Part 8

Nor is it a valid objection to allege that perhaps this idea of a triangle came into my mind by the medium of the senses, through my having seen bodies of a triangular figure; for I am able to form in thought an innumerable variety of figures with regard to which it can not be supposed that they were ever objects of sense, and I can nevertheless demonstrate diverse properties of their nature no less than of the triangle, all of which are assuredly true since I clearly conceive them: and they are therefore something, and not mere negations; for it is highly evident that all that is true is something (truth being identical with existence); and I have already fully shown the truth of the principle, that whatever is clearly and distinctly known is true. And altho this had not been demonstrated, yet the nature of my mind is such as to compel me to assent to what I clearly conceive while I so conceive it; and I recollect that even when I still strongly adhered to the objects of sense, I reckoned among the number of the most certain truths those I clearly conceived relating to figures, numbers, and other matters that pertain to arithmetic and geometry, and in general to the pure mathematics.

But now if because I can draw from my thought the idea of an object it follows that all I clearly and distinctly apprehend to pertain to this object does in truth belong to it, may I not from this derive an argument for the existence of God? It is certain that I no less find the idea of a God in my consciousness, that is, the idea of a being supremely perfect, than that of any figure or number whatever: and I know with not less clearness and distinctness that an (actual and eternal) existence pertains to his nature than that all which is demonstrable of any figure or number really belongs to the nature of that figure or number; and, therefore, altho all the conclusions of the preceding "Meditations" were false, the existence of God would pass with me for a truth at least as certain as I ever judged any truth of mathematics to be, altho indeed such a doctrine may at first sight appear to contain more sophistry than truth. For, as I have been accustomed in every other matter to distinguish between existence and essence, I easily believe that the existence can be separated from the essence of God, and that thus God may be conceived as not actually existing. But, nevertheless, when I think of it more attentively, it appears that the existence can no more be separated from the essence of God than the idea of a mountain from that of a valley, or the equality of its three angles to two right angles, from the essence of a (rectilineal) triangle; so that it is not less impossible to conceive a God, that is, a being supremely perfect, to whom existence is wanting, or who is devoid of a certain perfection, than to conceive a mountain without a valley.

But tho, in truth, I can not conceive a God unless as existing, any more than I can a mountain without a valley, yet, just as it does not follow that there is any mountain in the world merely because I conceive a mountain with a valley, so likewise, tho I conceive God as existing, it does not seem to follow on that account that God exists; for my thought imposes no necessity on things; and as I may imagine a winged horse, tho there be none such, so I could perhaps attribute existence to God, tho no God existed. But the cases are not analogous, and a fallacy lurks under the semblance of this objection: for because I can not conceive a mountain without a valley, it does not follow that there is any mountain or valley in existence, but simply that the mountain or valley, whether they do or do not exist, are inseparable from each other; whereas, on the other hand, because I can not conceive God unless as existing, it follows that existence is inseparable from Him, and therefore that He really exists: not that this is brought about by my thought, or that it imposes any necessity on things, but, on the contrary, the necessity which lies in the thing itself, that is, the necessity of the existence of God, determines me to think in this way: for it is not in my power to conceive a God without existence, that is, a being supremely perfect, and yet devoid of an absolute perfection, as I am free to imagine a horse with or without wings.

DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

Born in 1613, died in 1680; a duke and prince of distinction in his own day, but now known through his "Maxims," "Memoirs" and "Letters"; his "Maxims" first issued anonymously in 1665; a sixth edition, published in 1693, contains fifty additional maxims; his Letters not published until 1818.

A SELECTION FROM THE "MAXIMS"[26]

The contempt of riches in philosophers was only a hidden desire to avenge their merit upon the injustice of fortune, by despising the very goods of which fortune had deprived them; it was a secret to guard themselves against the degradation of poverty; it was a back way by which to arrive at that distinction which they could not gain by riches.

[Footnote 26: From the translation by J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell. At least eight English translations of La Rochefoucauld had appeared before 1870--including the years 1689, 1694, 1706, 1749, 1799 and 1815. Besides these, Swedish, Spanish and Italian translations have been made. The first English version (1689), appears to have been made by Mrs. Aphra Behn, the barber's daughter, upon whom has been conferred the distinction of being "the first female writer who lived by her pen in England." One of the later translations is by A. S. Bolton. The translation by Messrs. Bund and Friswell includes fifty additional maxims attributed to La Rochefoucauld.]

Perfect valor is to do without witnesses what one would do before all the world.

As it is the mark of great minds to say many things in a few words, so it is that of little minds to use many words to say nothing.

Who lives without folly is not so wise as he thinks.

There is no disguise which can long hide love where it exists, nor feign it where it does not.

The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire of receiving greater benefits.

Almost all the world takes pleasure in paying small debts; many people show gratitude for trifling, but there is hardly one who does not show ingratitude for great favors.

Nothing is rarer than true good nature; those who think they have it are generally only pliant or weak.

There is no less eloquence in the voice, in the eyes and in the air of a speaker than in his choice of words.

True eloquence consists in saying all that should be, not all that could be said.

There are people whose faults become them, others whose very virtues disgrace them.

We are never so happy or so unhappy as we suppose.

Our enemies come nearer the truth in the opinions they form of us than we do in our opinion of ourselves.

Most people judge men only by success or by fortune.

Love of glory, fear of shame, greed of fortune, the desire to make life agreeable and comfortable, and the wish to depreciate others are often causes of that bravery so vaunted among men.

The fame of great men ought always to be estimated by the means used to acquire it.

If we never flattered ourselves the flattery of others would not hurt us.

When great men permit themselves to be cast down by the continuance of misfortune, they show us that they were only sustained by ambition, and not by their mind; so that _plus_ a great vanity, heroes are made like other men.

We may forgive those who bore us, we can not forgive those whom we bore.

To praise good actions heartily is in some measure to take part in them.

There is a kind of greatness which does not depend upon fortune: it is a certain manner that distinguishes us, and which seems to destine us for great things: it is the value we insensibly set upon ourselves; it is by this quality that we gain the deference of other men, and it is this which commonly raises us more above them than birth, rank, or even merit itself.

The cause why the majority of women are so little given to friendship is, that it is insipid after having felt love.

Women can not be completely severe unless they hate.

The praise we give to new comers into the world arises from the envy we bear to those who are established.

Little minds are too much wounded by little things; great minds see all and are not even hurt.

Most young people think they are natural when they are only boorish and rude.

To establish ourselves in the world we do everything to appear as if we were established.

Why we hate with so much bitterness those who deceive us is because they think themselves more clever than we are.

Too great a hurry to discharge an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.

The moderation of those who are happy arises from the calm which good fortune bestows upon their temper.

Pride is much the same in all men; the only difference is the method and manner of showing it.

The constancy of the wise is only the talent of concealing the agitation of their hearts.

Whatever difference there appears in our fortunes, there is nevertheless a certain compensation of good and evil which renders them equal.

What we term virtue is often but a mass of various actions and divers interests, which fortune, or our own industry, manage to arrange; and it is not always from valor or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste.

Most men expose themselves in battle enough to save their honor, few wish to do so more than sufficiently, or than is necessary to make the design for which they expose themselves succeed.

If we never flattered ourselves we should have but scant pleasure.

Sincerity is an openness of heart; we find it in very few people; what we usually see is only an artful dissimulation to win the confidence of others.

We may find women who have never indulged in an intrigue, but it is rare to find those who have intrigued but once.

Every one blames his memory, no one blames his judgment.

In the intercourse of life, we please more by our faults than by our good qualities.

We are easily consoled at the misfortunes of our friends when they enable us to prove our tenderness for them.

Virtue in woman is often the love of reputation and repose.

He is a truly good man who desires always to bear the inspection of good men.

We frequently do good to enable us with impunity to do evil.

Every one praises his heart, none dare praise their understanding.

He is really wise who is nettled at nothing.

Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.[27]

In the adversity of our best friends we always find something which is not wholly displeasing to us.[28]

[Footnote 27: A maxim similar to this has been found in the writings of other men. Thus Massillon, in one of his sermons, said, "Vice pays homage to virtue in doing honor to her appearance"; and Junius, writing to the Duke of Grafton, said, "You have done as much mischief to the community as Machiavel, if Machiavel had not known that an appearance of morals and religion are useful in society." Both, however, lived in a period subsequent to that in which La Rochefoucauld wrote.]

[Footnote 28: This maxim, which more than any other has caused La Rochefoucauld to be criticized severely as a cynic, if not a misanthrope, appeared only in the first two editions of the book. In the others, published in the author's lifetime, it was supprest. In defense of the author, it has been maintained that what he meant by the saying was that the pleasure derived from a friend's misfortunes has its origin in the opportunity thus afforded to give him help. The reader should compare this saying with another that is included in these selections, "We are easily consoled at the misfortunes of our friends when they enable us to prove our tenderness for them."]

The confidence we have in ourselves arises in a great measure from that that we have in others.

Women for the most part surrender themselves more from weakness than from passion. Whence it is that bold and pushing men succeed better than others, altho they are not so lovable.

The great ones of the earth can neither command health of body nor repose of mind, and they buy always at too dear a price the good they can acquire.

Few things are needed to make a wise man happy; nothing can make a fool content; that is why most men are miserable.

The harm that others do us is often less than that we do ourselves.

Magnanimity is a noble effort of pride which makes a man master of himself, to make him master of all things.

BLAISE PASCAL

Born in France in 1623, died in 1662; educated in Paris; became celebrated at seventeen for a work on conic sections; became connected with the monastery at Port Royal, whose doctrines he defended against the Jesuits; published "Entretien sur Epictéte et Montaigne" in 1655; wrote his "Provincial Letters" in 1656-57; in his last days engaged on an "Apologie de la Religion Catholique" which, uncompleted, was published in 1670 as his "Pensées."

OF THE PREVALENCE OF SELF-LOVE[29]

Self is hateful. You, Milton, conceal self, but do not thereby destroy it; therefore you are still hateful. Not so, for in acting as we do, to oblige everybody, we give no reason for hating us. True, if we only hated in self the vexation which it causes us. But if I hate it because it is unjust, and because it makes itself the center of all, I shall always hate it.

[Footnote 29: From the "Thoughts." Many translations have been made of Pascal's "Thoughts"--one in 1680 by J. Walker, one in 1704 by Basil Kennet, one in 1825 by Edward Craig. A more modern one is by C. Kegan Paul, the London publisher, who was also a man of letters. Early translations from the older French, Italian and other Continental writers have frequently come down to us without mention of translators' names on title-pages or in the prefatory matter.]

In one word, Self has two qualities: it is unjust in its essence, because it makes itself the center of all; it is inconvenient to others, in that it would bring them into subjection, for each "I" is the enemy, and would fain be the tyrant of all others. You take away the inconvenience, but not the injustice, and thus you do not render it lovable to those who hate injustice; you render it lovable only to the unjust, who find in it an enemy no longer. Thus you remain unjust and can please none but the unjust.

OF SELF-LOVE.--The nature of self-love and of this human "I" is to love self only, and consider self only. But what can it do? It can not prevent the object it loves from being full of faults and miseries; man would fain be great and sees that he is little; would fain be happy, and sees that he is miserable; would fain be perfect, and sees that he is full of imperfections; would fain be the object of the love and esteem of men, and sees that his faults merit only their aversion and contempt. The embarrassment wherein he finds himself produces in him the most unjust and criminal passion imaginable. For he conceives a mortal hatred against that truth which blames him and convinces him of his faults. Desiring to annihilate it, yet unable to destroy it in its essence, he destroys it as much as he can in his own knowledge, and in that of others; that is to say, he devotes all his care to the concealment of his faults, both from others and from himself, and he can neither bear that others should show them to him, nor that they should see them.

It is no doubt an evil to be full of faults, but it is a greater evil to be full of them, yet unwilling to recognize them, because that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion. We do not like others to deceive us, we do not think it just in them to require more esteem from us than they deserve; it is therefore unjust that we should deceive them, desiring more esteem from them than we deserve.

Thus if they discover no more imperfections and vices in us than we really have, it is plain they do us no wrong, since it is not they who cause them; but rather they who do us a service, since they help us to deliver ourselves from an evil, the ignorance of these imperfections. We ought not to be troubled that they know our faults and despise us, since it is but just they should know us as we are, and despise us if we are despicable.

Such are the sentiments which would arise in a heart full of equity and justice. What should we say then of our own heart, finding in it a wholly contrary disposition? For is it not true that we hate truth, and those who tell it us, and that we would wish them to have an erroneously favorable opinion of us, and to esteem us other than indeed we are?

One proof of this fills me with dismay. The Catholic religion does not oblige us to tell out our sins indiscriminately to all; it allows us to remain hidden from men in general; but she excepts one alone, to whom she commands us to open the very depths of our hearts, and to show ourselves to him as we are. There is but this one man in the world whom she orders us to undeceive; she binds him to an inviolable secrecy, so that this knowledge is to him as tho it were not. We can imagine nothing more charitable and more tender. Yet such is the corruption of man, that he finds even this law harsh, and it is one of the main reasons which has set a large portion of Europe in revolt against the Church.

How unjust and unreasonable is the human heart which finds it hard to be obliged to do in regard to one man what in some degree it were just to do to all men. For is it just that we should deceive them?

There are different degrees in this dislike to the truth, but it may be said that all have it in some degree, for it is inseparable from self-love. This false delicacy causes those who must needs reprove others to choose so many windings and modifications in order to avoid shocking them. They must needs lessen our faults, seem to excuse them, mix praises with their blame, give evidences of affection and esteem. Yet this medicine is bitter to self-love, which takes as little as it can, always with disgust, often with a secret anger.

Hence it happens that if any desire our love, they avoid doing us a service which they know to be disagreeable; they treat us as we would wish to be treated: we hate the truth, and they hide it from us; we wish to be flattered, they flatter us; we love to be deceived, they deceive us.

Thus each degree of good fortune which raises us in the world removes us further from truth, because we fear most to wound those whose affection is most useful, and whose dislike is most dangerous. A prince may be the byword of all Europe, yet he alone know nothing of it. I am not surprized; to speak the truth is useful to whom it is spoken, but disadvantageous to those who speak it, since it makes them hated. Now those who live with princes love their own interests more than that of the prince they serve, and thus they take care not to benefit him so as to do themselves a disservice.

This misfortune is, no doubt, greater and more common in the higher classes, but lesser men are not exempt from it, since there is always an interest in making men love us. Thus human life is but a perpetual illusion, an interchange of deceit and flattery. No one speaks of us in our presence as in our absence. The society of men is founded on this universal deceit; few friendships would last if every man knew what his friend said of him behind his back, tho he then spoke in sincerity and without passion.

Man is, then, only disguise, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in himself and with regard to others. He will not be told the truth; he avoids telling it to others; and all these tendencies, so far removed from justice and reason, have their natural roots in his heart.

MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ

Born in Paris in 1626, died in 1696; married in 1644 to the Marquis de Sévigné, who was killed in a duel in 1651; lived late in life in Brittany; wrote to her married daughter, Madame de Grigman, the famous letters from which has proceeded her fame.

I

GREAT NEWS FROM PARIS[30]

I am going to tell you a thing, the most astonishing, the most surprizing, the most marvelous, the most miraculous, the most magnificent, the most confounding, the most unheard-of, the most singular, the most extraordinary, the most incredible, the most unforeseen, the greatest, the least, the rarest, the most common, the most public, the most private till to-day, the most brilliant, the most inevitable; in short, a thing of which there is but one example in past ages, and that not an exact one either; a thing that we can not believe at Paris; how, then, will it gain credence at Lyons? a thing which makes everybody cry, "Lord, have mercy upon us!" a thing which causes the greatest joy to Madame de Rohan and Madame de Hauterive; a thing, in fine, which is to happen on Sunday next, when those who are present will doubt the evidence of their senses; a thing which, tho it is to be done on Sunday, yet perhaps will not be finished on Monday.

[Footnote 30: From a letter dated Paris, December 15, 1670. George Saintsbury has described Madame de Sévigné as "the most charming of all letter-writers in all languages." Translations of these letters into English were made in 1732, 1745, 1764, and other years, including a version by Mackie in 1802.]

I can not bring myself to tell you; guess what it is. I give you three times to do it in. What, not a word to throw at a dog? Well, then, I find I must tell you. Monsieur de Lauzun is to be married next Sunday at the Louvre, to--pray guess to whom! I give you four times to do it in,--I give you six,--I give you a hundred. Says Madame de Coulanges: "It is really very hard to guess; perhaps it is Madame de la Vallière."

Indeed madame, it is not. "It is Mademoiselle de Retz, then." No, nor she either; you are extremely provincial. "Lord bless me," say you, "what stupid wretches we are! it is Mademoiselle de Colbert all the while." Nay, now you are still further from the mark. "Why, then, it must certainly be Mademoiselle de Crequy." You have it not yet. Well, I find I must tell you at last. He is to be married next Sunday at the Louvre, with the King's leave, to Mademoiselle--Mademoiselle de--Mademoiselle--guess, pray guess her name; he is to be married to Mademoiselle, the great Mademoiselle; Mademoiselle, daughter of the late Monsieur; Mademoiselle, granddaughter of Henry IV; Mademoiselle d'Eu, Mademoiselle de Dombes, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, Mademoiselle d'Orleans, Mademoiselle, the King's cousin-german--Mademoiselle, destined to the throne--Mademoiselle, the only match in France that was worthy of Monsieur.

What glorious matter for talk! If you should burst forth like a bedlamite, say we have told you a lie, that it is false, that we are making a jest of you, and that a pretty jest it is, without wit or invention; in short, if you abuse us, we shall think you are quite in the right; for we have done just the same things ourselves. Farewell, you will find by the letters you receive this post whether we tell you truth or not.

II

AN IMPOSING FUNERAL DESCRIBED[31]