Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France | Page 4

his Theophrastus." Nicknames were the order of the day, and the critic
called his new friend "Maximilian," although his real name was Jean,
because he wrote "Maximes." There is no other country than France
where the maker of maxims has stamped a deep and permanent
impression upon the conscience and the moral habits of the nation. But
this has been done by La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, Vauvenargues,
whom, did it not sound frivolous, we might style the three great
Maximilians.
The three portraits were first exhibited as a course of lectures at the
Royal Institution in February of this year. They have been revised and
considerably enlarged. For the English of the passages translated or
paraphrased I am in every case responsible. The chapter on "The
Gallantry of France" appeared in the Edinburgh Review, and I thank the
editor and publisher of that periodical for their courteous permission to
include it here.
April 1918.

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

One of the most gifted of the young officers who gave their lives for
France at the beginning of the war, Quartermaster Paul Lintier, in the
admirable notes which he wrote on his knee at intervals during the
battle of the Meuse in August 1914, said--
"The imperative instinct for making the best you can of life, the
sentiment of duty, and anxiety for the good opinion of others, in a word
honour--these are the main educators of the soldier under fire. This is
not a discovery, it is simply a personal statement."
Taken almost at random from the records of the war, this utterance may
serve us as well as any other to distinguish the attitude of the
Frenchman in the face of violent and critical action from the equally
brave and effective attitude of other races. He has the habit, not
common elsewhere, of analyzing conduct and of stripping off from the
contemplation of it those voluntary illusions which drop a curtain
between it and truth.
The result of this habit of ruthless criticism is to concentrate the
Frenchman's attention, even to excess, on the motives of conduct, and
to bring him more and more inevitably to regard self-love,
self-preservation, personal vanity in its various forms, as the source of
all our apparent virtues. Even when we appear to be most disinterested,
even when we are most clearly actuated by unselfish devotion, by
honour, we are really the prey, as Lintier saw it, of the wish to save our
lives and to preserve the good opinion of others. Underneath the
transports of patriotism, underneath the sincerity of religious fervour,
the Frenchman digs down and finds amour-propre at the root of
everything.
This attitude or habit of mind is particularly shocking to all those who
live in a state of illusion, and there is probably no aspect of French
character which is more difficult for the average Englishman to
appreciate than this tendency towards sceptical dissection of the
motives of conduct. Yet it is quite certain that it is widely disseminated
among those of our neighbours who are most prompt and effective in
action, and whose vigour is in no degree paralysed by the clairvoyance
with which they seek for exact truth even in the most romantic and

illusive spiritual circumstances. To throw light on this aspect of French
character, I propose to call attention to a little book, which is probably
well-known to my readers already, but which may be regarded from a
point of view, as I venture to think, more instructive than that which is
usually chosen.
In the year 1665 there appeared anonymously in Paris, in all the
circumstances of well-advertised secrecy, a thin volume of "Maximes,"
which were understood to have exercised for years past the best
thoughts of a certain illustrious nobleman. Mme de Sablé, who was not
foreign to the facts, immediately wrote a review, intended for the
Journal des Scavants, in the course of which she said that the new book
was "a treatise on movements of the human heart which may be said to
have remained until now unrecognized." The book, as every one knows,
was the work of the Duke of La Rochefoucauld, and the subject of it
was an unmasking of "the veritable condition of man."
It would be idle not to admit that La Rochefoucauld has been almost
exclusively regarded as the chief exponent of egotism among the great
writers of Europe. He has become--he became during his own lifetime--
the bye-word for bitterness. He is represented as believing that egotism
is the primum mobile of all human action, and that man is wholly the
victim of his passions, which lead him whither they will. He denies all
spirituality and sees a physical cause for everything we do. His own
words are quoted against him. It is true that he says, "All