ed a certain courtier to draw
up a despatch on an affair with which he had himself dealt. Comparing
the two despatches, the King found the courtier's much the better of the
two: the courtier makes a profound reverence, and hastens to take leave
of his friends: "_It is all over with me_," he said, "_the King has
found out that I have more brains than he has_."[124] Only mediocrity
succeeds in the world. "Sir," said a father to his son, "you are getting
on in the world, and you suppose you must be a person of great merit. To
lower your pride, know to what qualities you owe this success: you were
born without vices, without virtues, without character; your knowledge
is scanty, your intelligence is narrow. Ah, what claims you have, my
son, to the goodwill of the world."[125]

[124] See Diderot's truer version, _Oeuv._, ii. 482.

[125] _Disc._ iv. 13, etc.

It lies beyond the limits of our task to enter into a discussion of
Helvetius's transgressions in the region of speculative ethics, from any
dogmatic point of view. Their nature is tolerably clear. Helvetius
looked at man individually, as if each of us came into the world naked
of all antecedent predispositions, and independent of the medium around
us. Next, he did not see that virtue, justice, and the other great words
of moral science denote qualities that are directly related to the
fundamental constitution of human character. As Diderot said,[126] he
never perceived it to be possible to find in our natural requirements,
in our existence, in our organisation, in our sensibility, a fixed base
for the idea of what is just and unjust, virtuous and vicious. He clung
to the facts that showed the thousand different shapes in which justice
and injustice clothed themselves; but he closed his eyes on the nature
of man, in which he would have recognised their character and origin.
Again, although his book was expressly written to show that only good
laws can form virtuous men, and that all the art of the legislator
consists in forcing men, through the sentiment of self-love, to be just
to one another,[127] yet Helvetius does not perceive the difficulty of
assuming in the moralising legislator a suppression of self-love which
he will not concede to the rest of mankind. The crucial problem of
political constitutions is to counteract the selfishness of a governing
class. Helvetius vaulted over this difficulty by imputing to a
legislator that very quality of disinterestedn