through our own efforts; but example teaches us little. The old case is never so like the new that there is not some delicate difference between them, and it is because of this difference that we expect our new dream will not fail us as did the old. And thus the present never satisfying us, hope lures us on, and from unhappiness to unhappiness conducts us even to death, which of all unhappiness is the eternal consummation.

a true

What, then, cries out to us this eager desire and this powerlessness-if not that there was formerly in man happiness, whereof there now remains to him only the void it has left. This he tries in vain to fill up with all that surrounds him, seeking in absent things the help he does not find in things present, but to no avail, because the infinite gulf can be filled only by an object infinite and immutable, that is to say, only by God himself.

17 It is dangerous to make man see too clearly his equality with the brutes without showing him his greatness: It is also dangerous to make him see his greatness too clearly, apart from his vileness. It is still more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both. But it is very advantageous to show

him both.

18 The strength of a man's virtue must not be measured by his efforts,1 but by his ordinary life.

19 Notwithstanding the sight of all our miseries, which press upon us and take us by the throat, we have an instinct which we cannot repress, and which lifts us up.

20

It is natural for the mind to believe and for the will

1 That is, evidently, by his exceptional efforts, by what he may rise to on special occasions.

to love, and so it is that in the absence of true objects they necessarily attach themselves to false.

21 It is not in things extraordinary and bizarre that excellence, in whatever line, is to be found. We strive upward in order to come at it-only to get farther away; oftenest what is needed is that we should stoop down. The best books are those which those who read think they themselves might have written. Nature, which alone is excellent, is altogether familiar and common.

22 No one passes in the world as skilled in verse unless he has put up the sign of a poet; [as] a mathematician, etc. But educated people do not want a sign, and draw little distinction between the trade of a poet and that of an embroiderer.

People of education are not called poets or mathematicians, etc.; but they are all these, and judges of all these. No one guesses what they are. When they come into society, they talk on matters about which the rest are talking. We do not observe in them one quality rather than another, save when they have to make use of it. But then we remember it, for it is characteristic of such persons that we do not say of them that they are fine speakers, when it is not a question of oratory, and that we say of them that they are fine speakers, when it is such a question.

It is therefore to give a man false praise to say of him, on his entry, that he is a very clever poet; and it is a bad sign when a man is not asked to give his judgment on poetry.

23 I spent a long time in the study of the abstract sciences, and was disheartened by the small number of fellow-students in them. When I commenced the study of man, I saw that these abstract sciences are not suited to man, and that I was wandering further from my own state in examining them,

than others in not knowing them. I pardoned their little knowledge; but I thought at least to find companions in the study of man, and that it was the true study which is suited to him. I have been deceived; still fewer study it than geometry. It is only from want of knowing how to study this that we seek the other studies. But is it not that even here is not the knowledge which man should have, and that for the purposes of happiness it is better for him not to know himself?

24 Men are never taught to be gentlemen, and are taught everything else; and they never plume themselves so much. on the rest of their knowledge as on knowing how to be gentlemen. They only plume themselves on knowing the one thing they do not know.

23

MAXIMS1

La Rochefoucauld

ELF-LOVE is the greatest of all flatterers.

SELF-LOVE

2 The passions are the only orators that always persuade: they are, as it were, a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion is more persuasive than the most eloquent without it.

3 Our self-love endures with greater impatience the condemnation of our tastes than of our opinions.

4 We have all of us sufficient fortitude to bear the misfortunes of others.

5 Philosophy triumphs easily over past and future evils, but present evils triumph over it.

6 It requires greater virtues to support good fortune 1

than bad.

7 We often make a parade of passions, even of the most criminal; but envy is a timid and shameful passion which we never dare to avow.

8 We have more power than will; and it is often by way of excuse to ourselves that we fancy things are impossible.

1 Selected. The translation is-substantially-that published by A. Wessels Company, New York, 1908.

1

9 If we had no faults ourselves, we should not take so much pleasure in remarking them in others.

ΙΟ

Pride has a greater share than goodness of heart in the remonstrances we make to those who are guilty of faults; we reprove not so much with a view to correct them as to persuade them that we are exempt from those faults ourselves.

II Those who bestow too much application on trifling things become generally incapable of great ones.

12 Happiness lies in the taste, and not in things; and it is from having what we desire that we are happy-not from having what others think desirable.

13 Nothing ought so much to diminish the good opinion we have of ourselves as to see that we disapprove at one time what we approve at another.

14 A clever man should regulate his interests, and place them in proper order. Our avidity often deranges them by inducing us to undertake too many things at once; and by grasping at minor objects, we lose our hold of more important.

ones.

15 There is no disguise which can long conceal love where it does, or feign it where it does not, exist.

16 It is with true love as with apparitions. Everyone talks of it, but few have ever seen it.

17 The reason we are so changeable in our friendships is, that it is difficult to know the qualities of the heart, while it is easy to know those of the head.