ; for I confess 
 I have no acquaintance among authors, but I say 
 frankly that, with the exception of a few great 
 geniuses and a few original men whose names I 
 respect, the others do not impress me. I begin 
 to see that the greater part of them only know 
 what others have thought, that they do not feel, 
 that they have no soul, that their criticism only re- 
 32 
 
VAUVENARGUES 
 
 fleets the taste of the age or of those in authority ; Introduction 
 for they do not penetrate into the heart of things. 
 They have no principles of their own, or if they 
 have, so much the worse ; they oppose conven- 
 tional prejudices with false, useless, or tiresome 
 knowledge, and a mind dulled with toil, and 
 therefore I imagine that it is not their genius 
 that made them turn to knowledge, but their in- 
 capacity for affairs, the rebuffs which they have 
 encountered in the world, jealousy, ambition, 
 education, chance. So that to live with such 
 men you need a great stock of knowledge that 
 satisfies neither heart nor mind, and which fills 
 up the greater part of one's youth." As a 
 matter of fact Vauvenargues never became a 
 man of letters in the professional sense of the 
 term. With him a life of action was ever supe- 
 rior to a life of thought, and he only entered on 
 the second when the first became impossible. 
 
 Another of Vauvenargues' s correspondents 
 was Fauris de Saint- Vincens, a scholar and an 
 antiquary, three years his junior. The letters 
 written by him are deeply interesting, and touch 
 on all subjects likely to be discussed between 
 young men of a thoughtful turn of mind. They 
 extend from 1739 to 1747, and give a fairly full 
 history of Vauvenargues' s active and spiritual 
 life. They contain, perhaps, his most intimate 
 utterances on religion, faith, and friendship. A 
 
 33 C 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Introduction few passages will suffice to prove their interest 
 and value. Saint-Vincens had been dangerously 
 ill, and Vauvenargues writes thus to him con- 
 cerning the uses of religion and faith at such a 
 time : — 
 
 Aug. 8, 1739. 
 " I am not surprised at the security with which 
 you regarded the approach of death ; yet it is very 
 sad to die in the flower of one's youth ! but religion, 
 as you say, provides great resources ; it is for- 
 tunate at such a moment to possess perfect faith. 
 By the side of Eternity, life seems but a moment, 
 and human happiness but a dream ; and to speak 
 frankly, it is not only against death that the 
 forces of Faith are to be arrayed ; there are no 
 misfortunes that it does not mitigate, no tears 
 that it does not dry, no losses that it does not 
 make good ; it affords consolation for con- 
 tempt, poverty, misfortune, lack of health — the 
 hardest of all the afflictions that can try men — 
 and there is none so humiliated, so forsaken who, 
 in his despair and distress does not find in it 
 support, hope, courage; but this same Faith, 
 which is the consolation of the wretched, is the 
 torture of the happy ; it poisons their pleasures, 
 troubles their present joy, causes them to regret 
 the past and fear the future ; indeed, it tyrannizes 
 over their passions, and aims at depriving them 
 of the two sources whence nature causes our 
 34 
 
VAUVENARGUES 
 
 good and evil fortune to flow, self-love and Introduction 
 pleasure, that is to say the pleasures of the 
 senses and all the joys of the heart." 
 
 Oct. 10, 1739. 
 
 " No more poignant picture could be traced than 
 that you draw of a dying man who lived amid 
 pleasures, persuaded of their innocence by the 
 liberty, duration or sweetness of their usage, 
 and who is suddenly recalled to the prejudices 
 of his education, and brought back to Faith by 
 the sentiment of his end, by the terror of the 
 future, by the danger of scepticism, by the tears 
 which are shed over him, and last by the im- 
 pressions of all who surround him. With most 
 men of the world it is the heart which doubts ; 
 when the heart is converted all is done, it carries 
 them along ; the mind follows the heart's im- 
 pulses by custom and by reason. I have nevet 
 been against ; but there are unbelievers whose 
 error lies deeper ; their too curious intellect has 
 spoiled their emotions." 
 
 Vauvenargues never wholly gave up religion. 
 His attitude towards it is perhaps best indicated 
 in the expressions that he had never been against 
 it, and that he thought it possible to be a Christian 
 " without being a Capuchin." 
 
 Another time he has something to say on 
 friendship : — 
 
 35 
 
LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Introduction Nov. 3, 1740- 
 
 "Truly, my dear Saint- Vincens, nothing is 
 perfect without friendship, nothing is whole, 
 nothing sensible. 
 
 " I pity those who neglect it, and who seek 
 their happiness only in themselves. There are 
 moments of strength, moments Of elevation, 
 passion and enthusiasm in which the soul may 
 suffice for itself and disdain all help, intoxicated 
 with its own greatness. . . . The fire of 
 pride, of glory, consumes itself very soon if it 
 derives no nourishment from without. It falls, 
 it perishes, it is extinguished, and then, man 
 suffers pain. . . . Men make one society : the 
 entire Universe is only one whole. In the 
 whole of Nature there is only one soul, one 
 body. He who cuts himself off from that body 
 causes the life in him to perish. He withers, 
 he is consumed in a terrible languor, he is 
 worthy of compassion." 
 
 These letters, too, give us a poignant picture 
 of the manner in which Vauvenargues was, 
 throughout his life, hampered by poverty. We 
 learn the expedients to which he was reduced, 
 the borrowings and the makeshifts, the debts he 
 was forced to contract in order to keep up his 
 position in the army. In a passage that has a 
 sort of ironical humour, he tells Saint- Vincens 
 36 
 
VAUVEN ARGUES 
 
 that a man of whom he seeks to borrow money Introduction 
 has daughters, and that if he will lend him the 
 desired sum, it occurs to him he might promise 
 to marry one of them in two years' time, with a 
 reasonable dowry ! 
 
 Vauvenargues took part in the war of the 
 Austrian Succession, and in 1742 was in 
 the terrible retreat from Prague to Egra, 
 compared by Voltaire to the retreat of the Ten 
 Thousand. The cold was intense and the army 
 suffered horrible tortures. Vauvenargues, con- 
 stitutionally weak, never properly recovered from 
 the privations endured on the march. His 
 friend, Paul Hippolyte Emmanuel de Seytres, 
 the young man for whom he wrote the " Con- 
 seils a un jeune homme," died at the age of 
 eighteen, during the siege of Prague. In his 
 memory Vauvenargues wrote an " Eloge Fun6- 
 bre." Its eloquence was evidently inspired by 
 F6nelon, and although it will not rank high 
 among compositions of the kind, or among 
 Vauvenargues's works, we are told that he set 
 more store by it than by any other of his pro- 
 ductions, and that he was continually retouching 
 it. The most interesting passages are those that 
 reveal De Seytres's personality, the most illu- 
 minating of which is, perhaps, the brief sentence, 
 " he was insensible to the pleasure of talking 
 about himself, the bond of feeble friendships." 
 
 37 
 
LA BRUYgRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Introduction At length the state of Vauvenargues's health 
 rendered it necessary for him to renounce the 
 military life. He had traversed great perils and 
 had won no glory, but still eager for a life of 
 action, he turned his thoughts to diplomacy. 
 He sent letters asking for employment to the 
 King and to Amelot, the minister for foreign 
 affairs, but even a second application brought 
 no result. About this time, Vauvenargues wrote 
 to Voltaire touching a question of criticism con- 
 cerning the genius of Comeille and Racine. 
 The great man, fully alive to his young corre- 
 spondent's ability and originality, replied, and 
 sent Vauvenargues a copy of his works. Thus 
 began a friendship ended only by death. Vol- 
 taire obtained from Amelot the promise of a 
 post for Vauvenargues in the diplomatic service. 
 But unluckily he was attacked by small-pox ot 
 the most malignant type ; the little health he still 
 possessed was completely ruined ; the disease 
 left him almost blind, it was impossible that he 
 should avail himself of the minister's offer. 
 
 Everything now pointed to the literary life, 
 and accordingly, in 1745, acting under the advice 
 of Voltaire and Mirabeau, Vauvenargues went 
 to Paris. The difficulty of the step was enhanced 
 by his poverty ; he was forced to live in modest 
 lodgings and to lead a very retired life. 
 
 Notwithstanding his dislike for the professional 
 38 
 
VAUVENARGUES 
 
 man of letters, Vauvenargues had, in his leisure Introduction 
 moments, found time to record his thoughts in 
 writing, and in February, 1746, published anony- 
 mously a duodecimo volume of less than 400 
 pages, containing an " Introduction to the know- 
 ledge of the human mind ; Reflexions on various 
 subjects ; Advice to a young man ; Critical re- 
 flexions on various poets ; Fragments on the 
 orators and on La Bruyere ; Meditation on faith ; 
 Paradoxes mingled with reflexions and maxims." 
 A few days after its publication Voltaire wrote 
 to the author giving it the very highest praise. 
 He characterized it as one of the best books 
 " we have had in our language." It had, how- 
 ever, no success with the public, yet acting 
 always under Voltaire's advice, Vauvenargues 
 issued a second edition in 1747. He corrected 
 in it faults of style that had been pointed out to 
 him, suppressed over two hundred of the maxims 
 as too obscure, too common-place, or useless, 
 changed the order of the maxims he retained, 
 developed some, added others.^ Meanwhile he 
 was dying in slow agony and dire poverty, yet 
 heroic to the end, Voltaire could say of him " I 
 
 1 This second edition, the title of which was altered to 
 Riflexions et Maximes, contained 330 maxims. The number 
 was subsequently made up from the author's MSS. to 945. 
 Those that appear in the present translation are mainly- 
 drawn from the 1747 issue, the last to appear during the 
 author's lifetime. 
 
 39 
 
LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVE^ARGUES 
 
 Introduction saw him the most unfortunate and the most 
 serene of men." His whole life may be read 
 in his "characters" — Clazomenes and Phere- 
 cides. " When fortune seemed to tire of per- 
 secuting him, when a too tardy hope began to 
 alleviate his misery, death confronted him." 
 
 Vauvenargues died 28 May, 1747. He had not 
 completed his thirty-second year. For half a 
 century the work he left behind him remained 
 unnoticed. In 1797, a new edition in two 
 volumes appeared, quickly followed by another 
 in 1806. Since, there have been many others, 
 the best critical edition being that edited in two 
 volumes by Gilbert ^ in 1857. 
 
 " The essence of aphorism is the compression of a mass 
 of thought into a single saying ... it is good sense brought 
 to a point."— JOHN MORLEY. 
 
 Philosophy, like art and poetry, must have its source in 
 the clear comprehension of the universe. . . . Men's ac- 
 tions depend in equal measure on both head and heart. . . . 
 Philosophy is not an algebra sum. Vauvenargues is quite 
 right when he says " Great thoughts come from the heart." — 
 SCHOPENHAUER. 
 
 Rare indeed are the cases in which a man 
 escapes the influences of his time. Vauven- 
 
 ' Jean Desir6 Louis Gilbert (1819-1870), whose ^hge on 
 Vauvenargues prefixed to this edition won him the prix 
 d'iloqamce at the French Academy in 1857. 
 40 
 
VAUVENARGUES 
 
 argues was strangely little touched by them. Introduction 
 The scepticism of the first half of the eighteenth 
 century, its contempt for the past, its frivolous 
 society, a society without dignity or conviction, 
 produced on him little or no effect. We look in 
 vain in Vauvenargues's writings for the keen 
 cynicism and delicate satire of La Rochefoucauld, 
 or for the more brutal methods of Chamfort or 
 Rivarol. Vauvenargueshad no desire to display 
 the vices of men, his aim was to show of what 
 their virtues made them capable. Were it not 
 for an occasional reference to some custom es- 
 sentially belonging to the France of his time, 
 there would be little to mark internally the 
 period to which his work belongs. 
 
 The maxims form the most interesting part 
 of Vauvenargues's writings, but it is not wise to 
 ignore or underrate other portions of them, 
 especially the Characters. His method of 
 painting character diff'ers considerably from that 
 of L-a Bruyere. Vauvenargues has himself 
 described it. He disapproved of the unwritten 
 law that forced writers who drew " characters " 
 to limit themselves to the manners of their time 
 or their country ; a little more liberty was ad- 
 visable, and authors should be permitted to leave 
 their age on condition that they never left nature. 
 He did not seek to describe men of the world, 
 nor the absurdities of the great. He preferred 
 
 41 
 
LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Introduction to render, so far as he could, rather what fitted 
 all men than what was only applicable to a few, 
 and was more touched by the picture of a single 
 virtue than by the numberless little defects so 
 pleasing to superficial minds. Vauvenargues's 
 characters are full of himself. As we said above, 
 Clazomenes and Pherecides sum up his life. 
 The characters that follow take us through dif- 
 ferent phases of it. There are portraits of mili- 
 tary men, and of active, firm, ambitious charac- 
 ters having insight into human character and so 
 able to lead men. These would seem to point 
 to his experiences in the army, and to his at- 
 tempts to enter diplomacy. By contrast he 
 draws a few characters of vain, weak, inconse- 
 quential persons, and, lastly, portraits of insipid 
 or frivolous authors represent his literaryperiod. 
 The enthusiastic student of Vauvenargues will 
 of course read all that he has written, but those 
 who, without so much study, wish to gain a clear 
 idea of his philosophy and teaching may confine 
 themselves to the maxims after they have once 
 become acquainted with the personality of the 
 man through his correspondence and the Charac- 
 ters. As writers of maxims and aphorisms the 
 French stand easily first ; no one disputes their 
 supremacy. No other of the world's great litera- 
 tures can point to the long line of authors, among 
 whom we may name at random Pascal, La 
 42 
 
VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Bruyere, La Rochefoucauld, Chamfort, Rivarol, Introduction 
 De Bonald, Joubert, who have excelled in that 
 form of composition. The reason is not far to 
 seek. The marvellous clarity and terseness of 
 the French language, the ready wit of the French- 
 man, and his capacity for handling words with 
 lightness and dexterity, for expressing much in 
 small compass, are just the qualifications that 
 make for perfection in maxim writing. It is the 
 Frenchman who has made conversation a fine 
 art, and who has studied anxiously and lovingly 
 the art of expressing in words delicate shades of 
 thought and feeling. The French excel in the 
 conte or short tale for similar reasons. Even 
 Goethe with all his genius, and wisdom, and 
 knowledge of men cannot be said to have written 
 maxims that are successful as maxims. 
 
 Regarded solely from the standpoint of literary 
 style Vauvenargues's maxims often fall short of 
 perfection. He was not a man of letters by pro- 
 fession, and understood the art of writing, as 
 an art, scarcely at all. His criticism of other 
 authors is all but valueless. He judged them 
 entirely by their effect on himself, and forgot 
 that the first duty of a critic is to have prefer- 
 ences and no exclusions. He considered that 
 Moliere chose sujets trap bas, and praised Boileau 
 with enthusiasm. Some of his criticisms, how- 
 ever, contain certain general views that are 
 
 43 
 
LA BRUYgRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Introduction universally true. For example, he infers from 
 the number of worthless books that cannot possi- 
 bly live, issued from the presses of his day, that 
 the taste of the majority is not correct. The 
 mass of bad books is caused by the fact that 
 writers do not follow the maxim — " Before you 
 can write you must have thought ; before you 
 can excite emotion in others you must have felt 
 it yourself ; before you can convince you must 
 know with certainty. Every effort made to seem 
 what you are not, only serves to prove more 
 clearly what you are." He declared that " all 
 fiction that does not paint nature is insipid," and 
 that what people so eagerly seek in novels is 
 <« the image of a living and passionate truth." 
 
 As Vauvenargues was no man of letters by 
 profession, so was he no philosopher by pro- 
 fession, observing at leisure and making that, and 
 that alone, the business of his life. He was a 
 man who had suffered and had thought, and his 
 sufferings and reflexions led him to certain con- 
 ceptions of life and conduct which he embodied 
 in his maxims. His main article of faith was 
 that man should be guided by his passions equally 
 with his reason ; that only by such means could 
 right action be possible ; only by such means 
 could a harmonious existence be assured. He 
 even thought that our passions, wisely developed 
 and followed, might be more likely to lead us on 
 44 
 
VAUVENARGUES 
 
 the right road than if we listened to reason alone. Introduction 
 
 Regarding the passions as the principle of all 
 
 moral activity, as the very life of the soul, he 
 
 writes to Mirabeau — " We are generally masters 
 
 of our actions, but scarcely ever of our passions. 
 
 It is foolish to struggle against them when there 
 
 is nothing vicious in them, and even unjust to 
 
 complain of them. For life without passions 
 
 resembles death, and I compare a man without 
 
 passions to a book of logic ; he is only of use to 
 
 those who read him. He has no life in him, he 
 
 does not feel, he enjoys nothing, not even his 
 
 thoughts." Although it is true that suppression 
 
 of real, sincere feeling may prove as harmful to 
 
 character as a too great readiness to yield to it, 
 
 the doctrine would scarcely be a safe one for 
 
 weak men. What Vauvenargues really meant 
 
 was that a man's character should be developed 
 
 on every side. He believed in the importance of 
 
 character, much as thoughtful men who have the 
 
 welfare and progress of the human race at heart 
 
 are beginning to believe in it now. 
 
 Vauvenargues saw clearly the faults and vices 
 of men, but was full of that large toleration for 
 weakness that is ever the hall-mark of a superior 
 mind. He believed in human goodness, that in 
 all men lies something of good which should be 
 cherished and developed. This point of view 
 made him sympathize with ordinary mortals, 
 
 45 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Introduction their hopes and fears, their weakness and their 
 strength, and we contend that if only Vauven- 
 argues's Maxims were better known, more 
 widely spread abroad, there is no philosophy 
 that would more appeal to the average human 
 being than that which they contain. A long 
 line of moralists before him had written of the 
 duties of men. He was no mere preaching 
 moralist; it was his chief aim to spread clear- 
 ness and light over the difficulty of attaining to 
 virtue, of resisting temptation to sin. The first 
 impulse of the human heart when brought face 
 to face with weakness is to pity, it is the second 
 impulse that moves us to condemn ; second 
 thoughts are not always best. Yet Vauven- 
 argues's tenderness of heart has no resem- 
 blance to the sentimentalism of the Richardsonian 
 period, or to the philanthropy of our own. The 
 professional philosopher in all ages, and rightly, 
 is more interested in the destiny of the human race 
 than in that of the individual ; Vauvenargues, 
 without altogether losing sight of the species, is 
 more interested in the lot of the individual. 
 Some find Vauvenargues' s classic prototype in 
 Voltaire; we are inclined to regard him as a 
 disciple to a great extent of Pascal and Fenelon. 
 However that may be, Rousseau is undoubtedly 
 his intellectual successor. Like La Bruyere, 
 Vauvenargues seems to have loved and observed 
 46 
 
VAUVENARGUES 
 
 external nature ; a number of beautiful similes Introduction 
 from nature are to be found in the maxims. He 
 compares an old man's advice to winter sunshine, 
 and the sudden end of a long and prosperous 
 career to the dissipation of summer heat by one 
 stormy day, and further shows his feeling for 
 nature in such sentences as " The tempests of 
 youth are mingled with days of brilliant sun- 
 shine " ; "The days of early spring have less 
 beauty than the budding virtue of a youth"; 
 " The light of dawn is not so sweet as the first 
 glimpses of glory." Delille was nine years 
 old when Vauvenargues died, and the Nouvelle 
 Hdloise, in which Rousseau was the first to draw 
 his countrymen's attention to the beauty and 
 influence of natural scenery, did not appear until 
 the end of 1760. 
 
 While La Bruyere paints a picture of humanity 
 and draws from it no conclusions ; while Pascal 
 suffers from, and is irritated by humanity, 
 although he continues to esteem it, and his 
 maxims are often perverted by his systematic 
 views on religion ; while La Rochefoucauld's 
 maxims, true as they are of all selfish persons, 
 and of all persons in proportion as they are 
 selfish, succeed in slandering mankind; Vau- 
 venargues's maxims act like a strengthening 
 tonic. He restores to humanity its virtues, puts 
 the spur where others put the curb, preaches 
 
 47 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Introduction liberality even to extravagance, boldness even to 
 rashness, advocates all that makes life strong and 
 beautiful. His own life was certainly a restless 
 striving for glory, but not for glory that should 
 aggrandize himself, but for the glory born of 
 valiant service to his country. Maybe that his 
 sympathy with the imperfections of humanity, 
 his serenity under a cruel destiny, his earnest 
 desire to discover the good in men, give him a 
 more enduring place in the "choir invisible" 
 than the more active kind of glory he so ardently 
 sought. 
 
 VI 
 
 ■'No music is more agreeable than variations of well- 
 known airs."— JOUBERT. 
 
 This little introduction would, perhaps, be 
 more incomplete than it is, if we did not briefly 
 mention the French maxim writers who lived 
 after Vauvenargues. 
 
 Nicolas Chamfort (1741-1794) is sometimes 
 called " La Rochefoucauld-Chamfort," because 
 his conclusions about men and morals resemble, 
 if we can imagine such a person, those of a 
 more philosophic La Rochefoucauld, living, not 
 in the seventeenth, but in the eighteenth century. 
 Chamfort' s maxims are always incisive and 
 48 
 
RIVAROL 
 
 witty ; sometimes they are cruel, pessimistic, or Introduction 
 even of a distorted truth. It seems strange that 
 the same man who wrote, " The most wasted 
 of all days is that on which we have not laughed," 
 could also write, "There are few vices that pre- 
 vent a man having many friends, in the degree 
 that too great qualities may prevent many friend- 
 ships," or " Life is a disease for which sleep 
 consoles us every sixteen hours ; it is a palliative ; 
 death is the remedy. ' ' Chamfort lost his illusions 
 too soon, yet his cynicism, which has a flavour 
 of that of Swift, was absolutely sincere, for few 
 have had keener insight into the weaknesses of 
 men. But his philosophy of life is unsatisfying, 
 and we read his maxims for the sake of their 
 brilliance rather than for that of their truth. 
 
 Antoine Rivarol (1753-1801) combated the 
 sophisms and the revolutionary excesses of the 
 Revolution. He emigrated in 1792 and died at 
 Berlin. It was he who said " Printing is the 
 artillery of thought." It was his desire that 
 men should be guided by reason, and for that 
 purpose adorned his maxims of reason with an 
 inimitable wit and brilliance of style. With 
 Vauvenargues he believed in the power of the 
 heart. " The heart," he writes, " is the infinite 
 in man, the mind has its bounds. We do not 
 love God with all our mind, we love Him with 
 all our heart. I have noticed that the people 
 
 49 D 
 
LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Introduction who lack heart, and the nunaber is larger than 
 one thinks, have an excessive self-love, and a 
 certain poverty of mind — for the heart rectifies 
 everything in man — and that such persons are 
 jealous and ungrateful, and that it is only neces- 
 sary to do them a favour to make enemies of 
 them." 
 
 The Vicomte de Bonald (1753-1840), a devoted 
 royalist, published works in support of his party, 
 among them a few maxims which uphold his 
 views of society and government. He said many 
 true and witty things. As examples, let us take 
 the two following sentences : " Follies com- 
 mitted by the sensible, extravagances uttered by 
 the clever, crimes committed by the good — that 
 is what makes revolutions:" "a man of genius 
 only needs a wife of sense : more than one 
 genius in a house is too much." 
 
 But, in our opinion, since Vauvenargues, there 
 has only been one maxim writer in France who 
 ranks beside his seventeenth century brethren, 
 and that one is Joseph Joubert (1754-1824). He 
 wrote in fragments for himself alone, and had, 
 perhaps, no intention of composing a book of 
 maxims at all. For he published nothing in his 
 life-time. Fourteen years after his death a 
 small volume was issued by Chateaubriand 
 containing " Thoughts " that at once assured 
 Joubert a high place among French moralists and 
 50 
 
JOUBERT 
 
 maxim writers. As a moralist his chief desire Introduction 
 was, perhaps, to induce men to desist from lov- 
 ing the future at the expense of the past, and 
 thus his teaching was a protest against the nega- 
 tive philosophy of the Revolution period. Of his 
 forerunners he most resembles Vauvenargues. 
 He lived too much in himself, too little in outside 
 things, to be compared with La Bruyere, he 
 was not a despairing soul like Pascal ; but he 
 possessed the same generosity and natural 
 elevation of thought, the same enthusiasm for 
 all that is beautiful and good, the same delicacy 
 of feeling, the same combination of charm and 
 austerity that distinguish Vauvenargues. He 
 has even been called the Christian Vauvenargues. 
 We must not press the comparison too closely. 
 Joubert had wider horizons and a surer judgment 
 as a critic. He is, it would seem, the last of 
 the maxim writers, the last composer, so far, of 
 variations on the well-known themes of religion, 
 conduct, love and literature. 
 
 51 
 
LA BRUYERE 
 
 53 
 
THE ABSENT-MINDED MAN 
 
 CHARACTERS 
 
 THE ABSENT-MINDED MAN 
 |ENALCAS comes downstairs, opens the 
 
 door to go out and shuts it again ; he per- 
 ceives that his night-cap is still on, and 
 examining himself a little more carefully, 
 discovers that only one side of his face is shaved, 
 that his sword is on his right side, that his stock- 
 ings are hanging about his heels, and his shirt 
 out of his breeches. If he walks abroad he 
 feels something strike him roughly on the face 
 or stomach ; he cannot imagine what it is, until 
 opening his eyes and looking up he sees in front 
 of him the shaft of a cart, or a long plank of 
 wood, carried on a workman's shoulder. He 
 has been seen to knock up against a blind man, 
 when their limbs become entangled and each 
 falls backward. Sometimes he has run right up 
 against a prince, and has scarcely had time to 
 squeeze himself against the wall in order to 
 make room for his highness to pass. He seeks, 
 55 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 The Absent- rummages, mislays, gets angry, and calls his 
 Minded Man servants one after the other : they lose every- 
 thing, put nothing in its place ; he asks for his 
 gloves which he has on his hands, like the 
 woman who asked for her mask when she had 
 it on her face. He enters the drawing-room, 
 passes under a chandelier, to which his periwig 
 hitches and is left hanging ; the courtiers stare 
 and laugh. Menalcas also stares, and laughs 
 louder than the rest, and searches through the 
 assembly for the poor mortified creature who 
 has lost his wig. In his walks about town he 
 thinks that he has lost his way, puts himself 
 into a fret, and asks of the passers-by where he 
 is : they tell him the name of his own street, he 
 at once enters his own house but hastily runs 
 out again, fancying himself mistaken. He comes 
 out of the law-courts, and finding a coach at the 
 bottom of the steps takes it for his own and gets 
 in, the coachman whips up the horses and thinks 
 he is driving his master home. Menalcas leaps 
 out, crosses the court -yard, goes upstairs, walks 
 through the ante-room and the other apartments, 
 everything is familiar, nothing new to him, he 
 sits down and rests, as he would at home. The 
 master of the house arrives, Menalcas rises to 
 receive him, treats him with great ceremony, begs 
 him to sit down, and pays him all the attention 
 due to a guest ; he talks, muses, and talks again ; 
 56 
 
THE ABSENT-MINDED MAN 
 
 the master of the house is bored and greatly The Absent- 
 astonished. Menalcas is not less so, but does Minded Man 
 not say what he thinks, that the other is some 
 impertinent, idle person who will at length 
 withdraw ; he hopes so, and possesses his soul 
 in patience, but it may be night-time before he 
 is undeceived. 
 
 Another time he visits a lady and, imagining 
 that she is visiting him, he sits down in her arm- 
 chair and has no idea of giving it up ; he finds 
 that the lady is paying him a somewhat long 
 visit and every moment expects her to get up 
 and go, but as that does not happen and he is 
 growing hungry, and it is nearly night, he asks 
 her to sup with him ; she laughs, and so loudly, 
 that he comes to his senses. 
 
 He gets married in the morning, forgets all 
 about it in the evening, and goes home at night 
 as if nothing had happened. A few years later 
 he loses his wife, she dies in his arms, he goes 
 to the funeral, and the next day, when his 
 servants announce dinner, he asks if his wife is 
 ready and if she has been told. 
 
 It is also he who, entering a church, takes the 
 blind beggar at the door for a pillar and his dish 
 for the holy water vase, dips his hand in, when 
 suddenly he hears the pillar speak and ask for 
 alms ; he walks down the nave, thinks he sees a 
 praying desk and throws himself heavily on his 
 
 57 
 
LA BRUYgRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 The Absent- knees ; the machine bends, pushes him, strives 
 Mmded Man ^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ Menalcas is astonished to find 
 himself kneeling on the legs of a little man, 
 resting on his back, his two arms passed over 
 his shoulders, and his joined hands holding his 
 nose and shutting his mouth ; he retires in con- 
 fusion and kneels elsewhere. He takes a prayer- 
 book from his pocket, as he thinks, but it is his 
 slipper, that he had inadvertently pocketed before 
 going out. He is scarcely out of the church 
 when a footman runs after him and asks, 
 with a laugh, if he has not got Monseigneur's 
 slipper. Menalcas shows him his and says 
 " these are all the slippers I have about me ; " 
 nevertheless, on searching, he finds the slipper 
 
 of the Bishop of , whom he had just been 
 
 visiting because he was kept at home by illness, 
 and before leaving him had picked up the slipper 
 as though it had been one of his gloves which 
 had fallen on the ground. He once lost at cards 
 all the money he had in his purse, went into his 
 study, opened a cupboard, took out a money-box, 
 withdrew the coins he wanted, and, as he 
 thought, locked it up again in the cupboard. To 
 his surprise he heard a barking in the cupboard 
 he had just closed, and, astonished at such a 
 prodigy, he opened it again, and burst out laugh- 
 ing to see his dog, whom he had locked up for 
 his money-box. 
 
 58 
 
THE ABSENT-MINDED MAN 
 
 He plays at backgammon and asks for some- The Absent- 
 thing to drink ; it is his turn to play, and having Winded Man 
 the dice box in one hand and the glass in the 
 other, being very thirsty, he gulps down the dice, 
 and almost the box as well, throwing the liquor 
 on the board and half drowning his antagonist. 
 
 Once when boating he asked the time, and 
 some one handed him a watch ; he had hardly 
 taken hold of it, when, forgetting all about the 
 time and the watch, he threw it into the river as 
 if it were something that was in his way. 
 
 He writes a long letter, sands the paper several 
 times, and always throws the sand into the ink- 
 pot, but that is not all, he writes another letter, 
 and having sealed them both makes a mistake 
 in the addresses ; one of them is to a duke, who, 
 on opening the letter, reads the following: "Mr. 
 Oliver, do not fail to send me by return a load of 
 hay." His farmer receives the other letter, 
 opens it and reads : " My Lord, I have received 
 with the utmost submission the commands your 
 Grace has been pleased to give me." He writes 
 another at night, and after sealing it puts out the 
 candle : he is surprised to find himself in the 
 dark, and is at a loss to conceive how it happened. 
 
 Coming down the stairs at the Louvre he 
 meets a man going up. " Oh," says Menalcas^ 
 "you are the very person I was looking for," 
 takes him by the hand, makes him come down 
 
 59 
 
LA BRUY^RE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 The Absent- with him, crosses several court-yards, walks from 
 Mmded Man room to room backwards and forwards, then 
 looking more closely at the man he has been 
 dragging about with him for the last quarter of 
 an hour, wonders who ever it can be, has no- 
 thing to say to him, lets him go, and turns 
 another way. 
 
 He often asks a question and is already out of 
 sight before you have time to reply, or he asks 
 you how your father is, and when you say that 
 he is very ill, Menalcas shouts back that he is 
 very glad. He happens to meet you another 
 time, he is charmed to see you, he has just come 
 from your house where he had been to tell you 
 some important news, he looks at your hand : 
 " What a fine ruby you have. IsitaBalasruby? " 
 Then he leaves you, goes on his way, and that 
 is the important business about which he was so 
 anxious to speak to you. 
 
 He begins a story and forgets to finish it, 
 bursts out laughing to himself at something that 
 strikes his mind, and replies to his own thought, 
 he hums a tune, whistles, upsets his chair, utters 
 a plaintive cry, yawns, thinking himself to be 
 alone. "When he is at table he insensibly 
 crumbles a heap of bread upon his plate, it is 
 true that his neighbours want it, as well as their 
 knives and forks, which he imagines to be all 
 for his use. 
 
 60 
 
THE ABSENT-MINDED MAN 
 
 Chancing to find himself in the company of a The Absent- 
 young widow, he speaks to her of her deceased Minded Man 
 husband, and asks the cause of his death ; the 
 lady, whose grief was naturally revived by this 
 discourse, wept and sobbed, and told him all 
 the details of her husband's illness, from the 
 beginning of the fever to the supreme agony. 
 " Madam," asks Menalcas, who had apparently 
 listened to her with the greatest attention, " had 
 you never another but him ? " 
 
 One morning, he bids the dinner be hastened, 
 rises before dessert, and takes leave of the 
 company, yet you are sure to find him that 
 day in every place in the city except where he 
 had the appointment which caused him to 
 neglect his dinner, and to go afoot in case he 
 should have to wait for the carriage. You may 
 hear him shout, scold, put himself into a rage 
 with one of his servants. He is astounded he 
 does not come. " Where can he be ? " he says, 
 " what is he doing, where is he to be found ? It 
 he does not come immediately, I shall discharge 
 him at once." The servant arrives. Menalcas 
 asks him in a fury where he has been. The man 
 replies that he has just returned from the errand 
 on which his master sent him, and gives a faith- 
 ful account of his commission. 
 
 You will often take him for what he is not ; 
 for a fool, because he listens little, and speaks 
 
 6i 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 The Absent- less ; for an idiot, because he talks to himself 
 Minaed Man ^j^^j jg subject to involuntary grimaces and move- 
 ments of the head ; for haughty and discour- 
 teous, because when you salute him he takes no 
 notice of you ; for a man without consideration 
 for others, because he speaks of bankruptcy in 
 a family that lies under that ban ; of executions 
 and scaffolds before a man whose father was 
 beheaded ; of mean extraction, before wealthy 
 farmers of the revenue who try to pass for 
 noblemen. In short, he seems as if he were 
 not present, and did not hear what was being 
 talked about. He thinks and talks at the same time, 
 but what he says is rarely what he is thinking 
 of, consequently there is seldom any coherence 
 in his talk ; he says no when he ought to say yes, 
 and yes, supposing that he is saying no. When he 
 answers you his eyes may be fixed on yours, 
 but it does not follow that he sees you. He is 
 not looking at you, nor at any one, nor at any- 
 thing in the world. All that you can drag from 
 him in his most communicative moments are 
 such words as " Yes indeed ; it is true; good ; all 
 the better ; I think so ; certainly; oh, heaven! " 
 and other equally appropriate monosyllables. 
 Then he is never with those with whom he 
 seems to be : he addresses his footman as Sir, and 
 his friend as Jeames ; a prince of the blood as 
 His Reverence, and a Jesuit as Your Highness. 
 62 
 
THE ABSENT-MINDED MAN 
 
 When he is at mass, if the priest sneezes, he cries The Absent- 
 out loud " God bless you." He chances to Minded Man 
 be in the company of a judge, a man of grave 
 disposition, venerable by his age, character and 
 dignity, who asks him about a certain event, and 
 demands if the circumstances were so, " Yes, 
 miss," replies Menalcas. 
 
 Once when he was returning from the country 
 his footmen plotted to rob him, and succeeded 
 in their plan. They jumped off the carriage, 
 held the torch under his nose, demanded his 
 purse, which he delivered to them. Having 
 reached home he told his adventure to his 
 friends, and when they questioned him as to 
 details, said, " Ask my servants ; they were 
 there." 
 
 63 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 THE RICH MAN 
 
 ^ITON has a fresh complexion, a full face, 
 a steady, determined eye, is broad 
 P fi shouldered and broad chested, and has 
 a firm, deliberate gait. He speaks con- 
 fidently, and makes his interlocutor repeat what 
 he says, and is only indifferently pleased with 
 whatever is said. He pulls out a big handkerchief 
 and blows his nose with much noise. He spits 
 all about and sneezes very loudly. He dozes 
 in the day-time, he sleeps soundly at night, he 
 snores in company. He takes up more room 
 than any one else at table and on the public 
 promenade. In walking with his equals he 
 takes the middle place. When he stops, they 
 stop ; he walks on, they walk on ; all are ruled by 
 him. He interrupts, and takes up those whose 
 turn it is to speak, but he is never interrupted, 
 he is listened to as long as he likes to speak ; all 
 are of his opinion, all believe the news he tells. 
 If he sits down, he lolls in an armchair, crosses 
 his legs, wrinkles his brows, pulls his hat over 
 his eyes that he may see nobody, then pushing 
 64 
 
THE RICH MAN 
 
 it back shows a haughty and supercilious ex- The Rich 
 
 pression of countenance. He is merry, for ever "Ian 
 
 laughing, impatient, arrogant, choleric, irreligious, 
 
 politic, mysterious about the events of the time. 
 
 He believes that he has talent and wit. He is 
 
 rich. 
 
 65 
 
LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 THE POOR MAN 
 
 ilJ^HEDON has hollow eyes, a red com- 
 plexion, a dried up body, and a thin face. 
 He sleeps little and very lightly. He 
 is moody, a dreamer, and possessing 
 intelligence, appears stupid. He neglects to say 
 what he knows, or to speak of events with which 
 he is acquainted. If sometimes he does speak, 
 he comes lamely off ; he thinks that he must be 
 boring those to whom he is talking. He speaks 
 concisely, but coldly. He does not rivet the 
 attention of his hearers, nor does he amuse 
 them. He applauds, he smiles at what others 
 say to him, he is of their opinion. He is eager 
 to perform little services for them, he is a 
 flatterer, ever anxious to please. He is mysteri- 
 ous about his own affairs, and sometimes a liar ; 
 he is superstitious, full of scruples and very 
 timid. He steps softly and lightly, he seems 
 afraid to tread the ground. He walks with 
 eyes cast down, not daring to raise them to 
 the passers-by. He is never among those who 
 meet in order to converse. He places himself 
 
 66 
 
THE POOR MAN 
 
 behind him who is speaking, listens to what is The Poor 
 said as if by stealth and withdraws if any one "^^'^ 
 
 looks at him. He neither occupies nor retains 
 any place. He goes about with his shoulders 
 shrugged, his hat pulled down over his eyes that 
 he may not be recognized. He wraps himself 
 in his cloak ; there is no street or gallery so 
 thronged and crowded but he finds a way through 
 it without jostling, and steals along unperceived. 
 If he is asked to sit down, he seats himself on 
 the edge of the chair ; in conversation he speaks 
 softly and indistinctly. He is, nevertheless, 
 candid with his friends on public affairs, is 
 irritated with the times, regards neither minis- 
 ters nor government favourably. He only 
 opens his mouth to reply, he coughs, blows his 
 nose under his hat, spits almost upon himself, 
 waits until he is alone to sneeze, or if that is 
 impossible, contrives that no one shall hear him. 
 He costs nobody a compliment nor a greeting. 
 He is poor. 
 
 67 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 THE ENTHUSIASTIC COLLECTOR 
 
 ^^^OLLECTING is not a taste for what is 
 I ^^^ good and beautiful, but for what is rare 
 fti^l^g and unique, for things that other men 
 do not possess. Neither is it a desire 
 for what is perfect, but for what is most run 
 after, what is the fashion. It is not an amuse* 
 ment, but a passion, and often so violent a one 
 that it yields to love and ambition only in the 
 pettiness of its object. Neither is it a passion 
 for everything that is scarce and in vogue, but 
 only for some particular object that is rare and 
 at the same time the fashion. 
 
 The amateur of flowers has a garden in the 
 suburbs of the town ; he goes there at dawn 
 and leaves at sunset. He seems as if planted 
 there and to have taken root amid his tulips. 
 Standing before the Hermit he opens his eyes 
 wide, rubs his hands, stoops down, looks at it 
 more closely ; he has never seen it look so beau- 
 tiful before ; he is in an ecstasy of joy. He quits 
 that for the Oriental, thence to the Widow, pro- 
 ceeds to the Cloth of Gold, and then on to the 
 68 
 
THE ENTHUSIASTIC COLLECTOR 
 
 Agatha. At last he returns to the Hermit, where The 
 
 he stays, and, tired with his perambulations, sits Enthusiastic 
 J J r . . ,. . , . Collector 
 
 down ana forgets his dinner in contemplating 
 
 and admiring its lights and shades, its expanse 
 piece by piece. But God and Nature are not 
 what he admires in all that ; he goes no further 
 than the bulb of his tulip, which he would not 
 part with for a thousand crowns, though he 
 would give it away for nothing if tulips should 
 grow out of fashion and carnations should be- 
 come the flower in vogue. This reasonable 
 creature, who has a soul, and professes a reli- 
 gion, returns home tired and famished, but in- 
 finitely pleased with his day ; he has seen tulips ! 
 Talk to another amateur of the rich crops, of 
 the plentiful harvest, of the good vintage ! You 
 discover that he is only interested in fruit, and 
 does not understand a word you say. Speak to 
 him of figs or melons, tell him the pear-trees 
 this year are bowed down with the weight of 
 their fruit, that peaches are abundant ; nothing 
 of that is in his way, he cares only for plums. 
 But if you proceed to discuss plums in general 
 you get no reply, he is only fond of a certain 
 species of them, and sneers at the mention of 
 any others. He leads you to the tree, with much 
 ado gathers the exquisite plum, divides it, taking 
 one half himself and giving you the other. ' ' What 
 pulp," he says ; "just taste it. Isn't it divine ? 
 
 69 
 
Collector 
 
 LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 The You'll find nothing to match it in the whole 
 
 ^"*!il^A'ff!^'^ world." And at this his nostrils are inflated ; he 
 can scarcely hide his joy and vanity under a 
 semblance of modesty. Oh, what a really divine 
 personage ! A man never enough to be praised 
 and admired ; a man to be celebrated through all 
 the ages ! Let me examine his mien and shape 
 while he lives, that I may impress on my mind 
 the features and expression of a man who alone 
 among mortals possesses such a plum ! 
 
 A satirist relates how there are men who, 
 either through restlessness or curiosity, make 
 long voyages, yet keep no journal and write 
 no accounts of their travels ; who go to see, 
 and see nothing or forget what they have seen ; 
 who desire only to get acquainted with new 
 turrets and steeples, and to cross rivers that are 
 not named the Seine or the Loire ; who leave 
 their country in order to return to it again ; who 
 like to be away in order that they may one day 
 have returned from a long distance. Having 
 spoken so far, he adds that books are more in- 
 structive than travel, and having given me to 
 understand that he possesses a library, I express 
 a wish to see it. I pay him a visit, and he re- 
 ceives me in a house where, on the staircase 
 itself, I am ready to faint at the scent of the 
 Russian leather in which his books are bound. 
 To revive me he shouts at me that they are all 
 
 70 
 
Collector 
 
 THE ENTHUSIASTIC COLLECTOR 
 
 gilt edged and beautifully tooled in gold, that the The 
 
 editions are most rare, enumerates the titles of Enthusiastic 
 the best of them, and tells me that in some por- 
 tions of the library, the volumes are so cunningly 
 simulated as to deceive the eye, to be taken for 
 real books resting on the shelves. He adds that 
 he never reads or sets foot in his library, that 
 he is there now only to do me pleasure. I thank 
 him for his kindness, and wish no more than he 
 does ever again to see the tan-pit that he calls 
 his library. 
 
 71 
 
LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 THE MAN OF LETTERS 
 
 GO to your door, Clitophon ; my need 
 of your interest gets me early out of 
 my bed and my room. Would to 
 heaven I had no occasion to solicit or 
 be troublesome to you ! Your servants tell me 
 that you are engaged, and that it will be quite 
 an hour before you can see me. I return within 
 the time, and am told that you are gone out. 
 What is it, Clitophon, that you have to do of 
 such importance in your most retired study, that 
 you cannot afford me a moment ? You file papers, 
 collate a register, you sign documents. I only 
 had one thing to ask you, and you but one 
 word to answer, yes or no. If you would be 
 esteemed, do good offices to your dependants ; 
 you will gain more credit by that conduct than 
 by making yourself inaccessible. O, you person of 
 importance, oppressed with business, when you 
 stand in need of my assistance, come to the 
 solitude of my apartment ! The philosopher is 
 accessible. I shall not put you off till another 
 day. You will find me turning over the books 
 72 
 
THE MAN OF LETTERS 
 
 of Plato, which treat of the spirituality of the The Man 
 soul, and of its differentia from the body ; or pen °' Letters 
 in hand calculating the distances of Saturn and 
 Jupiter. I admire the works of God, and en- 
 deavour, by knowing the truth, to regulate my 
 intelligence and to become a better man. Pray 
 enter, all my doors are open to you, my ante- 
 room is not made for you to tire yourself in with 
 waiting ; come straight in and find me without 
 troubling to send in your name. You bring me 
 something more precious than gold and silver if 
 it is an opportunity for me to oblige you. Tell 
 me, what can I do for you ? Must I leave my 
 books, my studies, my writing, the line I have 
 just begun ? It is a happy interruption for me 
 if I can be of use to you. The manipulator of 
 money, the man of business is a bear that is not 
 to be tamed. You can scarcely ever see him at 
 home. What do I say ? You do not see him at 
 all, for at first it is you cannot see him yet — soon 
 you see him no more. While on the other hand, 
 the man of letters is as accessible as the common 
 roadway. He is seen by every one, at all times, 
 and in all conditions: at table, in bed, naked, 
 dressed, well or ill. He cannot play the person 
 of importance, nor does he wish to do so. 
 
 73 
 
LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 THE DRAWING-ROOM PEDANT 
 
 ERMAGORAS does not know who is 
 king of Hungary, and is astonished not 
 to hear mention of the king of Bohemia. 
 Do not speak to him of the wars of 
 Flanders or Holland, or at least you must ex- 
 cuse him from answering the questions you ask 
 concerning them. He does not know when they 
 began or ended, those battles and sieges are all 
 new to him. But he is learned in the wars of 
 the giants, and can relate their progress and all 
 the details of the campaign ; nothing has escaped 
 him. With equal fluency he discourses of the 
 terrible downfall of the Babylonian and Assyrian 
 Empires, he is learned in the Egyptians and their 
 dynasties. He has never seen Versailles, and 
 never will see it, but he has almost seen the 
 tower of Babel and counted its stories ; he knows 
 how many architects were employed, and what 
 were their names. If he knows Henry IV to 
 be the son of Henry III, it is as much as I can 
 affirm. Ask him about the houses of France, 
 Austria, and Bavaria. " What trifles ! " he ex- 
 
 74 
 
THE DRAWING-ROOM PEDANT 
 
 claims, and rolls off from memory a list of the The Draw- 
 kings of Media and Babylon ; and the names of ing-Room 
 Apronal, Herigebal, Noesnemordach, Mardo- ^®^^"* 
 kempad are as familiar to him as those of Valois 
 and Bourbon are to us. He asks if the Emperor 
 is married, but needs no one to tell him that 
 Ninus had two wives. He hears that the king 
 enjoys excellent health, and he remembers that 
 Thetmosis, a king of Egypt, was a valetudinarian 
 and that he inherited that condition from his 
 grandfather, Alipharmutosis. "What is there that 
 he does not know? What in the whole of 
 antiquity is hidden from him ? He will tell you 
 that Semiramis, or, as some will have it, Seri- 
 maris, talked so much like her son Ninyas that 
 they were not to be distinguished by their speech ; 
 but he dares not decide whether the mother had 
 a manly voice like her son, or the son an effem- 
 inate voice like his mother. He informs you 
 that Nimbrot was left-handed and Sesostris am- 
 bidexter ; that it is an error to imagine that one 
 of the Artaxerxes was called Longimanus be- 
 cause his arms reached down to his knees, and 
 not because one of his arms was longer than the 
 other : he adds that although some grave authors 
 state that it was his right arm, he has certain 
 proof that it was the left. 
 
 75 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 THE MAN OF UNIVERSAL 
 KNOWLEDGE 
 
 |RRIAS has read and seen everything, at 
 least he would have it thought so. He 
 gives himself out to be a man of univer- 
 sal knowledge and would rather lie than 
 be silent or appear ignorant of anything. At din- 
 ner conversation turned on a great man at a north- 
 ern court. Arrias broke in and would not permit 
 those who were talking to say what they knew, 
 but discoursed concerning that far-off land as if 
 he were a native of it. He described the man- 
 ners of its court, its women, its laws and customs ; 
 he told stories of what happened there, and 
 thinking them extremely entertaining, was the 
 first to laugh uproariously at them. Some one 
 presumes to contradict him, and clearly demon- 
 strates that what he says is not true. Arrias is 
 not disconcerted ; on the contrary he takes arms 
 against his antagonist : "I aver nothing but 
 what I know to be true. I had it from Sethon, 
 76 
 
THE MAN OF UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE 
 
 the French ambassador to that court, who re- The Man of 
 
 turned to Paris a few days ago, and is my Universal 
 
 Knowledge 
 familiar friend. I questioned him closely and he 
 
 concealed nothing from me." He continued his 
 
 story with even more confidence than he had 
 
 begun it, when one of the guests informed him 
 
 that he had been speaking to Sethon himself, 
 
 lately arrived from his embassy. 
 
 77 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 THE MAN WHO WILL BE 
 COMFORTABLE 
 
 ERMIPPUS is the slave of what he calls 
 his little comforts ; to them he sacrifices 
 
 I received customs, usages, fashions, nay 
 even decorum. He seeks them in every- 
 thing, discards a less for a greater, neglects none 
 that are practicable, makes a study of them, and 
 not a day passes that he does not make some 
 new discovery of the kind. Dinner and supper 
 he leaves to others, he scarcely admits the 
 existence of the terms, he eats when he is 
 hungry, and then only of the dishes he likes 
 best. He must see his bed made, but what hand 
 is skilful or well trained enough to make it so 
 that he may sleep as he desires to sleep. He 
 seldom goes abroad, but loves to keep his room, 
 where, in the garb of a sick man, he is neither 
 idle nor busy, but incessantly employed in doing 
 nothing. Others are slavishly dependent on 
 smiths and joiners, according to their needs ; as 
 for him if filing is in question, he has a file ; if 
 sawing, a saw ; and pincers if something has to 
 
 78 
 
THE MAN WHO WILL BE COMFORTABLE 
 
 be pulled out. In fact there is no tool imaginable The Man 
 
 that he does not possess, and those infinitely who will be 
 
 . ^^ , , , , comfortable 
 
 better and more to his liking than any used by 
 
 professional workmen ; he has, too, new ones 
 and unknown ones that have no name, inventions 
 of his own, of which he has almost forgotten 
 the use. No one can be compared to him for 
 doing with despatch and without labour any use- 
 less piece of work. He had to take ten steps 
 to go from his bed to his wardrobe, he has now 
 so arranged his room that he has only to take 
 nine ; how many steps saved in the course of a 
 life-time ! It is usual to turn the key, thrust or 
 pull, before you open a door. What a fatigue ! 
 He knows how to save himself such an unneces- 
 sary exertion, but the method is a mystery he 
 keeps to himself. He is in truth a great master 
 of springs and mechanism, such at least as the 
 world could do very well without. He brings 
 light to his apartments otherwise than through 
 the window, he has found the secret of going up 
 and down the house otherwise than by the stair- 
 case, and is studying how to get in and out more 
 conveniently than by the door. 
 
 79 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 NEWSMONGERS, PESSIMISTS AND 
 OPTIMISTS 
 
 HOSE who sit peacefully by their own 
 firesides, and live in the midst of their 
 families and in a town where nothing is 
 to be feared for the safety of their lives 
 or property, are the men who generally breathe 
 fire and sword, talk continually of war, pillage, 
 conflagrations and massacres, are out of patience 
 that the armies which are carrying on the cam- 
 paign do not meet, or if once in sight of each 
 other, that they do not give battle, or if they en- 
 gage, that the combat was not more bloody, and 
 that scarcely ten thousand men were killed. 
 Sometimes they go so far as to forget their 
 dearest interests, their repose and safety, out of 
 their love for change, their desire for novelty, or 
 for things out of the ordinary. Some would 
 even like to see the enemy at the gates of the 
 city, barricades thrown up, and chains stretched 
 for the mere pleasure of hearing or telling the 
 news. 
 
 Demophilus, on my right, laments and cries : 
 So 
 
NEWSMONGERS 
 
 " All is lost, all is up with the country, at least 
 it is on the brink of ruin. How can we resist so 
 strong and general a coalition ? By what means 
 may we, I dare not say conquer, but even make 
 head against such numerous and powerful 
 enemies ? The whole of history does not afford 
 an example. A hero, an Achilles would succumb. 
 We have committed gross errors. I know what I 
 am talking about, I have been a soldier myself, 
 and reading has likewise taught me much. ' ' Then 
 he speaks with admiration of Olivier le Daim 
 and Jacques Coeur : "Those were men," he says, 
 "those were ministers." He retails his news, 
 which is sure to be the most disadvantageous 
 and melancholy that can be forged. Now a 
 party of our men have fallen into an ambuscade 
 and been cut to pieces, now some troops shut up 
 in a castle have surrendered at discretion and 
 been put to the sword ; and if you tell him that 
 the report is false or needs confirmation he does 
 not listen to you, he adds that a general has been 
 killed ; and although you assure him that he is 
 only slightly wounded, he deplores his death, 
 pities his widow and children, and bemoans his 
 own loss ; he has lost a good friend and a kind 
 patron. He tells you that the German cavalry 
 are invincible, and turns pale if you but mention 
 the Imperial Cuirassiers. " If we attack that 
 place," he continues, "we shall be obliged to 
 
 8i F 
 
 News- 
 mongers, 
 Pessimists 
 
 and 
 Optimists 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 News- 
 mongers, 
 Pessimists 
 
 and 
 Optimists 
 
 raise the siege, and if we, lose it the enemy will 
 be at our frontiers," whence Demophilus hastens 
 them into the heart of the kingdom He already 
 hears the alarm sounded from the belfries, he is 
 in fear for his property and his lands. Whither 
 shall he remove his money, his furniture, his 
 family ? Where shall he take refuge ? In 
 Switzerland or Venice ? 
 
 But, on my left, Basilides raises an army of 
 three hundred thousand men in a minute ; he will 
 not abate you a single brigade. He has a list of 
 the squadrons, battalions, generals and officers, 
 not omitting the artillery and baggage. He as- 
 signs these forces their various parts. Some he 
 sends into Germany, others into Flanders, re- 
 serves a certain number for the Alps, a lesser 
 for the Pyrenees, and transports the rest beyond 
 sea. He knows the marches of these forces, he 
 can tell what they will do and what they will 
 not do, you would think he had the king's ear 
 or was in the minister's confidence. If the 
 enemy lost a battle with nine to ten thousand 
 killed, he declares it to be thirty thousand, 
 neither more nor less, for his numbers are al- 
 ways fixed and certain, as with a well-informed 
 man. If he hears in the morning that we have 
 lost a paltry village, he not only sends an excuse 
 to the friends he had invited to dinner, but 
 he fasts, and if he sups, it is without appetite. 
 82 
 
NEWSMONGERS 
 
 If we besiege a place, naturally strong, regularly 
 fortified, and well stored with ammunition and 
 food, besides a good garrison commanded by a 
 brave general, he tells you that the town has 
 its weak, ill-fortified spots, that they want pow- 
 der, and that the governor wants experience, 
 and that it must capitulate after eight days' open 
 trenches. At another time he runs in all out oi 
 breath, and as soon as he has recovered a little, 
 exclaims, "Here's news! they are beaten, totally 
 routed ; the general, the superior officers, at 
 least a great part of them, are killed ; all have 
 perished. There's slaughter ! ' It must be con- 
 fessed that we enjoy great good fortune." Then 
 he sits down and breathes once again after this 
 extraordinary news, which, however, lacks one de- 
 tail, namely, that there never was any such battle. 
 He assures us further that a certain prince with- 
 draws from the league and abandons his con- 
 federates, and that another is ready to take the 
 same step, he firmly believes with the populace 
 that a third is dead, and names the place of his 
 burial, and even when the whole town is unde- 
 ceived, persists in laying wagers on it. He 
 has indubitable information that Tekeli is making 
 great progress against the Emperor; that the 
 Grand Signior is making formidable preparations, 
 does not desire a peace, and that his Vizier will 
 once more sit down before Vienna. He claps 
 
 83 
 
 News- 
 mongers, 
 Pessimists 
 
 and 
 Optimists 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 News- 
 mongers, 
 Pessimists 
 
 and 
 Optimists 
 
 his hands and is in ecstasy over this event, in 
 which he firmly believes. He talks of nothing 
 but laurels, triumphs, and trophies. He says in 
 common talk, " Our august hero, our mighty 
 potentate, our invincible monarch." Make him, 
 if you can, say simply, "the king has a great 
 many enemies, they are powerful, united, ex- 
 asperated ; he has overcome them and I hope 
 will always overcome them." That style, too 
 bold and decisive for Hemophilus, is neither 
 pompous nor exaggerated enough for Basilides. 
 He has very different phrases in his head ; he 
 is composing inscriptions for the triumphal arches 
 and pyramids which will adorn the metropolis at 
 the conqueror's entry, and as soon as he hears 
 that the armies are in sight of each other, or 
 that a town is invested, he orders his robes to 
 be aired against the Te Deum. 
 
 84 
 
THE MAN OF CAPRICE 
 
 THE MAN OF CAPRICE 
 
 ■ HE capricious man is not one man but 
 several ; he multiplies himself as often 
 as he changes his tastes and his man- 
 ners. He is not this minute what he 
 was the last, and will not be the next what he 
 is now ; he succeeds himself. Do not ask him 
 of what party he is, but what are his parties ? 
 Nor of what humour, but how many sorts of 
 humour he has ? Are you not mistaken ? Is 
 it Euthychrates whom you met ? How cold he 
 is to day ! Yesterday he sought you out and 
 caressed you; his friends were quite jealous. 
 Does he remember you ? Tell him your name. 
 
 85 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 THE LITTLE " GREAT MAN " 
 
 iv^AMPHILUS does not converse with the 
 people he meets in the rooms of the 
 palace, or in the courtyards, but by 
 his gravity and the raising of his voice, 
 he seems to receive them, grant them audience, 
 and dismiss them. He has a parcel of terms, 
 at once civil and haughty, and an imperious 
 courtesy which he uses without discernment, 
 and a false dignity which lowers him and is 
 vastly embarrassing to those who are his friends 
 and who do not desire to despise him. 
 
 A Pamphilus is full of himself ; he never loses 
 sight of himself, of his greatness, his alliances, 
 his offices, his dignity ; so to speak he collects 
 them all together, and wraps himself in them 
 in order to demonstrate his great worth. 
 He mentions : " My order, my blue ribbon," and 
 displays or hides it, both from ostentation. In 
 short, Pamphilus would be great and believes 
 that he is so ; but he is nothing of the kind, only 
 a mere imitation of a great man. If ever he 
 smiles on an inferior, on a wit, he chooses his 
 86 
 
THE LITTLE "GREAT MAN" 
 
 time so well that he is never caught in such The Little 
 
 familiarity. If, unfortunately, he was surprised "Great 
 
 ivian ** 
 m any condescension to a person who is not 
 
 rich or powerful, or the friend of a minister, or 
 his ally, or his servant, he would blush up to his 
 ears. He is inexorably severe to him who has 
 not yet made his fortune. He meets you one 
 day in the gallery and avoids you ; the next day 
 coming upon you in a less public place, or, if 
 equally public, in company of persons of impor- 
 tance, he goes up to you with confidence, and 
 says: " Yesterday you would not look at me," 
 and then he leaves you hastily to accost a lord 
 or some great official. If he finds such persons 
 talking with you, he interrupts and carries them 
 off. You meet him another time, he will not 
 stop ; you must run after him and talk so loud 
 that the passers-by wonder and stare. Thus the 
 Pamphiluses always seem to be on a stage, 
 actors of comedy, a kind of men nourished in 
 falsehood, and who hate nothing so much as to 
 be natural. 
 
 We can never say enough of the Pamphiluses ; 
 they are servile and timorous before princes and 
 ministers ; proud and overbearing to those who 
 possess nothing but virtue ; dumb and confused 
 before the learned ; talkative, bold, and positive 
 with the ignorant. They talk of war to a law- 
 yer, politics to a financier, history to women, 
 
 87 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 The Little poetry to men of science, and mathematics to 
 M ^^"* poets. They do not trouble themselves with 
 maxims, and less with principles. They live at 
 random, pushed and driven by the wind of favour, 
 and the allurements of wealth. They have no 
 opinions of their own, they borrow them as 
 they want them, and he to whom they apply for 
 them is neither wise, learned, nor virtuous, but 
 a man of fashion. 
 
 88 
 
THE PARVENU 
 
 THE PARVENU 
 
 HEAR much talk of the Sannions ; " the 
 same name, the same arms ; the older 
 branch, the younger branch, the young- 
 est branch of the youngest house ; the 
 armorial bearings of the first are without quarter- 
 ings, the second with a label, and the third with 
 a bordure indented. Their colour and metal are 
 the same as those of the Bourbons, and like them 
 they bear two and one. It is true they are not 
 Fleurs de Lis, but the Sannions are satisfied, and 
 perhaps believe in their hearts their bearings as 
 noble ; at least they are not inferior to those of 
 persons of the first quality. Their arms are to 
 be seen on their windows, their castle gates, their 
 justiciary pillars, where many a man is hanged 
 who only deserved banishment. They strike the 
 eye everywhere ; on their furniture, on their 
 locks ; their carriages are covered with them, 
 and their liveries are as resplendent as their 
 coats of arms. But I should like to say to the 
 Sannions : " Your folly is premature, you should 
 wait at least until your race has existed for a 
 
 89 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 The Parvenu century. Those who have met and spoken with 
 your grandfather are old and cannot Uve long. 
 Who then would be able to say ' He kept a shop 
 and sold very dear?'" 
 
 The Sannions and the Crispins like still better 
 to be thought extravagant and able to spend 
 money. They bore you with a long story of a 
 fete or banquet they gave, they confide to you 
 their losses at play, and they complain loudly of 
 that which they had not thought to lose. They 
 speak in a mysterious jargon of certain women of 
 their acquaintance, they have a hundred amusing 
 stories to tell each other, " they have just made 
 some curious discoveries," and pass with each 
 other for men of great intrigue. One of them 
 going to bed late in the country, and who loves 
 to sleep long, rises early, dons his gaiters and a 
 shooting coat, belt, and powder flask, and takes 
 his gun, and is a sportsman if only he could 
 shoot ! He returns at night, wet and weary, 
 without having hit anything. But he goes shoot- 
 ing again on the morrow, and so spends every 
 day in missing thrushes and partridges. 
 
 go 
 
THE BOURGEOIS 
 
 THE BOURGEOIS THEN AND NOW 
 
 ]HE Roman Emperors never triumphed so 
 nicely, commodiously and surely over 
 wind, rain, dust, and sun as the citizens 
 of Paris when they drive about the town. 
 What a distance from this custom to the rule of 
 their ancestors ! They did not understand how 
 to deprive themselves of necessities in order to 
 have luxuries, nor did they prefer show to sub- 
 stance. Their houses were not lighted with wax 
 candles, and they warmed themselves at a small 
 fire. Wax lights were for altars and palaces. They 
 did not rise from a bad dinner to get into a coach, 
 but, convinced that men had legs given them 
 to walk with, they used them. In dry weather 
 they kept themselves clean, and in wet they did 
 not mind soiling their shoes, as little troubled to 
 cross a street or square as a sportsman trudging 
 over a ploughed field or a soldier into the damp 
 trenches. They had not then invented harness- 
 ing two men to a Sedan chair ; their magistrates 
 themselves walked to the courts with as good a 
 grace as Augustus to the Capitol. In those days 
 
 91 
 
now 
 
 LA bruye're and VAUVENARGUES 
 
 The pewter shone on their tables and sideboards, 
 
 Bourgeois brass and iron on their chimney pieces, while 
 silver and gold lay safe in their coffers. Women 
 were then waited on by women, who were like- 
 wise employed in the service of the kitchen. The 
 fine names of tutors and governesses were not 
 unknown to our fathers ; they knew to whose care 
 were entrusted the children of kings and princes. 
 But they shared the service of their domestics 
 towards their children, and were content to 
 superintend their immediate education them- 
 selves. Everything they did was suitable to 
 their circumstances, their expenditure was pro- 
 portioned to their income, their liveries, equip- 
 ages, furniture, table, town and country houses 
 were all in proportion to their revenue and 
 circumstances. Less desirous of spending or 
 increasing their patrimony than of keeping it, 
 they left it entire to their heirs and passed from 
 a quiet life to a peaceful death. They did not 
 complain that the times were hard, that poverty 
 abounded, that money was scarce. They had 
 less than we have, and yet they had enough ; 
 and were richer by their economy and modera- 
 tion than by their revenues and lands. In those 
 days they believed in the maxim that what is 
 splendour, sumptuousness, magnificence in people 
 of rank is profusion, foolishness, and ostentation 
 in private men. 
 
 92 
 
THE MONEY GRUBBER 
 
 THE MONEY GRUBBER 
 
 ■ HERE are some sordid souls, grovelling 
 in filth and ordure, to whom interest 
 and gain are what glory and virtue are 
 to fine minds. They are sensible of 
 but one pleasure, to acquire, or at least never to 
 lose. They are covetous and greedy to a farth- 
 ing, busied sorely about their debtors, ever 
 anxious about a debasing of the coinage, plunged 
 and almost buried in contracts, title deeds, and 
 mortgages. Such people are neither relations, 
 friends, citizens. Christians, nor even men : they 
 have money. 
 
 93 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 THE AFFECTED TALKER 
 
 |HAT do you say? What? I don't 
 understand. Would you mind begin- 
 ning again? I comprehend you still 
 less. I can partly guess your meaning 
 — ^you want to tell me, Acis, that it is cold. 
 Why don't you say it is cold ? You want to in- 
 form me that it is raining or snowing. Well then, 
 say it rains, it snows. You find me looking well, 
 and wish to congratulate me on that circum- 
 stance. Then say ' You look well.' ' Oh !' you 
 reply, but that is so plain and clear, any one 
 might have said it. What does that matter, 
 Acis ? Is it so great a harm to be intelligible, 
 and to speak like the rest of the world ? There 
 is one thing, Acis, which you and your com- 
 panions want, although you haven't an idea of it, 
 one thing you lack, and that is wit. That is not 
 all, there is another thing of which you have too 
 much, and that is the opinion that you have more 
 of it than other men ; that is the source of all 
 your bombastic, barbarous, and grotesque phrases 
 which mean nothing. Next time you address 
 
THE AFFECTED TALKER 
 
 anybody I shall pluck you by the sleeve and The 
 
 whisper : Don't pretend that you have wit, have ^^y^ 
 none, that is your part. Cultivate, if you can, 
 simple language such as those employ in whom 
 you find no wit ; maybe then, people will think 
 you have some yourself." 
 
 95 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 THE PERFECT WOMAN 
 
 ^E said that wit in that beautiful lady^ was 
 a diamond set to best advantage, and 
 continuing to speak of her added : "A 
 flavour of reason and charm combined 
 strikes all who talk to her. She possesses qualities 
 which would make a perfect friend, and also those 
 which would lead you beyond the bounds of friend- 
 ship. Too young and beautiful not to please, but 
 too modest to seek to do so, she esteems men only 
 for their merit, and thinks of them only as friends. 
 Full of vivacity, and capable of deep feeling, she 
 surprises and interests, and although she per- 
 
 1 This lady was Catherine Turgot, daughter of the Saint- 
 Clair Turgot, doyen de conseil. She married in 1686 at the age 
 of thirteen, Gilles d'Aligre de Boislandry. For seven years 
 M. and Mme. de Boislandry lived happily together. Then 
 M. de Boislandry took exception to his wife's conduct 
 and they separated. In 1694 the poet Chaulieu became 
 Catherine's lover, and it was he who revealed the identity of 
 La Bruyfere's Arthenice. Chaulieu addresses her in his poems 
 as Iris. Having become a widow she married as her second 
 husband M. de Chevilly in 1712, and nothing further is known 
 of her except that she died in 1737. La Bruyfere probably 
 describes her as she was in the early days of her first 
 marriage. 
 
 96 
 
THE PERFECT WOMAN 
 
 fectly understands the delicate and fine shades The Perfect 
 of conversation, makes sometimes sallies so Woman 
 happy that, among other pleasures they afford, 
 they always dispense with a reply. She talks with 
 you like one who is unlearned, who doubts and 
 seeks to be enlightened ; she listens to you like 
 one who knows a great deal, who fully compre- 
 hends the value of what you are saying, with 
 whom nothing of what you say will be lost. Far 
 from seeking to show her wit by contradicting 
 you, and from imitating Elvira, who would 
 rather be thought smart than sensible and 
 discreet, she adopts your ideas, believes them 
 to be her own, even extends and embellishes 
 them ; thus you are delighted to have thought so 
 well, and to have spoken so much better than 
 you had imagined. She despises vanity whether 
 she speaks or writes, she neglects figures of 
 speech where reason is in question, she under- 
 stands that the truest eloquence is simplicity. 
 If it be a matter of doing some one a service, of 
 making your interests concur, leaving fine words 
 and phrases to Elvira, who uses them on all 
 occasions, Arthenice employs only sincerity, 
 ardour, earnestness, and persuasion. She finds 
 her chief pleasure in reading, and in conversing 
 with persons of worth and reputation, and this 
 not so much to be known to them, as to know 
 them. She may be praised in advance for all 
 
 97 G 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 The Perfect the wisdom which will one day be hers, and for 
 Woman gu the merit which the future holds for her ; for 
 possessing, with an unexceptional conduct, better 
 intentions, and sure principles useful to those who, 
 like her, are exposed to flattering attentions, and 
 being of a retiring nature without being brusque, 
 and even a little inclined to avoid society, she only 
 wants opportunity, or, so to speak, a stage in 
 order to display all her virtues." 
 
 98 
 
THE COQUETTE 
 
 THE COQUETTE 
 
 ^RGIRA pulls off her glove to show her 
 beautiful hand, and never forgets to 
 let her little shoe be seen that supposes 
 a small foot. She laughs equally at 
 things funny and serious, in order to show her 
 fine set of teeth. If she shows her ears, it is 
 because they are well formed. If she does not 
 dance, it is because she is dissatisfied with her 
 figure, which is indeed not of the slimmest. She 
 understands all her points with the exception of 
 one, that she is perpetually talking and lacks in- 
 telligence. 
 
 99 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 THE FASHIONABLE DANDY 
 
 JjT church Iphis sees a new-fashioned 
 shoe. He looks at his own and blushes 
 for it, he cannot think himself dressed. 
 He went to mass only to be seen, and 
 now he hides himself, kept at home by the foot 
 for the rest of the day. He has a soft hand and 
 preserves it by using a scented paste. He takes 
 care to laugh often in order to show his teeth, 
 and is, indeed, perpetually smiling. He surveys 
 his legs, looks at himself in the glass, and nobody 
 could be more pleased with another than he is 
 with himself. He has acquired a soft clear 
 voice, and fortunately talks with fluency. He 
 has a movement of the head, and a kind of 
 expression in the eyes, both of which he does 
 not neglect to use to the best advantage. 
 His gait is slow, and his attitudes prettily 
 studied. Occasionally he puts on a little rouge, 
 but not habitually. It is true that he wears 
 breeches and a hat, and that he has neither 
 ear-rings nor necklace, therefore I have not put 
 him in my chapter " of women." 
 
 100 
 
THE EGOIST 
 
 THE EGOIST 
 
 jNATHON lives for nobody but himself, 
 and for him the rest of the world are 
 Bj^ P as if they were not. Not content 
 with the best seat at table, he must 
 take up the room of two others ; he forgets that 
 dinner is for the rest of the company as well as 
 for him. He lays hold of every dish, and must 
 taste of them all before he can decide of which 
 to eat. He makes himself at home wherever he 
 may be, and whether at church or at the play 
 behaves as if he were in his own room. When 
 he drives, he must always sit backwards ; sitting 
 forwards, he says, makes him feel faint. When 
 he travels in company he goes before the rest 
 into the inns, and picks out for himself the best 
 room and the best bed and appropriates everything 
 to his own use. His own servants, as well as 
 those of others, hasten to serve him. He worries 
 every one, puts himself out for none, pities none, 
 recognizes no troubles but his own, no sufferings 
 but his own, laments nobody's death, and to 
 prevent his own would willingly consent to the 
 extinction of mankind. 
 
 lOI 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 THE MAN OF CONVENTION 
 
 JARCISSUS rises in the morning to go 
 H to bed at night, has a fixed hour for 
 i his toilette like a woman, and attends 
 mass regularly every day. He is 
 good company, and may be counted on for a 
 third or fifth at ombre or reversi. He sits for 
 four hours together at Aricia's, where every 
 evening he ventures his five or six pistoles. 
 He never misses reading the newspapers, and 
 is acquainted with the works of Cyrano de 
 Bergerac and others, and some collections of 
 poems. He accompanies ladies in the public 
 promenades, and is religiously punctual in his 
 visits^ He will do the same to-morrow as he 
 has done to-day, and as he did yesterday, and 
 he will die after having lived so. 
 
 102 
 
THE RESIDUARY LEGATEE 
 
 THE RESIDUARY LEGATEE 
 
 ITIUS hears a will read with tearful eyes 
 and swollen lids, and is overcome with 
 grief at the loss of a friend by whose 
 death he will inherit a fortune: one 
 clause bestows on him the succession of a 
 post, another house property, a third gives him 
 a fine country estate, and a fourth makes him 
 master of a richly-furnished house situated in 
 the best part of Paris; his grief increases, the 
 tears run down his cheeks. How can he refrain 
 from weeping ? He has now an office, a town 
 house, and a country house, both well furnished, 
 he will be able to keep his carriage and a well- 
 provided table. " Was there ever a more honest, 
 a better man than my poor friend ?" But here is 
 a codicil that must be read ; it makes Maevius 
 residuary legatee, and sends Titius back to his 
 garret without sinecure, horses, lands, or money. 
 He dries his tears ; it is now the turn of Maevius 
 to weep. 
 
 103 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 , FOOLS 
 
 l^r^^ FOOL is an automaton, a machine with 
 [w'SilJl springs which turn him about always in 
 li^^Mi,^ one manner, and preserve his equili- 
 brium. He is ever the same, and never 
 changes. If you have seen him once you have 
 seen him at every moment and period of his life. 
 He is at best but ^s the lowing ox or the whist- 
 ling blackbird. He is fixed and obstinate, I may 
 say, by nature. What appears least in him is 
 his soul ; that has neither activity nor energy ; it 
 reposes. 
 
 104 
 
THE GREAT CONDE 
 
 THE GREAT CONDE 
 
 (iEmilius) 
 
 EMILIUS was born what the greatest 
 men do not become but by force of rules, 
 study, and practice. He had no more 
 to do in his early years than to give 
 himself up to the bent of his natural talents and of 
 his genius. He performed actions before he had 
 gained knowledge, or rather he had knowledge 
 without ever having learnt. Shall I say that his 
 boyish games were so many victories ? It would 
 make a life of brilliant success and great exploits 
 only to have performed the actions of his youth. 
 All the opportunities that have since offered for 
 conquest he has embraced, and those which did 
 not exist his virtue and his good fortune created, 
 admirable alike for the things he did and for those 
 which he could have done. He was looked on as 
 a man incapable of yielding to an enemy, or of 
 giving way under numbers of obstacles. He was 
 regarded as a soul of a superior order, full oi 
 resource and intelligence, and who saw more 
 105 
 
LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 The' Great than others, like him who at the head of legions 
 Conde ^gg fQj. them a presage of victory, and who was 
 in his single person worth several legions. He 
 was great in prosperity, greater even in adversity ; 
 the raising of a siege or a retreat have gained 
 him more honour than his successes, such things 
 come only second to battles won and towns 
 taken. He was filled equally with glory and 
 modesty. He has been heard to say '< I fled," 
 with the same grace that he said "We beat 
 them." He is devoted to the State, to his family 
 and its head, true to God and man, as much 
 an admirer of merit as if he had been himself less 
 well acquainted with it, a man sincere, simple, 
 magnanimous, in whom none of the virtues were 
 wanting but the inferior ones. 
 
 io6 
 
FONTENELLE 
 
 FONTENELLE 
 
 (Cydias) 
 
 JSCANIUS is a statuary, Region a founder, 
 Aeschines a fuller, and Cydias a wit. 
 He has a sign, a workshop, commis- 
 sions, and apprentices who work under 
 him. It will be a month before you can have the 
 stanzas he promised you, unless he breaks his 
 word to Dosithea, who has ordered an elegy from 
 him. He has also an idyll on the stocks for 
 Grantor which is occupying him closely, and for 
 which he expects generous remuneration. Prose, 
 poetry, -what do you desire ? He is equally suc- 
 cessful in both. Do you want letters of condo- 
 lence, or about an absence, he will undertake 
 them, or there are plenty ready-made if you will 
 step into his shop and choose. He has a friend 
 whose sole function on earth is to speak of him 
 continually in society, and then to introduce him 
 into houses as a man of rare gifts and exquisite 
 conversation. And then like a singer or a lute- 
 player in the presence of persons to whom he 
 107 
 
LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Fontenelle has been talked of, Cydias, after coughing and 
 smoothing his ruffles, stretching forth his hand 
 and spreading his fingers, gravely utters his 
 volatilized ideas and his sophisticated arguments. 
 Differing from those who, agreeing in principle, 
 and recognizing reason and truth, interrupt each 
 other only to prove how their sentiments agree, 
 he only opens his mouth to contradict. "It 
 seems to me," he says condescendingly, " that it 
 is just the reverse of what you say," or " I must 
 differ from you," or " I was formerly under the 
 same infatuation, but . . . there are three 
 things," he adds, "to consider," and he never 
 fails to bring forward a fourth. He is a rapid 
 talker, whose first aim at coming into an assem- 
 bly is to get among the women, that he may 
 amaze them by exhibiting his wondrous talents. 
 For whether he speaks or writes he must not be 
 suspected of aiming at the presentment of truth 
 or falsehood, reason or absurdity; he equally 
 avoids agreeing with or holding a similar opinion 
 to the rest. Thus he often waits until all the 
 company have spoken their thoughts on some 
 casual subject, not seldom introduced by himself, 
 and then holds forth dogmatically, and as he 
 imagines decisively and unanswerably, on entirely 
 new themes. Cydias is the equal of Lucian and 
 Seneca, ranks himself above Plato, Virgil, and 
 Theocritus, and his flatterers confirm him every 
 io8 
 
FONTENELLE 
 
 day in that opinion. United in taste and interest Fontenelle 
 with the detractors of Homer, he waits calmly 
 until men shall be undeceived and shall prefer 
 modern poets to him. In that case he ranks him- 
 self at the head of the latter, and he knows to 
 whom to adjudge the second place. In short he 
 is a cross between a pedant and a pricieux, made 
 to be admired by middle-class folk and provincials, 
 a man in whom, nevertheless, nothing great is to 
 be seen except the opinion he holds of himself. 
 
 log 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 LA FONTAINE 
 
 ^fi5gji*ERE is a man who appears coarse, 
 ! ^^ ll heavy, stupid ; he is unable to speak of 
 ^^^ or describe what he may just have seen, 
 but when he begins to write he is the 
 model of story-tellers. He makes everything 
 speak that does not speak, animals, trees, stones ; 
 his works are full of lightness, elegance, good 
 humour, and delicacy. 
 
 He is more uniform than Marot, and more a 
 poet than Voiture. He has the playfulness, the 
 happy turn of phrase, the simplicity of both. He 
 instructs while he jests, and persuades men to 
 virtue by the organs of beasts. He confers 
 sublimity on the meanest subject. Unique in 
 his way of writing, always original whether he 
 invents or translates, he surpasses his models, 
 and is himself a model difficult 'to imitate. 
 
 J 10 
 
A GOOD KING 
 
 A GOOD KING 
 
 HEN, towards sunset on a fine day, you 
 see a large flock dispersed over a hillside, 
 quietly grazing the wild thyme, or nibb- 
 ling in a meadow the short tender grass 
 that has escaped the reaper's scythe, the shepherd, 
 careful and diligent, stands upright among his 
 sheep ; he does not let them from his sight, he 
 follows them, leads them, changes their pasture. 
 If they go astray, he gathers them together 
 again. If a hungry wolf approaches, he lets 
 loose his dog, and so puts him to flight. He 
 cherishes and protects them. At dawn he is 
 already in the field, which he does not quit till 
 sunset. What anxiety ! What vigilance ! What 
 slavery ! Which condition appears the most 
 free and desirable, that of the shepherd or the 
 sheep ? Is the flock made for the shepherd, or 
 the shepherd for the flock ? Here we have a real 
 image of a king and his people, if he is a good 
 king. 
 
 Ill 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 THE PEOPLE 
 
 CERTAIN wild animals, male and female, 
 are to be seen spread over the land. They 
 are dark-skinned, tanned by the sun, 
 chained as it were to the earth which 
 they dig and plough with invincible steadiness. 
 They have something like an articulate voice, 
 and when they stand erect, reveal a human face, 
 and are, in fact, men. At night they retire into 
 their burrows, where they live on black bread, 
 water and roots. They spare other men the 
 trouble of sowing, toiling and reaping for their 
 sustenance, and thus deserve at least not to want 
 the bread for which they themselves have 
 toiled. 
 
 112 
 
PICTURES OF NATURE 
 
 PICTURES OF NATURE 
 
 I. 
 
 AM approaching a small town and am 
 already on an eminence whence I can see 
 it. It is situated on the hill- side, a river 
 washes its walls and then winds through 
 beautiful meadows, while a thick forest protects 
 it from the cold north winds. The atmosphere 
 is so clear that I can count its towers and 
 steeples ; it looks as if painted on the slope of the 
 hill. I am enchanted and exclaim : << How 
 delightful it would be to live in so delicious a 
 spot, under so serene a sky ! " I enter the town, 
 and have not spent two nights there when I be- 
 come like its inhabitants, and want to get out 
 of it. 
 
 II. 
 
 Observe, Lucilius, that spot of earth so much 
 more beautiful and pleasing than the land con- 
 tiguous to it. Here are spaces of ground amid 
 which are dispersed pools and fountains ; there, 
 endless espalier walks which shelter you from 
 113 H 
 
LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Pictures of the north wind. On one side is a thick wood 
 Nature which affords you shade from the sun, and on 
 another an enchanting view. Lower is a rivulet 
 which once flowed in its hidden course between 
 willows and poplars, and is now become a 
 banked up canal. Spacious, cool avenues are 
 lost in the distance, and announce to you the 
 whereabouts of the house, which is surrounded 
 byjwater. 
 
 114 
 
TOWN'S IGNORANCE OF THE COUNTRY 
 
 THE TOWN'S IGNORANCE OF THE 
 COUNTRY 
 
 jN the town people are brought up in total 
 ignorance of, and a blamable indiffer- 
 ence regarding, things of the country. 
 They can scarcely distinguish between 
 flax and hemp, wheat and rye, and either of those 
 from barley, they only care for eating, drinking and 
 dressing. It is useless to speak to inhabitants of 
 a town of pastures, copses, aftermath and second 
 crops, such terms are Greek to them. If you 
 talk to some of them of weights, tariffs and the 
 rate of interest ; to others of appeals, petitions, 
 decrees and injunctions, they will eagerly listen. 
 They know the world and what in it is least 
 beautiful, and least pleasing. They know nothing 
 about nature, her origins, her progress, her gifts 
 and bounties. Their ignorance is often voluntary, 
 and founded upon the conceit they have of their 
 own vocations and talents. There is not a petti- 
 fogger of them all who, sitting in his gloomy and 
 smoky study, his mind full of dark chicanery, 
 does not set himself higher than the labourer, 
 "5 
 
the Country 
 
 LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 The Town's who praises God, tills the earth, sows in due 
 *?.1°r>^,^«.«?. season and gathers in rich harvests, and if at 
 any time he hears talk of the first inhabitants of 
 the earth, or of the patriarchs, with their rural 
 and well-ordered lives, he is astonished that any 
 one could have lived at a time when there were 
 neither attorneys, nor counsellors, nor judges, 
 nor solicitors ; neither does he understand how 
 men could have done without the bar and 
 lawyers' clerks and coffee-houses. 
 
 ii6 
 
REALISM AND THE STAGE 
 
 REALISM AND THE STAGE 
 
 T is not sufficient that the morals of the 
 stage shall not be bad, they should be 
 decent and instructive. Some things are 
 so low, so mean, so insipid and so insigni- 
 ficant in themselves that it is not permitted to the 
 poet to pay attention to them, nor possible for 
 the spectators to be amused by them. The 
 peasant or the drunkard may furnish some 
 scenes for the farce-writer, but they scarcely 
 enter into true comedy ; how then can they furnish 
 the basis or the principal action of comedy ? 
 " Such characters," you say, " are natural." 
 By that rule, the audience would be pleased with 
 a lackey whistling, or a drunkard snoring. 
 Could anything be more natural ? It is the way 
 of an effeminate fellow to get up late, spend part 
 of the day at his toilet, look at himself in the 
 glass, perfume himself, put on patches, receive 
 notes and answer them. Bring that part on to 
 the stage. The longer you make it last, one act, 
 two acts, the more natural and true to its original 
 it will be, but also the more insipid and dull. 
 
 "7 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 TIME 
 
 IVERY hour in itself is for each one of 
 us unique ; once past, it has gone for 
 ever, and not millions of ages will 
 bring it back. Days, months, and 
 years are fled away, and irrecoverably lost in 
 the abysm of time. Time itself shall be de- 
 stroyed ; it is but a point in the immense space of 
 eternity, and it will be effaced. There are 
 several light and frivolous circumstances of time 
 which are unstable and pass away ; such I call 
 fashions, greatness, favour, wealth, power, 
 authority, independence, pleasure, gaiety, super- 
 fluity. What will become of those fashions 
 when time itself shall have disappeared ? Only 
 virtue, so little the fashion, stretches beyond 
 time. 
 
 ii8 
 
A MUTUAL ADMIRATION SOCIETY 
 
 A MEMBER OF A MUTUAL ADMIRATION 
 SOCIETY 
 
 ^T^^RSENES contemplates mankind from 
 l^^\ffl the summit of self-conceit, and at the 
 Jyl^tBii distance from which he beholds them, 
 seems frightened at their littleness. 
 Praised and extolled to the skies by a knot of 
 persons who form a mutual admiration society, 
 he thinks with the little merit he has to possess 
 all that it is possible to have, all that he will never 
 possess. Filled with sublime ideas, he scarcely 
 finds time to pronounce a few oracles. Elevated 
 by his character above human judgment he 
 leaves to vulgar souls the merit of a regular, 
 orderly life, and is only responsible for his in- 
 consistencies to the circle of friends who wor- 
 ship him ; they alone judge correctly, think cor- 
 rectly, they alone write or ought to write. There 
 is, indeed, no work of genius, however well re- 
 ceived by the world, and universally liked by men 
 of sense, which he approves, or which he would 
 even condescend to read. He is incapable of 
 being corrected by this portrait, which he will 
 not read. 
 
 119 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 BRIEF REFLEXIONS ON MEN AND 
 THINGS 
 
 IVERYTHING has been said, and we 
 are come too late by the seven thousand 
 years that men have lived and thought. 
 The finest and best things about 
 morality have already been appropriated, and 
 nothing is left for us but to glean after the an- 
 cients, and the cleverest of the modems. 
 
 We must only seek to think and speak cor- 
 rectly without desiring to lead others to our 
 tastes and feelings ; that would be too large an 
 undertaking. 
 
 It is not so easy to make a name by an ex- 
 cellent work, as to make an indifferent work 
 valued through the name already acquired. 
 
 There are some things that will not bear 
 mediocrity ; poetry, music, painting, oratory. 
 
 It is a sorry commendation that is made of a 
 heap of epithets ; deeds and the manner of 
 relating them speak a man's praise. 
 
 120 
 
REFLEXIONS ON MEN AND THINGS 
 
 The pleasure of criticism deprives us of that Brief Reflex- 
 of being profoundly touched by the finest things. "'"^ °^ 
 
 ■-' It is a happiness to be nobly descended ; it is Things 
 not a lesser happiness to have so much merit 
 that nobody enquires whether you are so or not. 
 
 A beautiful face is the most beautiful of all 
 sights, and the sweetest music is the sound of 
 the voice of her whom we love. 
 
 Women are all extremes : they are either 
 better or worse than men. 
 
 Women exceed the generality of men in love, 
 but men are their superiors in friendship. 
 
 Most women judge of a man's merit and looks 
 by the impression that they make on him, and 
 very rarely allow either to a man who is 
 indifferent to them. 
 
 The woman who has her eyes constantly fixed 
 on the same person, or who is always turning 
 them from him, makes us conclude one and 
 the same thing of her. 
 
 It costs a woman little to tell what she does 
 not feel, it costs a man still less to express what 
 he does feel. 
 
 There are few wives so perfect as not to give 
 their husbands cause to repent of marriage at 
 
 121 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Brief Reflex- least once a day, or to envy him who is un- 
 ions on married. 
 Men and 
 
 Things The passionless woman is she who has not 
 
 yet seen the man she is to love. 
 
 Pure friendship is something that cannot be 
 tasted by the mediocre. 
 
 Love and friendship exclude each other. 
 
 However fastidious we may be in love, we 
 forgive more faults in love than in friendship. 
 
 To be but in the company of those we love, 
 satisfies us. It does not signify whether we 
 speak to them or not, whether we think of them 
 or of indifferent things : to be near them is all. 
 
 That love can die is proof of man's limitations, 
 and that the heart has its bounds. 
 
 It is a weakness to love; it is sometimes 
 another weakness to be cured of it. 
 
 To be deprived of the person we love is happi- 
 ness compared to living with one we hate. 
 
 The things we most desire never happen, or 
 if they happen, it is neither at the time nor under 
 the circumstances when they would have given 
 most pleasure. 
 
 We must laugh before we are happy, for fear 
 of dying before we have laughed. 
 
 122 
 
REFLEXIONS ON MEN AND THINGS 
 
 There are some places we admire, and others Brief Reflex- 
 
 we love and where we should like to live. '°"^ °" 
 
 Men and 
 
 In the course of our lives there are some for- Things 
 
 bidden pleasures and engagements so dear and 
 
 tender that it is but natural at least to desire 
 
 that they were allowed. Nothing can be more 
 
 charming than they are except it be the pleasure 
 
 of renouncing them by the strength of virtue. 
 
 You cannot go far in friendship if you are not 
 willing to forgive each other little failings. 
 
 A king lacks nothing but the pleasures of 
 private life : he can only be consoled for so great 
 a loss by the charms of friendship and by the 
 fidelity of his friends. 
 
 There are some strange fathers who seem, 
 during the whole course of their lives, to be pre- 
 paring reasons why their children should be 
 easily consoled at their deaths. 
 
 The man who says he was not bom happy 
 may at least become so through the happiness of 
 his friends or relations. But envy robs him of 
 that last resource. 
 
 Take away passion, interest, injustice; what 
 a calm there would be in the greatest cities! 
 The necessaries of life do not occasion a third of 
 the embarrassment. 
 
 123 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Brief Reflex- If life be miserable, to live is painful ; if happy, 
 
 ions on jQ jjg jg terrible. Both come to the same thing. 
 Men and 
 
 Things There are but three events which happen to 
 
 mankind, birth, life and death. Of their birth 
 
 they know nothing, they suffer when they die, 
 
 and neglect to live. 
 
 Children have neither past nor future, but what 
 never happens with us, they enjoy the present. 
 
 All our misfortunes proceed from our inability 
 to be alone ; hence gaming, dissipation, wine, 
 women, ignorance, slander, envy, neglect of God 
 and ourselves. 
 
 Instead of being frightened or ashamed at the 
 name of philosopher, everybody ought to have 
 a strong tincture of philosophy. It becomes 
 every one ; its practice is useful to people of all 
 ages, sexes and conditions ; it comforts us under 
 the happiness of others, under unworthy pre- 
 ferences, disappointments, the decay of our 
 strength and beauty ; it arms us against poverty, 
 old age, disease and death; against fools and 
 buffoons ; it enables us to live without a wife, or 
 to endure her with whom we live. 
 
 All confidence is dangerous if it is not absolute. 
 In most circumstances it is needful either to tell 
 all or to conceal all. 
 
 124 
 
VAUVENARGUES 
 
CLAZOMENES 
 
 CHARACTERS 
 
 CLAZOMENES, OR UNFORTUNATE 
 VIRTUE 
 
 !|LAZOMENES has experienced all the 
 miseries of humanity. Disease took pos- 
 session of him from his childhood, and 
 deprived him in youth of all the pleasures 
 of a young man. He had too his secret griefs, for 
 despite his poverty, he possessed pride and ambi- 
 tion. He saw himself in his misfortunes despised 
 by those whom he loved. The insult undermined 
 his courage, and he was wounded by those on 
 whom he could not be revenged. His talents, his 
 unceasing industry, his application to good works, 
 could not soften his hard lot. His wisdom could 
 not keep him from committing irreparable faults. 
 He suffered the ills he did not deserve, and those 
 induced by his imprudence. When fortune 
 seemed to tire of persecuting him, when a too 
 tardy hope began to alleviate his misery, 
 death confronted him, surprising him at a 
 period when his affairs were in the greatest dis- 
 127 
 
LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Clazomenes, order. He had the bitter pain of not leaving 
 .. , °5 behind him property enough to pay his debts ; he 
 
 could not save his virtue from that blot. If a 
 
 Virtue 
 
 reason for so cruel a destiny is sought, I think it 
 would be difficult to find one. Is there any use 
 in asking why very skilful gamblers are ruined at 
 play while other men make their fortunes at it ? 
 Or why we see years without spring or autumn 
 in which the fruits of the year wither in their 
 blossoms? However, we must not think that 
 Clazomenes would have wished to exchange his 
 misery for the prosperity of weak men. Fortune 
 can make sport of the wisdom of brave men, but 
 it is not in her power to break their courage. 
 
 128 
 
PHERECIDES 
 
 PHERECIDES, OR AMBITION 
 DECEIVED 
 
 jHERECIDES sacrificed a mediocre for- 
 tune to hopes that were scarcely wise. 
 He entered on several careers at the 
 same time, and not understanding how 
 to curb his desires he trusted too implicitly to his 
 ambition and his courage. He persists that cir- 
 cumstances and the world were against him. 
 He thought a man could control his own destiny, 
 and that it depended neither on his position nor 
 on the waywardness of human affairs. He over- 
 taxed his strength, he relied unsuccessfully on 
 his own resources, he could not overcome 
 adversity. He saw his equals leave the ranks 
 and by various chances pass him in the race. 
 Some owed their advance to gambling, others to 
 rich inheritances, others again to the favour of the 
 great, or to quite frivolous talents, but talents 
 loved of the world ; others again succeeded by 
 dancing well, by the possession of pleasing fea- 
 tures, beautiful hair or fine teeth. Pherecides com- 
 mitted an irreparable fault, he wished to hasten 
 129 I 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Pherecides, his destiny. He neglected the means that 
 
 . °r. would have led to fortune slowly and gradu- 
 
 Ambition „ , . , , , ^ , . 
 
 Deceived y' "^* perhaps surely. Instead of applying 
 
 himself with unceasing industry to one object, 
 he aimed too high and cultivated no special 
 talent. The great advantages he sought made 
 him despise the small ones within his reach and 
 he obtained neither. The haughty disposition 
 that he vainly tried to conceal, deprived him of 
 the assistance of men in office, so that the 
 elevation of his soul, his mind and his merit 
 were harmful to his advancement and his aims. 
 Had he expected less of his resources, he would 
 have better proportioned his hopes and his 
 actions to his circumstances ; mature and 
 moderate minds do not force their future, they 
 proportion their enterprises to their circum- 
 stances, they await their fortune from events, 
 and sometimes win it without trouble. But it is 
 one of the illusions of youth to believe that every- 
 thing can be done by our own strength and 
 intelligence, and to desire to rise by our own 
 industry, or by paths that merit alone cannot 
 open to men without fortune. Pherecides was 
 reduced to regret the very advantages he had 
 despised. The people he wished to excel found 
 themselves naturally above him, and no one 
 pitied his misfortunes or deigned to discover 
 their cause. 
 
 130 
 
CYRUS 
 
 CYRUS, OR THE UNQUIET MIND. 
 
 ^YRUS hid, under a simple and calm 
 exterior, an eager, unquiet mind. Out- 
 wardly he had the insensibility and 
 indifference which so often cover a 
 wounded soul, greatly taken up with itself. 
 More unquiet in repose than in action, his stir- 
 ring, ambitious mind keeps him busy without 
 relaxation, and when he has no business he tires 
 and spends himself in reflection. Too free and 
 too bold in his ideas to set bounds to his passions, 
 readier to love strong vices than feeble virtues, 
 he follows all his feelings with independence, 
 and like a man who believes himself master of 
 his fate and is only responsible to himself for 
 his conduct, he subordinates all rules to his 
 instinct. He lacks those insignificant talents 
 which raise mediocre men in inferior circum- 
 stances, men who have not to contend with such 
 serious passions. He is above the reputation 
 gained by frivolous attractions, and the fortune 
 which shuts a man up in the precincts of a town 
 or small province, the ordinary outcome of a 
 131 
 
LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Cyrus, or somewhat narrow wisdom. He is eloquent, 
 "^^^Jr "'^"^^^ simple, vehement, profound, discerning, and im- 
 penetrable even to his friends. Endowed with 
 insight into men, exhibiting without envy the merit 
 of others, and relying on his own, he is insinuating 
 and bold, equally suited to persuade by force of 
 reason or by the charms of seduction. He is fer- 
 tile and powerful in resources for making facts 
 and minds bend to his purposes ; he is sincere by 
 character, but makes an artifice of the truth, and 
 is more dangerous when he speaks the truth than 
 deceivers are by their subterfuges and falsehoods. 
 He is one of those men whom other men mis- 
 understand, whom the mediocrity of their fortune 
 disguises and degrades, and whom only prosperity 
 could develop and put in their right place. 
 
 132 
 
TITUS 
 
 TITUS, OR ENERGY 
 
 ■ ITUS rises without assistance, and with- 
 out a fire during the winter. When the 
 servants come into his room they find on 
 his table a pile of letters that he has writ- 
 ten by candle-light ready for the post. He begins 
 several pieces of work at once and finishes them 
 with incredible speed ; his impatient genius does 
 not permit him to polish them. Whatever he 
 undertakes, it is impossible for him to linger over 
 it ; if he put any matter aside, he would feel un- 
 easy until he was able to take it up again. 
 Although occupied with affairs of so serious a 
 nature, he is to be met in society, just like 
 any idle man. He does not confine himself 
 to one sort of society, but cultivates several sorts 
 at the same time, and maintains relations with 
 numerous persons, both within and without the 
 kingdom. He has travelled, he has written, he 
 has been at Court and at the wars ; he excels in 
 several callings, and knows both men and books. 
 He has enjoyed all sorts of pleasures but has not 
 on that account neglected his business. He 
 133 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Titus, employs the time spent in society in forming 
 or Energy intrigues, and cultivating his friends. He does 
 not understand how people can talk for the sake 
 of talking, or act only in order to be doing some- 
 thing, and it is evident that his mind suffers when 
 necessity or politeness uselessly put a curb on it. 
 If he seeks pleasure, he does not take less trouble 
 about that than about more serious matters, and 
 the employment thus given to his mind is more 
 important to him than the particular pleasure he 
 pursues. In sickness, or in health he preserves 
 the same energy. He prosecutes a law suit on 
 a day on which he has taken physic ; another 
 time, he composes verses with a fever on him, 
 and when his friends beg him to take care of 
 himself, " Eh! " he says, " how can I just now ? 
 Just look at the business with which I am over- 
 whelmed," although, to be exact, he has no 
 business that is not purely voluntary. Prostrated 
 by a dangerous illness, he had himself dressed 
 so that he might put his papers in order. He 
 remembered how Vespasian desired to die 
 standing. 
 
 134 
 
PHOCAS 
 
 PHOCAS, OR FALSE ECCENTRICITY 
 
 JLL that is false displeases and wounds 
 us in whatever shape it presents it- 
 self. Since men , compliant by preference 
 and intention, embrace without selection 
 the ideas of everybody, who would believe that 
 others exist who pride themselves in not thinking 
 like any one else thinks, and in not borrowing 
 their opinions from any one? Never speak of 
 eloquence to Phocas, or, if you wish to please him, 
 do not mention Cicero, for he will immediately 
 eulogize Abdallah, Abutaleb and Mahomet, and 
 assure you that nothing equals the sublimity of 
 the Arabs. If some old comedy, the author of 
 which is long since forgotten, is revived on the 
 stage, it is that piece which he admires and prefers 
 before all ; he finds the plot ingenious, and the 
 poetry and the situations inimitable. If war is 
 the topic, you must not speak to him of Turenne 
 or the great Conde ; he places far above them 
 135 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Phocas, or certain ancient generals about whom only their 
 
 False names and one or two disputed battles are 
 
 Eccentricity , t i- ^ • -r 
 
 known. In fact, on every occasion, if you 
 
 mention two great men, be sure that he will always 
 choose the least famous for his hero. In all re- 
 spects one of the most mediocre of men, he stupidly 
 thinks to make himself original by means of 
 affectation and he aims at nothing more. He 
 avoids agreeing with anybody, and disdains to 
 speak to the point, provided he speaks differently 
 from the rest. He studies in puerile fashion to 
 be incoherent in his talk like a man who only 
 thinks and speaks by sudden inspirations and 
 flashes. Tell him seriously a serious thing, he 
 will reply by a jest ; speak to him of frivolous 
 things, he will begin a serious discourse. He 
 disdains to contradict, but he continually inter- 
 rupts, and often, instead of answering you, turns 
 away his eyes like a man in profound thought ; 
 he has an absent-minded far-away air, and a dis- 
 dainful expression of countenance. His part is to 
 appear dominated by his imagination, and to pay 
 no heed to the intelligence of others. He wishes 
 to make you understand that nothing you can say 
 has any interest for him because he is too far 
 above your ideas. His conversation, his manners, 
 his love, even his silence, warn you that you can 
 say nothing that is new to a man who thinks and 
 feels as he does. He is a feeble-minded man who, 
 136 
 
PHOCAS 
 
 disbelieving that merit can advance him, thinks to Phocas, or 
 
 impress humanity by his affectations, and to be „ J^a^o^ 
 
 , , ... , . . . . . Eccentricity 
 
 taken for an original merely by throwing aside 
 
 reason. 
 
 137 
 
LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 THEOPHILUS, OR THE PROFOUND MIND 
 
 ' HEOPHILUS was imbued from his youth 
 with the great and praiseworthy curi- 
 osity of knowing mankind and the vari- 
 ous characters of nations ; but, in 
 pursuing that object, he did not neglect the men 
 with whom he had to pass the greatest part of 
 his hfe, for he did not resemble those who under- 
 take long journeys in order to see, so they say, 
 other manners, and who have never examined 
 those of their own country. Urged by this 
 powerful instinct, and perhaps also by some 
 more secret ambition, he spent his best 
 days in study and travel, and his life, always 
 laborious, was always unquiet. Endowed by 
 nature with extraordinary, profound, and clear 
 penetration, he never speaks without a purpose, 
 and his is no mind to cause weariness ; his keen 
 and active intelligence early caused him to apply 
 himself to great affairs and solid eloquence ; his 
 words are simple, but bold and forcible ; he some- 
 times speaks with a freedom that cannot do him 
 any hurt, but which turns aside a defiant spirit in 
 138 
 
THEOPHILUS 
 
 others. Nature placed in his heart the desire of Theophilus, 
 insinuating himself and descending into the hearts °*" *® ^5°" 
 of men who inspire and teach the hidden seduc- 
 tions of eloquence; yet he seems a man who 
 does not seek to penetrate others, but who 
 follows the vivacity of his humour. When he 
 wishes to make a reserved man speak he contra- 
 dicts him violently in order to rouse him, and 
 insensibly engages him in talk in which he is 
 obliged to reveal himself ; even if he use dissimu- 
 lation, his dissimulation and his silence have a 
 meaning for Theophilus, who knows the things his 
 interlocutor hides, and profits almost equally by 
 candour and dissimulation, by indiscretion and 
 silence, so difficult is it to escape him. He mani- 
 pulates and plays a mind, turns over its pages just 
 as we glance through a book we have in our hands, 
 and which we open at a passage that pleases us ; 
 and this he does with such an air of innocence, 
 with so little preparation, and so rapidly that those 
 whom he has surprised by his words flatter them- 
 selves that they read his most secret thoughts. As 
 he never wastes time in unnecessary talking, nor 
 makes false steps, nor useless preparations, he is 
 able to shorten the most contentious matters, the 
 most difficult negotiations, and his flexible genius 
 lends itself to every kind of character without 
 abandoning his own. He is the affectionate 
 friend, the father, the adviser and confidant of 
 139 
 
Theophilus, 
 or the Pro- 
 found Mind 
 
 LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 those who surround him. We find in him a man 
 simple, without ostentation, familiar, popular. 
 When we have been talking to him for an hour 
 we think we know him, but his talent is to lay 
 bare the characters of others and to conceal his 
 own. Theophilus is a proof that skilfulness is not 
 solely an art, as false men imagine it to be ; a vivid 
 imagination, great sense, an eloquent soul, easily 
 subjugate the most guarded and defiant minds, 
 and a superior intelligence conceals thoughts 
 much more surely than do falsehood and dis- 
 simulation, always useless as trickery against 
 prudence. 
 
 140 
 
VARUS 
 
 VARUS, OR LIBERALITY 
 
 jjARUS hates useless luxury and purpose- 
 less profusion. He dresses simply, 
 goes afoot, likes order in his affairs, and 
 retires at times into the country so as 
 to spend less. But he is kind to those who are 
 unfortunate, liberal and lavish where the interests 
 of his fortune are concerned, grateful for the 
 slightest service, and considerate towards all who 
 suffer. If he has to give money to a man who 
 makes no ceremony about receiving it, who is 
 besides poor and of low rank, Varus's only fear 
 is of giving it him in a manner that might 
 make him feel his position. He embraces him, 
 shakes hands with him, in a way apologizes for his 
 kind deed. He says that between friends every- 
 thing is in common, and such kindly conduct 
 raises the soul of the poor man so that he in his 
 turn apologizes for the poverty that compels him 
 to ask assistance. Varus replies : " My friend, 
 mankind has only attached shame to receiving in 
 order to avenge themselves for the shame they 
 have in giving ; but, believe me, more generosity 
 is required for accepting a friend's help than for 
 141 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Varus, or giving it him." Varus has everything that money 
 Liberahty ^^^^ procure, and deserves to be sought out ; for 
 at need on important occasions he borrows, and 
 he never hesitates to put himself out in order to 
 satisfy himself, if need be, or to satisfy his friends. 
 As he was not born rich he is reduced to owe 
 largely, but he is never unpunctual in his pay- 
 ments. He pays at the date fixed, and all purses 
 are open to him because his probity is known and 
 his orderly conduct makes him seem quite at ease 
 when he is most involved. In that way he has 
 sufficient for his gifts and his own kind heart. 
 But if any one, hearing his generosity talked of, 
 attempts to make a dupe of him, after the manner 
 of rascals who always think themselves cleverer 
 than honest men. Varus, who can penetrate the 
 most secret thoughts, and who knows mankind 
 well, easily sees through the rascal's purpose, 
 and takes delight in playing with him. Instead 
 of giving him time to state his demand, he is first, 
 and says : " Well, my friend, you are out very 
 early to- day. Have you some important business 
 on hand ? Are you by any chance seeking an 
 honest money lender ? You'll have a vast deal 
 of trouble to find him, I assure you. I know 
 people who have been wanting a hundred pistoles 
 for the last three weeks, and can't find them, 
 even with good interest." The rascal, ashamed 
 and confused at being found out — for the best 
 142 
 
VARUS 
 
 way to unmask a man who is prepared is to be Varus, or 
 beforehand with him— replies that in truth he has Liberality 
 lost large sums at cards the last few days, but, 
 fortunately, he has been able to pay off his debts. 
 Glad to have baffled him. Varus pretends to be- 
 lieve him, and treats him with the utmost civility. 
 They are already risen and near the door when 
 the borrower, beginning to regret his feeling of 
 shame, and who is besides somewhat reassured 
 by Varus's manner, says : " I regret that I did 
 pay So-and-so for I haven't a crown left ; if you 
 could possibly lend me four pistoles, I will return 
 them to-morrow morning. " What !" exclaims 
 Varus, " can a man like you possibly be in want 
 of four pistoles ? How have you let yourself 
 come to that pass ? What's the use of possessing 
 such intelligence ? What do you do with it ? 
 How doyou employ it ?" " I don't exactly know, 
 but you would be doing me a great favour if you 
 would lend me those four pistoles." '< Oh ! as to 
 that, my dear fellow, it's quite impossible, for it 
 was of rnyself I was speaking just now. I have 
 been seeking money for the last month, and it is 
 a consolation to find that a man like you is in 
 equally low water." Then he accompanies him 
 to the door, overwhelms him with those protesta- 
 tions that rascals are so fond of employing and 
 are always so surprised to find in the mouths of 
 honest folk. 
 
 143 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VA UVENARGUES 
 
 ACESTES, OR YOUNG LOVE 
 
 YOUNG man who is in love for the first 
 time in his life is no more a libertine, 
 nor dissipated, nor ambitious ; all his 
 passions are suspended, one alone fills 
 his heart. If, perchance, he finds himself at a 
 concert where the music is passionate, the sym- 
 phony alone moves him without any accompani- 
 ment of words ; tears are seen to flow from his 
 eyes, and he is compelled to leave the assembly 
 in which he is not at ease and shut himself up 
 at home ; he turns aside from those he meets, 
 he wishes to hide his tears. Sitting at his table, 
 he begins a letter, and tears it up, he strides up 
 and down his room, mutters incoherent words ; 
 he is no longer himself, no one recognizes him. 
 Acestes idolizes a woman by whom he believes 
 himself loved in return. He sees her in his 
 sleep, speaks to her, listens to her, and thinks 
 she listens to him. He dreams that he is 
 travelling alone with her through a wood, over 
 rocks and burning sand; they reach a land of 
 savages ; the people crowd round them and 
 144 
 
ACESTES 
 
 enquire with curiosity about their fortunes. Acestes, or 
 Another time he dreams that he is in a battle, Young Love 
 and that, covered with wounds and glory, he is 
 about to die in his mistress's arms ; for a young 
 man's imagination easily produces all the 
 chimeras that our romancers only compose after 
 many wakeful nights. Acestes is timid with his 
 mistress ; although the bloom of youth is still on 
 his countenance he is uneasy when he is with 
 her. He forgets when he sees her what he had 
 prepared to say to her ; but sometimes he speaks 
 to her without preparation, with that fire and 
 impetuosity which the most poignant and 
 eloquent of the passions inspire ; he has a 
 torrent of words at once strong and tender ; he 
 draws tears from this woman who loves another ; 
 then he throws himself at her feet and demands 
 pardon for offences he has not committed. At 
 length his charm and sincerity prevail over the 
 vows of a rival less affectionate than he, and love, 
 time, caprice, reward so pure a passion. He re- 
 turns home preoccupied and saddened ; love brings 
 goodness into an innocent and sensitive heart ; 
 suspicion, envy, interest, hatred, have no place 
 in a loving happy heart. Acestes' s joy, transport, 
 silence and distraction cannot be described. All 
 who depend on him share in his happiness ; his 
 servants whom he ordered to await him at home 
 are not there ; Acestes by nature quick tempered 
 145 K 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Acestes, or and impatient, is not angry, and when, apologizing 
 Young Love foj. ^j^eir late arrival, they come, he tells them 
 that they did vu-ell to amuse themselves, and that 
 he would be sorry to spoil any one's pleasure. 
 Then if some poor wretch approaches him, 
 Acestes gives him his purse, for pity accom- 
 panies love, and says to him " I am only too happy 
 to be able to alleviate your woes ; if all men would 
 help each other, there would be none unfortunate ; 
 but the frightful and inexorable hardness of rich 
 men causes them to retain everything for 
 themselves, and thus it is avarice alone 
 which causes all the miseries of the earth." 
 Acestes only prides himself on being good ; he 
 forgives his enemies, he goes to see a man who 
 wished to injure him. "Happy," says he, "are 
 those who have passions that render them less 
 hard-hearted, less arrogant, less fastidious, less 
 conventional ! Oh ! if men could always be affec- 
 tionate, generous, modest!" While he is busied 
 with these reflections, some young men of his 
 acquaintance laugh at the passion by which he 
 is consumed, and above all at his fine ideas about 
 love. He replies : " Thank God, I have not 
 learnt to despise the love which pleases me, in 
 order to diminish my pleasures. I esteem human 
 things because I am a man, and do not pride 
 myself on finding in my imagination the things I 
 find more easily in nature. Interest, vanity, 
 146 
 
ACESTES 
 
 ambition, may possibly some day dry up my Acestes, or 
 heart and cause the natural feeling in it to perish, Young Love 
 but at least I need not go to meet that mis- 
 fortune. Do you then think yourselves more 
 clever to be undeceived so early about the so- 
 called illusions of youth ? You have grown old, 
 my friends, before your time and without having 
 enjoyed nature ; you are already disgusted with 
 its pleasures. I pity you, for it is an error to 
 seek otherwhere than in feeling what neither 
 intellect nor custom, neither art nor science, can 
 supply." 
 
 147 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 THE MAN OF THE WORLD 
 
 MAN of the world is not he who best 
 knows other men, who has the most 
 foresight or skill in affairs, who is best 
 informed either through experience or 
 study. He is neither a good economist nor a 
 man of learning, nor a politician, nor an intelli- 
 gent officer, nor a hard-working magistrate ; he 
 is a man who is ignorant of nothing, yet who 
 knows nothing, who, plying his own calling, 
 whatever it may be, very ill, thinks himself 
 capable of carrying on that of others very well. 
 He is possessed of much useless wit; he can say 
 flattering things that do not flatter, and sensible 
 things that do not instruct ; he can convince no 
 one although he speaks well. For he is endowed 
 with the sort of eloquence which creates trifles 
 or brings them into prominence, and only 
 succeeds in crushing great subjects. He is as 
 acute regarding the absurdity and outward 
 seeming of men as he is blind to their depth of 
 mind. He is rich in words and in all outward 
 things, and, unable to take the lead by good 
 148 
 
THE MAN OF THE WORLD 
 
 sense, is compelled to make an appearance by The Man of 
 eccentricity ; and dreading to be tiresome by *"® World 
 reason, is tiresome by his inconsequence and 
 digressions. He is cheerful without being gay, 
 and vivacious without being passionate. He has 
 need of constant change of place and aims, and 
 cannot make up for his lack of depth by the 
 variety of his amusements. If several persons 
 of that character meet together, and some game 
 cannot be arranged, such men, although they teem 
 with wit, have not enough of it to keep up a half- 
 hour's conversation, even with the ladies, or to pre- 
 vent their being greatly bored with each other. All 
 the facts, all the news, all the jests, all the re- 
 flexions are exhausted in a moment. He who is 
 not occupied in playing cards is obliged to look 
 on at the game so as not to find himself by the 
 fire-side with another man to whom he has 
 nothing to say, All those amiable persons who 
 have banished reason from their talk clearly 
 demonstrate how little it is to be dispensed 
 with. False things may supply conversation 
 that pricks the mind's surface, but only true 
 things penetrate the heart, create interest, and 
 are never exhausted. 
 
 149 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 THE PROFICIENT IN THE ART OF 
 DEALING WITH MANKIND 
 
 E who knows men and understands how 
 to deal with them has no need of the 
 vulgar artifices of flattery in order to 
 win hearts. He is candid, ingenious, 
 and friendly ; he does not display a vain pomp 
 of expression, nor does he adorn his conversation 
 with figures of speech that would only serve to 
 show ofT his own intelligence without interesting 
 other people. Wherever he may chance to 
 meet him, at table, on a journey, at the play, 
 in a minister's waiting room, or at the prince's 
 palace, if he finds himself in the company of a 
 man likely to listen to him, he joins him, gains 
 influence over him, persuades him by appealing 
 to the serious and sensitive side of his mind, 
 forces him to open his heart, excites and awakes 
 in him passions and interests that were dormant 
 or that he did not recognize, foresees or guesses his 
 thoughts, and winds himself in a moment into 
 his entire confidence. Thus he can win those 
 whom he does not know, as he can preserve the 
 150 
 
SAVOIR VIVRE 
 
 regard of those he has already won. He enters The Pro- 
 
 so deeply into the character of his interlocutor, "cient in the 
 L , , . . . , . ' Art of Deal- 
 
 what he says to him is so nicely proportioned ^^„ •with 
 
 to his thoughts and feelings, that where others Mankind 
 would comprehend nothing, or take no pleasure, 
 he understands all. Thus he prefers a tite-d.-tete ; 
 but if circumstances compel him to speak before 
 several persons of varying manners or opinions, 
 or if he has to decide between two men who do 
 not agree, since he knows the different sides of 
 human affairs, since he can exhaust the for and 
 against of every subject, and set all in the best 
 light and reconcile opposite views, he quickly 
 seizes the hidden point by which diverse opinions 
 may be reconciled, and his conclusion is of such 
 a nature that none of those who submitted them- 
 selves to his counsel can object to it. He does 
 not know how to shine at a supper party or in 
 a scrappy, interrupted conversation, where each 
 speaker follows the vivacity of his imagination 
 or humour without reflexion, but the art of 
 pleasing and dominating in serious conversation, 
 gentle acquiescence, and the charms of attractive 
 intercourse, are the amiable gifts which nature 
 has accorded him. He is the most eloquent 
 man in the world when it is a question of 
 softening a haughty mind, or of rousing a 
 weak one, of consoling an unhappy man, or 
 of inspiring a timid and reserved one with 
 151 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 The Pro- courage and confidence. He knows how to 
 ncient in the soften, conquer, convince, rouse, according to 
 ine with need ; he has the sort of mind which serves to 
 Mankind rule men's hearts, and which is suited for any- 
 thing of which the end is noble, useful, great. 
 
 152 
 
BRUTUS AND A ROMAN YOUTH 
 
 DIALOGUE 
 BRUTUS AND A ROMAN YOUTH 
 
 The Young Man : 
 
 ILLUSTRIOUS shade, deign to show me 
 
 affection. You were my model so long 
 
 as I lived ; like you I was ambitious, 
 
 I tried to imitate your other virtues. 
 
 Fortune was against me, I have foiled its hatred, 
 
 I have escaped its severity by killing myself. 
 
 Brutus : 
 You made that decision very young, my 
 friend. Had you no resources left in the world ? 
 
 The Young Man: 
 
 I thought none remained to me except chance, 
 and I could not wait. 
 
 Brutus : 
 What right had you to expect anything of for- 
 tune ? Did you come of a noble house ? 
 
 The Young Man: 
 My birth was lowly ; I desired to ennoble my- 
 self by virtue and fame. 
 153 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Dialogue Brutus : 
 
 What means did you take to raise yourself ? 
 for surely you had not merely a vague desire to 
 make your fortune without striving for a special 
 object. 
 
 Tke Young Man : 
 
 I hoped to advance by my intelligence and 
 courage ; I felt that I possessed a lofty mind. 
 
 Brutus : 
 And so you cultivated some talent ? For you 
 knew that no man gets on by magnanimity unless 
 he is in a position to develop it in great affairs ? 
 
 The Young Man : 
 I knew the human heart a little ; I understood 
 the spirit of finesse and skilful management ; I 
 hoped to make myself master of the minds of 
 other men ; by that means a man can attain any- 
 thing. 
 
 Brutus : 
 
 Yes, if you are already some way advanced in 
 your career, and acquainted with the great. 
 But what had you done towards obtaining your 
 end and making yourself known ? Had you dis- 
 tinguished yourself in the wars ? 
 
 The Young Man : 
 I conducted myself with coolness in all dangers, 
 154 
 
BRUTUS AND A ROMAN YOUTH 
 
 and I did my duty. But I had little taste for the Dialogue 
 details of my occupation. I thought I should 
 have done better in high affairs, but I neglected 
 to make a reputation in lower ones. 
 
 Brutus : 
 
 And you believe that this talent of yours for 
 high affairs would be guessed if you showed it 
 in lower ones ? 
 
 The Young Man : 
 
 That is exactly what I did imagine, illustrious 
 shade, for I had no experience of life, and no 
 one had instructed me in the ways of the world. 
 I had not been brought up for fortune. 
 
 Brutus : 
 Had you cultivated the art of eloquence ? 
 
 The Young Man : 
 
 I cultivated it as far as the occupation of war 
 permitted. I loved literature and poetry, but all 
 that was useless under the rule of Tiberius, who 
 only cared for politics, and, in his old age, 
 despised the arts. At Rome eloquence no 
 longer led to honours ; it was a talent quite 
 useless for making a man's fortune, and there 
 was scant opportunity for practising it. 
 155 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Dialogue Brutus : 
 
 You should have devoted yourself to the things 
 that would render you agreeable to your master, 
 and useful to your country under the conditions 
 in which it then was. 
 
 The Young Man ; 
 I recognized the truth of what you say, but I 
 discovered it too late, and I killed myself to punish 
 myself for my faults. 
 
 Brutus : 
 Your faults are not unpardonable, my friend. 
 You did not take the right road to fortune : but 
 you might have succeeded by other means, since 
 thousands have got on without merit and with- 
 out calculable industry. You are too hard on 
 yourself : like the generality of men you judge of 
 your conduct by its success. 
 
 The Young Man : 
 It is a sweet consolation, oh great shade ! that 
 you should make excuses for me. I never dared 
 to open my heart to any one so long as I lived. 
 You are the first to whom I have confessed my 
 ambition, and who has pardoned my ill fortune. 
 
 Brutus : 
 Alas ! if I had known you in the world I 
 should have tried to console you in your mis- 
 156 
 
BRUTUS AND A ROMAN YOUTH 
 
 fortunes. I see that you lack neither virtue, nor Dialogue 
 intelligence, nor courage. In more favourable 
 times you would have made your fortune, for you 
 have a Roman heart. 
 
 The Young Man : 
 If that is so, my dear Brutus, I do not regret 
 my misfortune. Fortune is partial and unjust ; 
 it is not a great evil to miss it when we feel cer- 
 tain that we deserved it. And when it is attained 
 unworthily and by an unjust title, it matters 
 little, for then it only serves to make greater 
 faults, and to increase vices. 
 
 157 
 
LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 HEGESIPPUS 
 
 EGESIPPUS passes rapidly from violent 
 feeling to its opposite, and his passions 
 are exhausted by their own vivacity. 
 Feeble and strong, encouraged by the 
 least success and thrown into consternation by 
 the least misfortune, excessive joy soon throws 
 him into sadness, hope into despair ; and hate once 
 satisfied awakes in him the extreme of pity. He 
 is subject to repent without proportion things 
 which he desired and executed without modera- 
 tion. Quick to grow excited, he cannot exist in 
 indifference. When he lacks anything his ardent 
 imagination occupies him secretly with the 
 objects his heart demands, and all his schemes 
 are as extreme as his feelings. He esteems little 
 what he does not desire or admire, and what he 
 does not regard with passion he considers to be 
 without interest. He passes swiftly from one 
 idea to another, and he exhausts in a moment 
 the feeling that sways him, but no one enters 
 with more truth into the personage whom his 
 passions make him deceive, and he is almost sin- 
 158 
 
HEGESIPPUS 
 
 cere in his tricks because he feels, in spite of him- Hegesippus 
 self, all that he desires to feign. He is the least 
 suited for affairs that demand sequence and 
 patience ; he becomes attached to people and dis- 
 gusted with them most promptly, urges a single 
 interest very vivaciously, but is entirely incapable 
 of conducting several at a time. He either en- 
 tirely neglects little things or worries himself 
 absurdly over them ; he has the greatest confi- 
 dence in himself and his schemes, but his imagina- 
 tion far outstrips his powers of execution. He is 
 destined by nature to commit great faults because 
 he imagines too vividly and undertakes too 
 rashly what he has conceived with transport. 
 He possesses, however, real and lofty courage, 
 which makes him take up from reflexion affairs 
 of which he despairs by feeling. Sometimes he is 
 rebuffed by the slightest obstacles, but does not 
 generally succumb to the greatest. Intrepid in 
 despair, he counteracts the changefulness of his 
 humour by resolution and prudence ; he even de- 
 rives virtues from his weakness, and repairs the 
 inequalities of his heart by the wisdom of his mind. 
 Equable minds are often mediocre, and we must 
 learn to esteem those men who by sudden fits 
 succeed in raising themselves to all the virtues 
 although they cannot long remain there. Their 
 heart goes out towards generosity, courage, 
 pity, and immediately yields to opposite im- 
 
 159 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Hegesippus pulses. Such virtues are not false for being 
 sudden, they sometimes go farther towards 
 heroism than moderation and wisdom, which, 
 more subject to common laws, have neither the 
 vigour nor the boldness that is the sign of 
 independence. 
 
 i6o 
 
THE INCONSTANT MAN 
 
 THE INCONSTANT MAN 
 
 1UCH a man seems really to possess more 
 than one character. A powerful imagi- 
 nation makes his soul take the shape of 
 all the objects that affect it; he sud- 
 denly astonishes the world by acts of generosity 
 and courage which were never expected of him, 
 the image of virtue inflames, elevates, softens, 
 masters his heart, he receives the impressions of 
 the greatest examples and surpasses them. But 
 when his imagination has grown cold his courage 
 droops, his generosity sinks, and the vices 
 opposed to those virtues take possession of his 
 mind and soul, and after reigning there supreme 
 for a short space yield to other objects. The 
 actions of men of that character have no rele- 
 vance one with another, they do not resemble 
 each other any more than their thoughts, which 
 vary ceaselessly ; they possess, in some sort, in- 
 spiration. He who trusts in their words and 
 their friendship lacks prudence ; they are not 
 deceitful, but they are inconstant. We cannot 
 say that they have a great or a strong or a weak 
 i6i L 
 
LA BRUtERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 The Incon- or a light nature ; it is a swift and imperious 
 stant wan imagination reigning supreme over their whole 
 being which subjugates their genius and which 
 prescribes for them in turn the great deeds and 
 the faults, the heights and the littlenesses, the 
 enthusiasms and disgusts, in short, all the differ- 
 ent lines of conduct which we wrongly ascribe to 
 hypocrisy or folly. 
 
 i6a 
 
LYCAS 
 
 LYCAS, OR THE FIRM MAN 
 
 O a self-reliant, bold, and imperious nature 
 Lycas unites a spirit of reflexion and 
 profundity which moderates the coim- 
 sels of his passions, which leads him by 
 impenetrable motives, and causes him to advance 
 to his ends by a variety of roads. He is one of 
 those long-sighted men who consider events from 
 afar, who always finish any design they have 
 begun, who, in order to attain their end, know 
 how to yield or to resist at the right moment, 
 who are capable, I will not say of dissembling a 
 misfortune or an offence, but of raising themselves 
 above it instead of allowing themselves to be de- 
 pressed by it. They are deep natures, independ- 
 ent by their firmness in suffering all, in daring 
 all ; who, whether they resist their inclinations 
 through foresight or whether from pride and a 
 secret consciousness of their resources, they defy 
 what is called prudence, always in good as in 
 evil cheat the most acute conjectures, so greatly 
 does their habit of being master of themselves 
 lead them to display what of their character or 
 their ruling passions they desire to let others see. 
 
 163 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS 
 
 T is easier to say new things than to 
 reconcile those which have already 
 been said. 
 
 Clearness is the ornament of deep thought. 
 
 Obscurity is the kingdom of error. 
 
 Where an author often errs is in believing that 
 he can express things exactly as he sees or feels 
 them. 
 
 We should be more tolerant of the ideas con- 
 tained in a piece of writing if we conceived them 
 in the same way as their author. 
 
 We rarely fathom another's thoughts ; conse- 
 quently if it happens that later a similar reflexion 
 occurs to us, so many sides does it present which 
 had escaped us that we are easily persuaded it is 
 new. 
 
 To praise moderately is always a sign of 
 mediocrity. 
 
 164 
 
REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS 
 
 Rapid fortunes of any kind are the least solid, Reflexions 
 because they are rarely the result of merit. The *"^ Maxims 
 perfect but laborious outcome of prudence is 
 always of tardy growth. 
 
 Prosperity makes few friends. 
 
 Sometimes a lengthened period of prosperity 
 melts away in a moment ; just as the heat of 
 summer flies before a day of tempest. 
 
 Courage has more resources against misfor- 
 tune than has reason. 
 
 Reason and independence are incompatible 
 with weakness. 
 
 War is less burdensome than servitude. 
 
 Servitude degrades men even to making them 
 love it. 
 
 Before attacking an abuse we must And out if 
 its foundations can be destroyed. 
 
 We have no right to render miserable those 
 whom we cannot render good. 
 
 No one can be just who is not humane. 
 165 
 
LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Reflexions Some authors regard morality in the same 
 and Maxims ygj^t ^g ^g regard modern architecture. Con- 
 venience is the first thing to be looked for. 
 
 No one likes to be pitied for his faults. 
 
 The tempests of youth are mingled with days 
 of brilliant sunshine. 
 
 Women and young people do not distinguish 
 their esteem from their inclinations. 
 
 Habit is everything — even in love. 
 
 Few passions are constant, but many are 
 sincere. 
 
 It is proof of a narrow mind when things 
 worthy of esteem are distinguished from things 
 worthy of love. Great minds naturally love 
 whatever is worthy of their esteem. 
 
 When we feel that we lack the wherewithal to 
 secure a certain man's esteem, we come very 
 near hating him. 
 
 Pleasures teach princes to recognize their 
 genus- 
 
 The man who can render his wealth useful, 
 practises a great and noble economy^ 
 i66 
 
REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS 
 
 Fools do not understand men of intelligence. Reflexions 
 
 and Maxims 
 A man can hardly be said to have made a for- 
 tune if he does not know how to enjoy it. 
 
 To attain fortune, you must act warily. You 
 must be supple and amusing. You must be 
 concerned in plots and yet offend no one ; you 
 must make yourself agreeable to women, and to 
 men in power, take your share of business and 
 pleasure, hide your secret, and know how to 
 bore yourself a whole night at table and play 
 three games of quadrille without leaving your 
 chair. Even after all that you can be certain of 
 nothing. How much annoyance and anxiety 
 might be spared if glory was only to be attained 
 by merit. 
 
 The man who rises before eight o'clock in the 
 morning to hear a case in court, or to see an 
 exhibition of pictures at the Louvre, or to attend 
 the rehearsal of a new play, and who prides 
 himself on being a judge of every sort of work 
 done by other people, is a man who often lacks 
 nothing but intelligence and taste. 
 
 We are less offended by the contempt of fools 
 than by the moderate esteem of men of intelli- 
 gence. 
 
 You sometimes offend a man by bestowing on 
 167 
 
LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Reflexions him praise which marks out the limit of his 
 and Maxims deserving; few men are modest enough to endure 
 
 being appreciated. 
 
 It is difficult to esteem a man as he desires to 
 be esteemed. 
 
 Reason and extravagance, virtue and vice, 
 have their favoured ones. Contentment is not a 
 sign of merit. 
 
 Should calmness of mind be regarded as a 
 proof of virtue ? Good health ensures it. 
 
 The moderation of great men only sets a limit 
 to their vices. The moderation of weak men is 
 mediocrity. 
 
 There are none so sour as those who are sweet 
 to order. 
 
 What is arrogance in the weak is elevation in 
 the strong ; just as the strength of the sick is 
 frenzy and that of the whole is vigour. 
 
 One does not gain much by mere clever- 
 ness. 
 
 Consciousness of our strength increases it. 
 
 It is not true that poverty calls forth virtue in 
 men more than wealth does. 
 i68 
 
REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS 
 
 You must maintain strength of body in order Reflexions 
 to preserve strength of mind. ^^^ Maxims 
 
 Those who think they have no need of others 
 become unreasonable. 
 
 Every man thinks himself worthy of the 
 highest office ; but nature, who has not made 
 him capable of holding it, likewise makes him 
 able to live contentedly in the lowest. 
 
 Men despise great projects when they do not 
 feel themselves capable of great successes. 
 
 Great men undertake great things because the 
 things are great ; fools undertake them because 
 they deem them easy. 
 
 It is sometimes easier to form a party than to 
 attain by degrees the head of a party already 
 formed. 
 
 Those who do not know how to gain by inter- 
 course with others are not generally very 
 accessible. 
 
 Extreme distrust is not less harmful than its 
 opposite ; the greater part of men are useless to 
 him who will not risk being deceived. 
 
 Everything is to hoped, everything to be feared, 
 from time and from mankind. 
 i6g 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Reflexions The bad are always greatly surprised to find 
 and Maxims cleverness in the good. 
 
 Too much and too little reserve about our 
 affairs testify equally to a weak mind. 
 
 The maxims of men reveal their hearts. 
 
 Few maxims are true in every respect. 
 
 We find in ourselves what others hide from 
 us ; and we recognize in others what we hide 
 from ourselves. 
 
 Men say few solid things when they try to say 
 extraordinary things. 
 
 The best authors say too much. 
 
 A man who neither dines nor sups at home 
 thinks himself vastly occupied. And another 
 who spends the morning at his toilette, and in 
 giving audience to his embroiderer, laughs at the 
 idleness of a newsmonger who takes a walk 
 every day before dinner. 
 
 Few men would be happy if others had 
 the determining of their occupations and 
 pleasures. 
 
 If passion sometimes counsels greater boldness 
 170 
 
REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS 
 
 than does reflexion, it gives more strength to Reflexions 
 execute it. and Maxims 
 
 If passion commits more faults than judgment 
 does, those who govern commit more faults by 
 reason than do private men. 
 
 Great thoughts come from the heart.^ 
 
 Magnanimity owes no account to prudence of 
 its motives.* 
 
 No one is more liable to make mistakes than 
 he who acts only on reflexion. 
 
 Conscience, the organ of the feeling which 
 dominates us and of the opinions which rule us, 
 is presumptuous in the strong, timid in the weak 
 and unfortunate, uneasy in the undecided. 
 
 Strength or weakness at the hour of death 
 depends on the nature of the last illness. 
 
 Disease extinguishes courage in some men, 
 fear, and even love of life, in others. 
 
 It is unjust to exact of a soul crushed and 
 vanquished by some irremediable evil, that it 
 
 ' " Trfes beau," said Voltaire of tliis maxim, "Vauvenargues 
 se peignait lui-m€me." 
 » Voltaire.—" C'est grand." 
 
 171 
 
LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Reflexions shall preserve the same strength it had at other 
 and Maxims times. Are we surprised if a sick man cannot 
 walk, or keep awake, or stand upright ? Would 
 it not be more strange if he was the same man 
 as when he was well ? If we have a headache, 
 or have slept badly, we are excused for feeling 
 incapable of work, and yet no one suspects us of 
 being always lazy. Shall we deny a dying man 
 the privilege we grant a man with a headache ? 
 And dare we assert that the man who lacks 
 courage in his last agony never possessed that 
 virtue when he was well. 
 
 To accomplish great things we must live as 
 though we had never to die. 
 
 The thought of death deceives us ; for it causes 
 us to neglect to live. 
 
 I sometimes say to myself: " Life is too short 
 to be worth troubling about." Yet if a bore 
 calls on me, prevents me from going out or from 
 dressing myself, I lose patience and cannot 
 endure to be bored for half an hour. 
 
 The falsest of all philosophies is that which, 
 under the pretext of delivering men from the 
 embarrassment of their passions, counsels 
 idleness, and the abandonment and neglect of 
 themselves. 
 
 172 
 
REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS 
 
 If all our foresight cannot render our lives Reflexions 
 happy, how much less our indifference. ^^^ Maxims 
 
 No one says in the morning : A day is soon 
 past, let us wait for the night. On the contrary, 
 in the evening we consider what we shall do 
 next day. We should be very sorry to spend 
 even one day at the mercy of time and of bores. 
 We should not dare leave the disposal of a few 
 hours to chance, and we are right. For who 
 can be certain of spending an hour without being 
 bored, if he takes no care to fill even that short 
 period according to his pleasure. Yet what we 
 cannot be certain of for an hour, we sometimes 
 feel assured of for life, and say : — " If death is 
 the end of everything, why give ourselves so 
 much trouble ? We are extremely foolish to 
 make such a pother about the future : that is to 
 say, we are extremely foolish not to entrust our 
 destinies to chance, and to provide for the 
 interval which lies between us and death. 
 
 Reason and emotion counsel and supplement 
 each other. Whoever heeds only the one, and 
 puts aside the other, recklessly deprives himself 
 of a portion of the aid granted us for the regula- 
 tion of our conduct. 
 
 We owe perhaps to the passions the greatest 
 advantages of the intellect 
 173 
 
LA BRUY6RE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 , Reflexions In the childhood of nations, as in that of indivi- 
 and Maxims duals, feeling precedes reflexion, and is their 
 first teacher. 
 
 Young people suffer less from their faults than 
 from the prudence of the old. 
 
 The counsels of the old, like the winter sun, 
 shine, but give no heat. 
 
 The common excuse of those who bring mis- 
 fortune on others, is that they desire their good. 
 
 It is unjust to exact that men shall do out of 
 deference to our advice what they have no desire 
 to do for themselves. 
 
 Whoever is more severe than the laws is a 
 tyrant. 
 
 To punish unnecessarily is to entrench on 
 God's clemency. 
 
 Mercy is of greater value than justice. 
 
 We censure the unfortunate for the slightest 
 faults, and pity them little for the greatest mis- 
 fortunes. 
 
 We reserve our indulgence for the perfect. 
 
 No man is weak from choice. 
 174 
 
REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS 
 
 The most odious form of ingratitude, yet the Reflexions 
 most common and the most ancient, is that of ^^°^ Maxims 
 children towards their fathers. 
 
 Generosity is affected by the misfortunes of 
 others as if it were itself responsible for them. 
 
 We are not greatly pleased that our friends 
 should respect our good qualities if they venture 
 to perceive our faults. 
 
 We do not condole with a man for being a 
 fool, and perhaps rightly ; but it is very delight- 
 ful to imagine that it is his fault. 
 
 We can love with all our hearts those in 
 whom we recognize great faults. It would be 
 impertinent to believe that perfection alone has 
 the right to please us; sometimes our weak- 
 nesses attach us to each other as much as our 
 virtues. 
 
 If our friends do us a service, we think they 
 owe it to us by their title of friend. We never 
 think that they do not owe us their friendship. 
 
 More fortunes are made by energy than by 
 prudence. 
 
 Nature does not seem to have made man for 
 independence. 
 
 Dependence is born of society. 
 175 
 
LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Reflexions In order to protect himself from force, man 
 and Maxims ^J^g obliged to submit to justice. Justice or 
 force : he was compelled to choose between the 
 two masters, so little are we made to be inde- 
 pendent. 
 
 With kings, nations, and private individuals, 
 the strongest assume to themselves rights over 
 the weakest, and the same rule is followed by 
 animals, by matter, by the elements, so that 
 everything is performed in the universe by 
 violence. And that order which we blame with 
 some appearance of justice is the most universal, 
 most absolute, most unchangeable, and most 
 ancient law of nature. 
 
 The weak wish to be dependent in order to be 
 protected : those who fear men love the laws. 
 
 He who knows how to suffer everything can 
 dare everything. 
 
 There are insults which we have to condone 
 if we would not compromise our honour. 
 
 It is good to be firm by temperament and 
 pliant by reflexion. 
 
 The weak sometimes wish to be thought 
 wicked, but the wicked wish to be thought 
 virtuous. 
 
 176 
 
REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS 
 
 The law of the mind is not different from that Reflexions 
 of the body, which can only be supported by ^^^ Maxims 
 continual nourishment. 
 
 The fruits of work form the sweetest of plea- 
 sures. 
 
 It is of no use to possess a lively wit if it is not 
 of right proportion : the perfection of a clock is 
 not to go fast, but to be accurate. 
 
 Those who laugh at serious tastes have a 
 serious affection for trifles. 
 
 We judge works of genius as we would me- 
 chanical productions. When we buy a ring we 
 say, that one is too big, the other is too small, 
 until we find one that fits our finger. But none 
 are left at the jeweller's, for what is too small for 
 one exactly fits another. 
 
 The fool who has a good memory is full of 
 thoughts and facts. But he does not know how 
 to draw conclusions, and everything depends on 
 that. 
 
 I do not approve the maxim which desires a 
 man to know a little of everything. Superficial 
 knowledge, knowledge without principles, is 
 almost always useless and sometimes harmful 
 knowledge. 
 
 177 M 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Reflexions It is true that the greater number of men are 
 and Maxims scarcely capable of profound knowledge, but it 
 is equally true that the superficial knowledge 
 they seek only serves to satisfy their vanity. It 
 is hurtful to those who possess true genius ; for 
 it necessarily draws them away from their main 
 object, wastes their industry over details and 
 subjects foreign to their needs and natural 
 talent, and lastly does not serve, as they flatter 
 themselves, to prove the breadth of their mind. 
 In all ages there have been men of very moderate 
 intelligence who knew much, and on the con- 
 trary, men of the highest intelligence who knew 
 very little. Ignorance is not lack of intelligence, 
 nor knowledge a proof of genius. 
 
 There is perhaps as much truth among men 
 as error, as many good qualities as bad, as much 
 pleasure as pain ; but we desire to control human 
 nature, to try to raise ourselves above our species, 
 and to enrich ourselves with the consideration 
 of which we try to despoil it. We are so pre- 
 sumptuous that we think we can separate our 
 personal interest from that of humanity, and 
 slander mankind without compromising our- 
 selves. That absurd vanity has filled the books 
 of philosophers with invectives against nature. 
 Man is now in disgrace with all who think, and 
 the prize is to him who loads him with the most 
 178 
 
REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS 
 
 vices ; but maybe he is on the point of improve- Reflexions 
 ment, and of compelling all his virtues to be ^^^ Maxims 
 restored to him. For nothing is stable, and 
 philosophy has its fashions like dress, music, or 
 architecture. 
 
 As soon as an opinion becomes common it is 
 sufficient reason for men to abandon it and to 
 uphold the opposite opinion until that in its turn 
 grows old, and they require to distinguish them- 
 selves by other things. Thus if they attain their 
 goal in some art or science, we must expect 
 them soon to cast it aside to acquire some fresh 
 fame, and this is partly the reason why the most 
 splendid ages degenerate so quickly, and, scarcely 
 emerged from barbarism, plunge into it again. 
 
 Great men in teaching weak men to reflect 
 have set theni on the road of error. 
 
 The comtemplative man, lying in a luxuriously 
 furnished room, abuses the soldier who spends 
 the winter nights on the banks of a river, and 
 silently, under arms, watches over the safety of 
 his country. 
 
 A hero does not seek glory in order to carry 
 hunger and misery into the home of his enemies, 
 but to endure them for his country : he does not 
 desire to cause death but to brave it. 
 
 179 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Reflexions Vice stirs up war : virtue fights. If there was 
 and Maxims jjq virtue we should have unbroken peace. 
 
 It is not true that equality is a law of nature. 
 Nature has made nothing equal, her sovereign 
 law is surbordination and dependence. 
 
 Necessity moderates more ti^oubles than reason . 
 
 Necessity embitters the evils which it cannot 
 cure. 
 
 The favourites of fortune or of fame topple 
 from their pedestals before our eyes without 
 diverting us from ambition. 
 
 Patience is the art of hoping. 
 
 Despair puts the last touch not only to our 
 misery but also to our weakness. 
 
 Neither the gifts n or the blows of fortune equal 
 those of nature ; in generosity and in rigour 
 nature is alike supreme. 
 
 We are forced to respect the gifts of nature, 
 which study and fortune cannot give. 
 
 The generality of men are so bound within the 
 
 sphere of their circumstances that they have not 
 
 even the courage to get out of them through their 
 
 ideas, and if we see a few whom , in a way, specu- 
 
 i8o 
 
REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS 
 
 lation over great things makes incapable of mean Reflexions 
 ones, we find still more with whom the practice ^"^ Maxims 
 of small things takes away the feeling for great 
 ones. 
 
 The most absurd and the most rash hopes have 
 sometimes been the cause of extraordinary 
 success. 
 
 Great resources of mind and heart are needed 
 to enjoy sincerity when it wounds, or to practise 
 it without giving offence : few men have depth 
 enough to hear or to tell the truth. 
 
 However we may be reproached for our vanity 
 we have need sometimes to be assured of our 
 merits.* 
 
 We are rarely consoled for great humiliations ; 
 we forget them. 
 
 The less power a man has in the world, the 
 more he may commit faults with impunity, or 
 possess in vain true merit. 
 
 Mediocre minds do not feel the extremes of 
 good and evil. 
 
 Persons of rank do not talk about such trifles 
 
 1 < And to have our most obvious advantages pointed out to 
 us.' — Later addition by Vauvenargues. 
 
 i8i 
 
LA bruyTere and vauvenargues 
 
 Reflexions as the common people do ; but the common 
 and Maxims people do not busy themselves about such frivo- 
 lous things as do persons of rank. 
 
 We sometimes seek the society of men who 
 impose on us by their outward appearance, just 
 as young men lovingly follow a mask, taking it 
 for the most beautiful woman in the world, and 
 worry it until they force it to reveal itself, only 
 to show them a little man with dark complexion 
 and beard. 
 
 It is easy to criticize an author : it is difficult 
 to appreciate him. 
 
 If we only consider a few of the works of the 
 best authors we are tempted to despise them; 
 to appreciate them fairly we must read all. 
 
 Men are not to be judged by what they do not 
 know, but by what they know, and by the man- 
 ner in which they know it. 
 
 A liar is a man who does not know how to de- 
 ceive, a flatterer one who only deceives fools: 
 he who knows how to make skilful use of the 
 truth, and understands its eloquence, can alone 
 pride himself on his cleverness. 
 
 The maxim that men are not to be praised before 
 their death was invented by envy and too lightly 
 z8a 
 
REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS 
 
 adopted by philosophers. I, on the contrary. Reflexions 
 maintain that they ought to be praised in their ^'^^ Maxims 
 lifetime if they merit it ; but jealousy and ca- 
 lumny, roused against their virtue or their talent, 
 labour to degrade them if any one ventures to 
 bear testimony to them. It is unjust criticism 
 that they should fear to hazard, not sincere praise. 
 
 We are very wrong to think that some fault or 
 other can exclude all virtue, or to consider the 
 alliance of good and evil as a monstrosity or an 
 enigma. It is lack of insight that causes us to 
 reconcile so few things. 
 
 Is it against reason or justice to love ourselves ? 
 And why is self-love always a vice ? 
 
 He who seeks glory by the path of virtue has 
 no idea of asking what is to be his reward. 
 
 The greater works of the human mind are 
 assuredly the least perfect ; the laws which are 
 the most splendid invention of reason have not 
 been able to secure peace for a nation without 
 diminishing its liberty. 
 
 The common people and the nobles have 
 neither the same vices nor the same virtues. 
 
 We have neither the strength nor the oppor- 
 tunity to accomplish all the good and all the evil 
 which we design. 
 
 183 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Reflexions Intellectual mediocrity and sloth make more 
 and Maxims philosophers than reason or reflexion. 
 
 Commerce is the school of cozenage. 
 
 As it is natural to believe many things without 
 proof, so, despite all proof, is it natural to dis- 
 believe others. 
 
 Faith is the consolation of the wretched and 
 the terror of the happy. 
 
 The shortness of life can neither dissuade us 
 from its pleasures, nor console us for its pains. 
 
 Who are those that declare that the world has 
 grown old? I easily believe them. Ambition, 
 fame, love, in short all the passions of earlier 
 ages, do not create the same disorder and the 
 same noise. It is not perhaps that those passions , 
 are less keen to-day than they were formerly, 
 but that they are disavowed and combated. I 
 say that the world is like an old man who has 
 preserved the desires of his youth, but who is 
 ashamed of them, and hides them either because 
 he is disillusionized of the merit of many things 
 or because he wishes to appear so. 
 
 Men dissimulate their dearest, most constant, 
 and most virtuous inclinations from weakness and 
 a fear of being contemned. 
 
 We are too inattentive or too much occupied 
 184 
 
REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS 
 
 with ourselves to understand each other. Who- Reflexions 
 ever has seen masks at a ball dance amicably to- ^^^ Maxims 
 gether, and hold hands without knowing each 
 other, to part the moment after to see each other 
 no more, nor to regret each other, can form some 
 idea of society. 
 
 As there are many soldiers, and few brave ones, 
 so there are many versifiers and almost no poets. 
 Men crowd into honourable careers without other 
 vocation than their vanity, or at best their love 
 of fame. 
 
 Everything has its reason, and everything 
 happens as it ought; there is nothing against 
 feeling nor nature. I agree, but I am not anxious 
 that people should agree with me. 
 
 Children are taught to fear and obey; the 
 avarice, pride, or timidity of parents teaches 
 children economy, arrogance, or submission. 
 They are also encouraged to be imitators, a 
 course to which they are already only too much 
 inclined. No one thinks of making them original, 
 courageous, independent. 
 
 If children had teachers for judgment and elo- 
 quence just as they have for languages, if their 
 memory was exercised less than their energy or 
 their natural genius, if instead of deadening their 
 
 185 
 
LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Reflexions vivacity of mind we tried to elevate the free 
 and Maxims scope and impulses of their souls, what might not 
 result from a fine disposition ? As it is, we for- 
 get that courage, or love of truth and glory are 
 the virtues that matter most in youth ; and our one 
 endeavour is to subdue our children's spirits, in 
 order to teach them that dependence and supple- 
 ness are the first laws of success in life. 
 
 It is in our own mind and not in exterior 
 objects that we perceive most things ; fools know 
 scarcely anything because they are empty, and 
 their heart is narrow; but great souls find in 
 themselves a number of exterior things; they 
 have no need to read or to travel or to listen or 
 to work to discover the highest truths ; they have 
 only to delve into themselves and search, if we 
 may say so, their own thoughts. 
 
 A prince who is only good loves his servants, 
 his ministers, his family, his favourite, and is not 
 attached to his State ; it is a great king who loves 
 his people. 
 
 A prince is great and lovable when he has the 
 virtues of a king, and the weaknesses of a private 
 man. 
 
 Mediocre talent does not prevent great fortune, 
 but neither procures it nor deserves it. 
 i86 
 
REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS 
 
 When we are convinced of some great truths, Reflexions 
 and feel our convictions keenly, we must not fear ^^'^ Maxims 
 to express it, although others have said it before 
 us. Every thought is new when an author ex- 
 presses it in a manner peculiar to himself. 
 
 Gaming, devoutness, wit, are three great ad- 
 vantages for women past their youth. 
 
 It cannot be a vice in men to be sensible of 
 their strength. 
 
 The great do not know the common people, 
 and have no desire to know them. 
 
 Nothing endures except truth. 
 
 It is not exactly truth which is most wanting 
 in men's ideas, but precision and exactitude. 
 Absolute falseness is seldom met with in their 
 thoughts, and truth, pure and complete, is still 
 more rarely to be found in their expressions. 
 
 We have not time enough to reflect on all our 
 actions. 
 
 Every condition has its errors and its lights ; 
 every nation has its morals and its genius, 
 according to its fortune ; the Greeks, whom we 
 surpass in fastidiousness, surpassed us in sim- 
 plicity. 
 
 187 
 
LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Reflexions How few exact thoughts there are, and how 
 and Maxims j^^j^y g^m rej^ajn foj. well-balanced minds to 
 develop. 
 
 He who needs a motive for lying is not bom a 
 liar. 
 
 Whatever affection we have for our friends or 
 relations, the happiness of others never suffices 
 for our own. 
 
 Great men are sometimes so even in small 
 things. 
 
 If a man is endowed with a noble and courage- 
 ous soul, if he is painstaking, proud, ambitious, 
 without meanness, of a profound and deep-seated 
 intelligence, I dare assert that he lacks nothing to 
 be neglected by the great and men in high office, 
 who fear, more than other men, those whom 
 they cannot dominate. 
 
 The greatest evil that fortune can bring to men 
 is to endow them with feeble resources and yet 
 to make them ambitious. 
 
 Mediocre men sometimes fear great office, and 
 when they do not aim at it, or when they refuse 
 it, all that is to be concluded is that they are 
 aware of their mediocrity. 
 i88 
 
REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS 
 
 War is waged at the present time between Reflexions 
 European nations so humanely, so skilfully, and ^^^ Maxims 
 with so little profit, that without a paradox it may 
 be compared to the litigation of private persons 
 where the expenses diminish the principal, and 
 where men employ cunning rather than strength. 
 
 Men are so born for dependence that even the 
 laws that govern their weakness do not suffice 
 them : fortune has not given them masters 
 enough, fashion miust compensate for this, and 
 rule them even to the cut of their shoes. 
 
 The best things are the most common. You 
 can purchase the mind of Pascal for a crown. 
 Pleasures even cheaper are sold to those who 
 give themselves up to them. It is only luxuries 
 and objects of caprice that are rare and difficult 
 to obtain ; unfortunately they are the only things 
 that touch the curiosity and taste of ordinary 
 men. 
 
 We must not be timid from a fear of com- 
 mitting faults: the greatest fault of all is to 
 deprive oneself of experience. 
 
 The days of early spring have less beauty 
 than the budding virtue of a youth. 
 
 The light of the dawn is not so sweet as the 
 first glimpses of fame. 
 
 i8g 
 
LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES 
 
 Reflexions Courage is the light of adversity, 
 and Maxims 
 
 Wisdom is the tyrant of the weak. 
 
 Peace renders nations happier and men 
 weaker. 
 
 We must not be too much afraid of being 
 deceived. 
 
 Nature has endowed mankind with divers 
 talents. Some are bom to invent, others to 
 embellish ; but the gilder attracts more atten- 
 tion than the architect. 
 
 Nothing is more severe than justice. 
 
 We are not always as unjust to our enemies 
 as we are to our relations. 
 
 In friendship, in marriage, in love, or in any 
 other sort of intercourse, we desire to gain ; and 
 as the intercourse between friends, lovers, rela- 
 tions, brothers, and so forth is of a greater mag- 
 nitude than any other, it is not surprising to find 
 in it more ingratitude and injustice. 
 
 The things we know best are those we have 
 not learned. 
 
 There does not exist a man sufficiently intelli- 
 gent never to be tiresome, 
 igo 
 
REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS 
 
 Whatever taste we may have for high affairs, Reflexions 
 there is no reading so tiresome and wearying ^^^ Maxims 
 as that of a treaty between princes. 
 
 As nature has not made all men equal by 
 merit, it seems she cannot make them so by 
 fortune. 
 
 Butier and Tanner The Selwood Printinff Works Frome and London 
 
 igi