hopeless inherent badness of the human mind, we have but to gather
some of his sparse thoughts together. He says, in defiance of Pascal
and the Jansenists, "Mankind is the only source of our happiness,
outside that there is nothing." Again, "As it is the heart, in most
people, that doubts, so when once the heart is converted, all is done;
it leads them along the path to virtue." He deprecated the constant
checking and blaming of children which was part of the system of
education then in vogue; he declared that it sapped the confidence of
the young, their inherent sense of virtue; and he exclaimed, "Why does
no one dream of training children to be original, bold and
independent?"

Those who knew Vauvenargues recognized in the purity and sweetness and
severity of his teaching the record of his own conduct. Marmontel
speaks of the "tender veneration" with which all the more serious of
his early comrades in the army regarded him. In his works we trace the
result of a curious thing, experience superseding, taking the place
of, education. "He observed the weaknesses of mankind before he had
time to reflect upon their duties," says a contemporary. His mind,
although assaulted by such a crowd of disadvantages, remained calm,
and free from prejudice; remained gently indulgent to human weakness
on the one hand, rigid in allegiance to his ideal pursuit of "la
gloire" on the other. The noble movements of his mind were native, not
acquired, and he had not been hardened or exasperated by the pressure
of a mortifying theology. He does not take so exalted or so pitiless
an attitude as the classic seventeenth-century moralist. Pascal
scourges the mass of humanity down a steep place into the sea;
Vauvenargues takes each wanderer by the hand, and leads him along the
primrose path.

A singular charm in the French character lies in its gift for
composite action. Frenchmen prefer marching towards victory in a body
to a scattered effort of individual energy. It was part of the
constructive genius of Vauvenargues to find the aim and joy of life in
a combination of sentiment and action, in a community of rivals
amiably striving for the crown with fellowmen of like instincts and of
like experience. He was of all moralists the least solitary; he had
spent his life as a soldier among soldiers, among those who did their
best, in the midst of hardships, to live a life of pleasure without
reflection. He was no prig, but he had formed the habit of g