a plea for a return to a
healthy and normal sense of relations. 'These philosophers,' he cried,
'are men, yet they do not speak in human language; they change all the
ideas of things, and misuse all their terms.'[41] These are some of the
most direct of his retorts upon Pascal and La Rochefoucauld:

'I have always felt it to be absurd for philosophers to fabricate a
Virtue that is incompatible with the nature of humanity, and then after
having pretended this, to declare coldly that there is no virtue. If
they are speaking of the phantom of their imagination, they may of
course abandon or destroy it as they please, for they invented it; but
true virtue--which they cannot be brought to call by this name, because
it is not in conformity with their definitions; which is the work of
nature and not their own; and which consists mainly in goodness and
vigour of soul--that does not depend on their fancies, and will last
for ever with characters that cannot possibly be effaced.'

'The body has its graces, the intellect its talents; is the heart then
to have nothing but vices? And must man, who is capable of reason, be
incapable of virtue?'

'We are susceptible of friendship, justice, humanity, compassion, and
reason. O my friends, what then is virtue?'

'Disgust is no mark of health, nor is appetite a disorder; quite the
reverse. Thus we think of the body, but we judge the soul on other
principles. We suppose that a strong soul is one that is exempt from
passions, and as youth is more active and ardent than later age, we look
on it as a time of fever, and place the strength of man in his
decay.'[42]

* * * * *

The theological speculator insists that virtue lies in a constant and
fierce struggle between the will and the passions, between man and human
nature.

Vauvenargues founded his whole theory of life on the doctrine that the
will is not something independent of passions, inclinations, and ideas,
but on the contrary is a mere index moved and fixed by them, as the hand
of a clock follows the operation of the mechanical forces within.
Character is an integral unit. 'Whether it is reason or passion that
moves us, it is we who determine ourselves; it would be madness to
distinguish one's thoughts and sentiments from one's self.... No will in
men, which does not owe its direction to their temperament, their
reasoning, and their actual feelings.'[43] Virtue, then, is not
necessarily a condit