f the book, "Our virtues are commonly vices in disguise,"
expresses its central idea. La Rochefoucauld does not absolutely deny
disinterested goodness; there may be some such instinctive virtue
lying below all passions which submit to be analysed; he does not
consider the love of God, the parental or the filial affections; but
wherever he applies analysis, it is to reduce each apparently
disinterested feeling to self-love. "We all have strength enough to
endure the misfortunes of another;" "When vices desert us, we flatter
ourselves with the belief that it is we who desert them;" "With true
love it is as with apparitions--every one talks of them, but few
persons have seen them;" "Virtues lose themselves in self-interest
as rivers lose themselves in the sea;" "In the adversity of our best
friends we always find something which does not displease us"--such
are the moral comments on life graven in ineffaceable lines by La
Rochefoucauld. He is not a philosophic thinker, but he is a
penetrating and remorseless critic, who remains at one fixed point
of view; self-interest is assuredly a large factor in human conduct,
and he exposes much that is real in the heart of man; much also that
is not universally true was true of the world in which he had moved;
whether we accept or reject his doctrine, we are instructed by a
statement so implacable and so precise of the case against human
nature as he saw it. Pitiless he was not himself; perhaps his artistic
instinct led him to exclude concessions which would have marred the
unity of his conception; possibly his vanity co-operated in producing
phrases which live and circulate by virtue of the shock they
communicate to our self-esteem. The merit of his _Maximes_ as examples
of style--a style which may be described as lapidary--is
incomparable; it is impossible to say more, or to say it more
adequately, in little; but one wearies in the end of the monotony
of an idea unalterably applied, of unqualified brilliance, of
unrelieved concision; we anticipate our surprise, and its purpose
is defeated. Traces of preciosity are found in some of the earliest
sentences; that infirmity was soon overcome by La Rochefoucauld, and
his utterances become as clear and as hard as diamond.

He died at the age of sixty-seven, in the arms of Bossuet. His
_Memoires_,[1] relating to the period of the Fronde, are written with
an air of studied historical coldness, which presents a striking
contrast to the bril