Eminent literary and scientific men of France.

Date:
1838-1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Eminent literary and scientific men of France. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    reason present to us. To call this selfishness is to quarrel with the structure of human nature, which is based on personal identity and consciousness. Passion enables us to throw off even these, sometimes, and totally to amal- gamate our interests with those of another. But this is, indeed, of rare occurrence. We may remark, also, that even in those instances in which the mind does recognise benefit to arise from the misfortune of a friend, and feel involuntary self-gratu- ladon, we regard this as a crime or a vice, and reject it as such, showing the powTer of disinterestedness over selfishness by dismissing and abhorring the feeling. The Fronde was the soil in which the “Maxims” had root: better times softened their harshness, and inspired better and higher thoughts. But the younger life of Rochefoucauld was spent in a society demoralised to a de- gree unknown before—when self-interest was acknow- ledged as the principle of all; and the affections alone kept a “few green spots” — rare oases of beauty and virtue— amidst the blighted and barren waste of ambition and vice. Usually public revulsions give birth to heroism as well as crime; and war and massacre are elevated and redeemed by courage and self-devotion. But, in the time of the Fronde, there were no very great crimes, and no exalted actions: vice and folly, restless desire of power, and an eager, yet aimless, party spirit, animated society. Hence the mean opinion Roche- foucauld formed of human nature; and the very sub- tlety and penetration of his intellect occasioned him to err yet more widely in his conclusions. To adopt a maxim of his own, he erred, not by not reaching the mark, but going beyond it. Not that he went so far as his followers. Dry Scotch metaphysicians, men with- out souls, reduced to a system what he announced merely as of frequent occurrence. They tell us that self-interest is the mover of all our actions : Rochefoucauld only says “self-interest puts to use every sort of virtue and vice.” But he does not say that every sort of virtue, or even vice, in all persons is impregnated with self-interest.
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