No More Learning

La Rochefoucauld - the passionate soldier, the restless gallant, the


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-
suave lover. - became in his old age the polished ornament of the
most exclusive and exacting of Parisian salons. His friendship for
Madame de Sévigné, for Madame de Sablé, for Madame de La Fayette,
mellowed his declining years. He died in 1680.
In his 'Memoirs' he says of himself, "I have talent, marred by
melancholy;" and again, "I extremely approve of exalted passion: it
shows a grandeur of soul. I who know all the delicacy and strength
of the lofty sentiments of love-if I ever love, it will assuredly be
after this fashion; but such as I am, I do not believe that this knowl-
edge which I have would ever pass from my head to my heart. "
The key to Rochefoucauld's character and to his writings may
perhaps be found in these passages. The melancholy of which he
speaks was genuine. It lurks in many of the 'Maxims,' as the nat-
ural sorrow of one disillusioned by his contact with the world, forced
to acknowledge the gulf between the ideal and the actual, and to
bow to the power of expediency. La Rochefoucauld has been accused
of supremest egotism; of teaching a mode of life which is little else
than the essence of selfishness. If so, it is a selfishness disguised in
a constant effort to put the world at its ease, to infuse all society
with the golden atmosphere of courts, in which everybody and every-
thing is assumed to be perfect. The 'Maxims' show, indeed, how
nearly the wisdom of the children of the world approaches the wis-
dom of the children of light. Their author knew the world as few
men have the opportunity to know it; and once for all, he gave to
worldly knowledge perfect literary embodiment. His loves for many
women gave to him likewise an almost perfect insight into woman
nature. "In their first love women love the lover; in the others they
love love. " The 'Maxims' are faultless in style and form: brief
complete sayings, forming doorways neither too strait nor too broad
into the House of Life, whose many chambers La Rochefoucauld had
explored.
His 'Memoirs' are equally famous, taking first rank in their class.
His letters are vistas into the highly colored picturesque life of the
time. He himself seems less a great figure in French literature than
a great figure in old French life. What he wrote has more the char-
acter of an afterthought than of a supreme intention,— the reflections
of one concerning the world after that world had ceased to be of vital
importance to him.
XXI-771
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12322
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
MAXIMS
PAS
ASSION often makes the cleverest man a fool, and often ren-
ders the most foolish clever.
Those great and brilliant feats which dazzle our eyes are
represented by politicians as the effects of great designs, where-
as they are usually only the effects of temper and of passions.
Thus the war between Augustus and Antony, which is ascribed
to their ambition to make themselves masters of the world, was
perhaps only an effect of jealousy.
The passions often beget their contraries. Avarice sometimes
produces prodigality, and prodigality avarice; we are often firm
from weakness, and daring from timidity.
Our self-love bears more impatiently the condemnation of our
tastes than of our opinions.
The moderation of prosperous people comes from the calm
which good fortune gives to their temper.
We have strength enough to bear the ills of others.
The steadfastness of sages is only the art of locking up their
uneasiness in their hearts.
Philosophy triumphs easily over troubles passed and troubles
to come; but present troubles triumph over it.
When great men allow themselves to be cast down by con-
tinued misfortunes, they show that they bore them only through
the strength of their ambition, and not through that of their
soul; and that, great vanity apart, heroes are made like other
men.
It requires greater virtue to bear good fortune than bad.
Neither sin nor death can be looked at steadily.
We often make a parade of passions,- even of the most crim-
inal; but envy is a timid and shameful passion which we never
dare to acknowledge.
Jealousy is in some measure just and reasonable, since it tends
only to retain a good which belongs to us, or which we think
belongs to us; whereas envy is a fury which cannot endure the
good of others.
We have more strength than will; and it is often to excuse
ourselves to ourselves that we imagine that things are impossible.
Pride has a greater share than goodness in our remonstrances
with those who commit faults; and we reprove not so much to


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correct, as to persuade them that we ourselves are free from
them.
We promise according to our hopes, and we perform accord-
ing to our fears.
Interest speaks all sorts of languages, and plays all sorts of
parts, even that of disinterestedness.
Those who occupy themselves too much with small things
usually become incapable of great.
Strength and weakness of mind are misnamed: they are in
fact only the good or bad arrangement of the bodily organs.
The love or the indifference which the philosophers had for
life was only a taste of their self-love; which we should no more
argue about than about the taste of the tongue or the choice of
colors.
Happiness is in relish, and not in things: it is by having
what we like that we are happy, and not in having what others
find likable.
We are never so happy or so unhappy as we imagine.
Nothing ought to lessen the satisfaction we have in ourselves
so much as seeing that we disapprove at one time what we ap-
proved at another.
Contempt for riches was with the philosophers a hidden de-
sire to avenge their worth for the injustice of fortune, by con-
tempt for the good things of which she deprived them; it was a
secret to secure themselves from the degradation of poverty; it
was a byway to gain that consolation which they could not have
from wealth.
Sincerity is a frankness of heart. We find it in very few
people, and what we usually see is only a delicate dissimulation
to gain the confidence of others.
Grace is to the body what good sense is to the mind.
It is difficult to define love. What we may say of it is, that
in the soul it is a ruling passion; in the mind it is a sympathy;
and in the body it is a hidden and delicate desire to possess what
we love, after much mystery.
There is no disguise which can hide love long where it is, or
feign it where it is not.
There are few people who are not ashamed of having loved
each other when they no longer love each other.
We may find women who have never had a gallantry, but it
is rare to find any who have only had one.


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12324
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Love, as well as fire, cannot exist without constant motion;
and it ceases to live as soon as it ceases to hope or to fear.
It is of true love as of the apparition of spirits: all the world
talks of it, but few people have seen it.
The love of justice is in most men only the fear of suffering
injustice.
What makes us so fickle in our friendships is, that it is diffi-
cult to know the qualities of the soul and easy to know those of
the mind.
We can love nothing but by its relation to ourselves; and we
only follow our taste and our pleasure when we prefer our friends
to ourselves. Nevertheless it is by this preference alone that
friendship can be true and perfect.
Every one complains of his memory, and no one complains of
his judgment.
To undeceive a man absorbed in his own merit, is to do him
as bad a turn as was done to that mad Athenian who believed
that all the ships which entered the harbor belonged to himself.
Old men like to give good advice, to console themselves for
being no longer able to give bad examples.
The sign of extraordinary merit is to see that those who envy
it most are constrained to praise it.
We are mistaken when we think that the mind and the judg-
ment are two different things. The judgment is only the great-
ness of the light of the mind: this light penetrates the depths of
things; it notes there all that should be noted, and perceives those
things which seem imperceptible. Thus we must admit that it is
the extent of the light of the mind which causes all the effects
which we attribute to judgment.
Refinement of mind consists in thinking on proper and deli-
cate things.
The mind is ever the dupe of the heart.
All who know their mind do not know their heart.
The mind could not long play the part of the heart.
Youth changes its tastes from heat of blood, and age pre-
serves its own from habit.
We give nothing so liberally as advice.
The more we love a lady-love, the nearer we are to hating
her.
There are some good marriages, but no delightful ones.
We often do good to be able to do harm with impunity.


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LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
12325
If we resist our passions, it is more from their weakness than
from our strength.
The true way to be deceived is to think oneself sharper than
others.
The least fault of women who give themselves up to love-
making, is making love.
One of the causes why we find so few people who appear rea-
sonable and agreeable in conversation is, that there is scarcely
any one who does not think more of what he wishes to say than
of replying exactly to what is said to him. The cleverest and
the most compliant think it enough to show an attentive air,
while we see in their eyes and in their mind a wandering from
what is said to them, and a hurry to return to what they wish
to say; instead of considering that it is a bad way to please
or to persuade others, to try so hard to please oneself, and that
to listen well and answer well is one of the greatest accomplish-
ments we can have in conversation.
We generally praise only to be praised.
Nature creates merit, and fortune sets it to work.
It is more easy to appear worthy of a calling not our own
than of the one we follow.
There are two kinds of constancy in love: the one comes
from constantly finding new things to love in the person we love,
and the other comes from our, making it a point of honor to be
constant.
There are heroes in evil as well as in good.
We do not despise all who have vices, but we despise all who
have not any virtue.
We may say that vices await us in the journey of life, as
hosts with whom we must successively lodge; and I doubt
whether experience would enable us to avoid them were we
allowed to travel the same road again.
When vices leave us, we flatter ourselves by thinking that it
is we who leave them.
Virtue would not go so far if vanity did not keep her com-
pany.
Whoever thinks he can do without the world deceives him-
self much; but whoever thinks the world cannot do without him
deceives himself much more.
The virtue of women is often the love of their reputation and
their repose.


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LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
The true gentleman is he who does not plume himself on any-
thing.
Perfect valor is to do without a witness all that we could do
before the whole world.
Hypocrisy is a homage which vice renders to virtue.
All those who discharge debts of gratitude cannot on that
account flatter themselves that they are grateful.
Too great eagerness to requite an obligation is a kind of in-
gratitude.
Fortunate people seldom correct themselves: they always think
they are right when fortune favors their bad conduct.
Pride will not owe, and self-love will not pay.
The good we have received from a man requires us to be
tender of the evil he does us.
Nothing is so contagious as example; and we never do any
great good or any great harm that does not produce its like. We
copy good actions from emulation, and bad ones from the malig-
nity of our nature, which shame kept a prisoner and example sets
at liberty.
It is a great folly to wish to be wise all alone.
In one,
In afflictions there are various sorts of hypocrisy.
while pretending to mourn the loss of a person dear to us, we
mourn for ourselves: we regret. the good opinion he had of us,
we mourn the diminution of our possessions, of our pleasure, of
our consideration. Thus the dead are honored with tears which
flow only for the living. I say that it is a kind of hypocrisy,
for in these sorts of afflictions we deceive ourselves. There is
another hypocrisy which is not so innocent, because it imposes
on every one: it is the affliction of certain persons who aspire
to the glory of a noble and immortal grief. When time, which
wastes all things, has quenched the grief they really felt, they
persist in their tears, their wailings, and their sighs; they assume
a mournful aspect, and labor to persuade, by all their acts, that
their grief will only end with their life. This sad and weari-
some vanity is generally found in ambitious women: as their sex
bars them from the roads which lead to glory, they seek celeb-
rity by the show of unspeakable sorrow. There is yet another
kind of tears whose springs are only small, which flow and dry
up easily the weepers weep to have a name for being tender;
they weep to be pitied; they weep to be wept for: in short, they
weep to avoid the shame of not weeping.


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It is more often from pride than from deficiency of light that
we so obstinately oppose the most received opinions: we find the
first places taken on the good side, and we will have nothing to
do with the last.
No one deserves to be praised for goodness, unless he has
strength to be bad: all other goodness is most often only sloth
or weakness of will.
It is not so dangerous to do harm to most men as it is to do
them too much good.
Coquetry is the basis of the temper of women; but all do not
practice it, for the coquetry of some is restrained by fear or by
reason.
We often inconvenience others when we think we never could
inconvenience them.
Magnanimity despises everything to gain everything.
True eloquence consists in saying all that is needed, and in
saying only what is needed.
It is as common to see tastes change as it is uncommon to
see inclinations change.
Gravity is a physical cloak invented to hide mental defects.
The pleasure of love is in loving; and we are happier in the
passion we feel than in that we inspire.
What is called liberality is most often only the vanity of giv-
ing, which we prefer to the thing we give.
There are people whom the world approves of, whose only
merits are the vices which serve in the intercourse of life.
The charm of novelty is, in relation to love, what the bloom
is on fruit: it gives a lustre to it which is easily effaced, and
which never returns.
Absence diminishes moderate passions and increases great
ones, as wind puts out candles and inflames fire.
Women often think they love even when they do not. The
occupation of an intrigue, the excitement of mind which gallantry
causes, the natural inclination to the pleasure of being loved, and
the pain of refusing,- persuade them that they are influenced by
love, when they are influenced only by coquetry.
There are bad people who would be less dangerous if there
was no good in them.
The gratitude of most men is only a secret desire to obtain
greater favors.


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12328
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Nearly every one takes pleasure in acknowledging small obli-
gations; many are grateful for common ones; but there is
scarcely any one who is not ungrateful for great ones.
We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive
those whom we bore.
The reason why lovers and their lady-loves do not weary of
being together, is that they always talk of themselves.
Why should we have memory enough to retain even the
smallest particulars of what has happened to us, and yet not
have enough to remember how often we have told the to the
same individual ?
In jealousy there is more of self-love than of love.
We sometimes think we hate flattery, but we only hate the
way in which we are flattered.
We forgive as long as we love.
Women can less overcome their coquetry than their love.
The passions of youth are scarcely more opposed to salvation
than is the tepidity of age.
There can be no order either in the mind or in the heart of
woman, if her temperament be not in harmony with it.
We find few sensible people except those who are of our way
of thinking.
The greatest miracle of love is to cure coquetry.
Most women mourn the death of their lovers, not so much
because they loved them as to appear more worthy of being loved.
Most young people think they are natural when they are only
unpolished and rude.
When our worth declines, our taste also declines.
We ought only to be astonished that we are still able to be
astonished.
What makes the vanity of others unbearable to us is, that it
wounds our own.
We may be sharper than one other, but not sharper than all
others. .
There is merit without loftiness, but there is no loftiness with-
out some merit.
Loftiness is to merit, what dress is to handsome women.
Whatever shame we may have deserved, it is almost always in
our power to re-establish our reputation.
Confidence contributes more to conversation than does mind.


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Women who love, forgive great indiscretions more readily than
small infidelities.
Nothing prevents us from being natural so much as the desire
to appear so.
To praise noble actions heartily is in some sort to take part
in them.
The reason why most women are but little influenced by
friendship is, that it is insipid when they have tasted of love.
Decorum is the least of all laws and the most observed.
In great matters, we ought to strive less to create opportu-
nities than to profit by those which offer.
There are few occasions on which we should make a bad bar-
gain by giving up the good that is said of us, on condition that
nothing bad may be said.
In their first love women love the lover, in the others they
love love.
There are few women whose worth lasts longer than their
beauty.
However wicked men may be, they dare not appear the ene-
mies of virtue: when they wish to persecute it they pretend to
believe it is false, or they impute crimes to it.
Quarrels would not last long if the wrong were only on one
side.
Love, pleasant as it is, pleases even more by the ways in
which it shows itself than by itself.
It seems that it is the Devil who has purposely placed sloth
on the frontier of many virtues.
The ruin of a neighbor pleases friends and enemies.
Little is wanted to make the wise happy; nothing can satisfy
a fool: therefore nearly all men are miserable.
It is sometimes agreeable to a husband to have a jealous wife:
he always hears her talk of what he likes.
An honest woman is a hidden treasure: he who has found her
does well not to boast of her.
It is never more difficult to talk well than when we are
ashamed to be silent.
We prefer seeing those to whom we do good, to seeing those
who do good to us.
In the adversity of our best friends we always find something
which does not displease us.


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12330
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
There are none who hurry others so much as the slothful
when they have gratified their sloth, in order to appear diligent.
Great souls are not those which have fewer passions and more
virtues than common ones, but those only which have greater
aims.
Luxury and too great refinement in States are the sure fore-
runners of decay; because every individual, clinging to his own
interests, turns aside from the public good.
Of all the passions, that which is the most unknown to our-
selves is sloth; it is the most fierce and malignant of all, though
its violence may be insensible, and the harm it does may be
deeply hidden. If we attentively consider its power, we shall
see that on all occasions it masters our feelings, our interests,
and our pleasures; it is the remora which has power to stop the
largest vessels; it is a calm more dangerous to the most import-
ant affairs than rocks and the most violent tempests. The repose
of sloth is a secret charm of the soul, which suddenly suspends
the most ardent pursuits and the most stubborn resolves. In
short, to give a true idea of this passion, we must say that sloth
is like a beatitude of the soul, which consoles it for all its losses
and takes the place of all its good.
Translation of A. S. Bolton.
REFLECTIONS
ON SOCIETY
N SPEAKING Of society, it is not my intention to speak of friend-
ship: although they have some connection, they are never-
theless very different; of the two, the second has more
elevation and humility, and the greatest merit of the other is to
resemble it.
I shall speak, then, at present only of the particular inter-
course which well-bred people ought to have with each other. It
would be useless to say how necessary society is to man. All
desire it, and all seek it; but few make use of the means to
render it pleasant and to make it lasting. Every one wishes to
find his own pleasure and advantage at the expense of others:
we always prefer ourselves to those we propose to live with;
and we almost always make them feel this preference: it is this


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which disturbs and breaks up society. We ought at least to
know how to conceal this preference, since it is too much part
of our nature for us to be able to conquer it. We ought to
derive our pleasure from that of others, to spare their self-love,
and never to wound it.
The mind has a large part in so great a work; but alone, it
does not suffice to lead us in the various roads we must travel.
The harmony which is met with between minds would not long
preserve society if it were not ruled and supported by good
sense, by temper, and by the regard which ought to exist between
people who wish to live together. If it sometimes happens that
persons opposed in temper and in mind appear to be united, they
doubtless hold together from extraneous causes, which do not last
long. We may also be in society with persons to whom we are
superior by birth or by personal qualities: but those who have
this advantage ought not to abuse it; they ought seldom to make
it felt, and only make use of it for the instruction of others.
They ought to make them see that they need to be guided, and
lead them by reason, adapting themselves as much as is possible
to their feelings and their interests.
To make society agreeable, all its members should preserve
their liberty. They should either not see each other, or should
see each other without constraint, and with a view to mutual
enjoyment. They should be able to part without that parting
causing a change. They should be able to do without each other,
if they would not expose themselves sometimes to being in the
way; and they should remember that they often bore others when
they think it impossible ever to bore them. They should con-
tribute as much as is possible to the amusement of those with
whom they desire to live, but they should not always burden
themselves with the care of contributing to it. In society, com-
pliance with the wishes of others is necessary, but it ought to
have limits: it becomes a slavery when it is excessive. It should
at least appear to be free; and that in following the sentiments
of our friends they should believe we are also following our
own.
It should be easy to find excuses for our friends when their
faults are born with them, and when they are fewer than their
good qualities. We should often avoid letting them see that
we have observed them and are shocked at them. We should


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endeavor so to manage that they may see them themselves, to
leave them the merit of correcting them.
There is a kind of politeness which is necessary in the inter-
course of well-bred people: it makes them familiar with raillery,
and prevents them from taking or giving offense by sharp and
hard forms of speech, which often escape us without our thinking
of it when we support our opinion with warmth.
Intercourse between well-bred people cannot exist without a
certain sort of confidence: it ought to be common among them;
every one should have an air of security and discretion which
never gives rise to fear that anything could be said imprudently.
There should be variety in the mind: those who have only
one kind of mind cannot please long. We may take various
roads, not having the same talents, provided that we contribute
to the pleasure of society, and observe in it the same propriety
which different voices and different instruments ought to observe
in music.
As it is not easy for several persons to have the same inter-
ests, they must at least, for the comfort of society, have no
conflicting ones. We ought to anticipate what may please our
friends, seek the means of being useful to them, save them from
troubles, let them see that we share them with them when we
cannot turn them aside, efface them insensibly without pretend-
ing to pluck them away at once, and replace them with agree-
able subjects, or at least with such as engage their attention.
We may talk to them of their own concerns; but only so far as
they allow us to do so, and in that we ought to observe great dis-
cretion. There is politeness and sometimes even humanity in not
going too far into the recesses of their heart: people often feel
pain in showing all they know of them, and still more when
we penetrate to what they do not know well. Although the
intercourse which well-bred people have together gives them
familiarity, and supplies them with numberless topics for frank
conversation, scarcely any one has sufficient docility and good
sense to receive in good part much of the advice that is neces-
sary for preserving society. We like to be advised up to a certain
point, but we do not like to be so in all things; and we are
afraid to know all kinds of truths.
As we ought to preserve distances in order to see objects, we
should preserve them also for society. Every one has his point


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of view from which he desires to be seen; we are generally
right in not liking to be seen too closely, and scarcely any man.
likes to be seen in all things such as he is.
Translation of A. S. Bolton.
ON CONVERSATION
THE
HE reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is,
that every one thinks more of what he wishes to say than
of what others say. We should listen to those who speak,
if we would be listened to by them; we should allow them to
make themselves understood, and even to say pointless things.
Instead of contradicting or interrupting them, as we often do, we
ought on the contrary to enter into their mind and into their
taste, show that we understand them, praise what they say so far
as it deserves to be praised, and make them see that it is rather
from choice that we praise them than from courtesy. We should
avoid disputing about indifferent things, seldom ask questions
(which are almost always useless), never let them think that
we pretend to more sense than others, and easily cede the advan-
tage of deciding a question.
We ought to talk of things naturally, easily, and more or
less seriously, according to the temper and inclination of the per-
sons we entertain; never press them to approve what we say,
nor even to reply to it. When we have thus complied with the
duties of politeness, we may express our opinions, without preju-
dice or obstinacy, in making it appear that we seek to support
them with the opinions of those who are listening.
We should avoid talking much of ourselves, and often giving
ourselves as example. We cannot take too much pains to under-
stand the bent and the compass of those we are talking with, in
order to link ourselves to the mind of him whose mind is the
most highly endowed; and to add his thoughts to our own, while
making him think as much as is possible that it is from him we
take them. There is cleverness in not exhausting the subjects
we treat, and in always leaving to others something to think of
and say.
We ought never to talk with an air of authority, nor make
use of words and expressions grander than the things. We may


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LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
keep our opinions, if they are reasonable; but in keeping them,
we should never wound the feelings of others, or appear to be
shocked at what they have said. It is dangerous to wish to be
always master of the conversation, and to talk of the same thing
too often; we ought to enter indifferently on all agreeable sub-
jects which offer, and never let it be seen that we wish to draw
the conversation to a subject we wish to talk of.
It is necessary to observe that every kind of conversation,
however polite or however intelligent it may be, is not equally
proper for all kinds of well-bred persons; we should choose what
is suited to each, and choose even the time for saying it: but if
there be much art in knowing how to talk to the purpose, there
is not less in knowing how to be silent. There is an eloquent
silence, it serves sometimes to approve or to condemn; there is
a mocking silence; there is a respectful silence. There are, in
short, airs, tones, and manners in conversation which often make
up what is agreeable or disagreeable, delicate or shocking: the
secret for making good use of them is given to few persons,
those even who make rules for them mistake them sometimes;
the surest, in my opinion, is to have none that we cannot change,
to let our conversation be careless rather than affected, to listen,
to speak seldom, and never to force ourselves to talk.
Translation of A. S. Bolton.
-


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-
ÉDOUARD ROD
(1857-)
BY GRACE KING
DOUARD ROD belongs in the class of young French authors
of the last quarter of the century; the last recruits in the
column of which De Stendhal, in the opening quarter, was
the standard-bearer. His writings belong to that phase of the liter-
ary development of the period which may be termed parenthetical,
rather than transitional. They are in their nature a consequent, a
production, a reflection, rather than a factor, a vital actor; and their
value lies perhaps in their ethical rather than literary relation to
their period, important and charming as they are from a literary
point of view. They might indeed be fitly defined as intuitive, had
not the author, by himself assuming the classification of "intuitivist,"
shorn the term of its fundamental meaning of self-unconsciousness.
Although Rod's writings belong to French literature, he himself
is Swiss. He was born at Nyon in 1857, and studied at Berne and
Berlin; and after a brilliant literary career, was invited to the chair
of professor of foreign literature in the University of Geneva. Start-
ing with essays upon his first ideals,- Leopardi, Schopenhauer, and
Wagner, he has followed in his books, as a critic has pointed out,
the entire revolution of thought with which men's minds have been
in travail for twenty years: first the inflexible rulings of naturalism
and positivism,- of facts, externals, experiences, limited by the
contracted horizon of immediate reality; then the gradual modifica-
tion of the reactionary movement, when facts began to be accompa-
nied by explanatory and supplemental ideas,- deprived of which they
had been proven incomplete and sterile of conclusions. The soul
was rediscovered; the phenomena of conscience began to be observed;
intellectual activity was recognized to have an aim, and its devel-
opment to be in conformity with certain rules and regulations of
the time; the sum of whose changing, amended formulæ constitutes
morality, which is of and for all time. And now it is being asked
in literature if this morality, to be solid, should not rest on some
supernatural foundation. In short, the human mind has turned round
and retraced every step of its previous journey.
Rod's first novel, Palmyre Veulard,' is dedicated to the author
of Nana. "Conscientiously brutal and studiously impure," says the


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ÉDOUARD ROD
judicial critic, René Doumic, "it is worthy a disciple of Zola and the
school of Medan. " But-to follow the reasoning of this authority —
Rod's own nature protested against the developing tendencies of
Naturalism; and besides, outside influences came to his assistance.
He is a Swiss University man, and he is a Protestant; although he has
retained but little tenderness of heart for the religion in which he
has been reared, and mocks it upon all occasions. "But we remain
prisoners for life in the religion that first fashioned our souls; we
may lose faith, but not mental discipline. " Disengaging himself from
Zola, and following his intuitive predilections for Leopardi, Schopen-
hauer, the music of Wagner, the art of the English pre-Raphaelites
and the great Russian novelists, and for the contemporary psycho-
logical analysis, as applied by Bourget,- he came to the conception
of his own work, his own true originality, and his self-possession,
enfranchised from all other mastership.
'La Course à la Mort' (The Way to Death), 'Le Sens de la Vie'
(The Sense of Life), 'La Haut' (Up Above), 'La Vie Privée de
Michel Tessier' (The Private Life of Michael Tessier), and 'La Se-
conde Vie de Michel Tessier' (The Second Life of Michael Tessier),
are the novels which, succeeding one another in rapid succession,
have carried his name and the stream of his fresh strong thought
afield into literature. Their titles are a fair indication of their essen-
tial nature. 'La Course à la Mort' is the intimate journal, the piti-
less self-analysis, of the typical pessimistic youth of the day; a
despairing cry in the darkness; the confession of the want of the
very light of which one denies the existence. It has been criticized
as a catechism of pessimism drawn from the philosophy of Schopen-
hauer, and its author is reproached with its possible contagious influ-
ence upon the young. But as he himself observes in the preface
to the book, the analysis of a more or less subjective state of mind,
which is itself more or less general, is not to be taken as the per-
sonal conviction of the author,- a confession of faith; still less as
the propagation of a system. 'La Haut' itself is the antidote to the
contagious influence, if such there be, of La Course à la Mort. ' It
is the story of the cure of a soul and its restoration to virility and
hope, in the pure heights of an Alpine village. La Vie Privée de
Michel Tessier,' with its sequel, is the melancholy story of a high-
principled man, overtaken in his home and in an honored and honor-
able career by a love which seems to him pre-eminent above all
previous claims and duties; and his conscientious effort, through
divorce and remarriage, to reconsecrate his life with love, and his
love with life. It is a modern French tragedy of the purest writing.
'The Sense of Life,' crowned by the Academy, is however the work
which displays M. Rod's originality to the best advantage, to himself
―


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ÉDOUARD ROD
12337
and to that of the reader. There is hardly a novel in modern French
literature that can be read with more profit, particularly by the for-
eign student of that literature and that life. And it is one of the
books upon which criticism seems least profitably employed; — neces-
sarily, from its nature and from the nature of M. Rod. To quote a
characteristic passage from Jules Lemaître about it:-"M. Édouard
Rod puts to himself the question: What is the Sense of Life? ' and
if I have quite understood him, he answers himself in pretty much
these words: 'If life have a meaning, it is that which honest and
brave people give it, no matter what be the kind and degree of their
cùlture. ' . . . Life has no meaning except for such as believe and
love, that is his conclusion. "
Besides these stories, M. Rod has written other works on the same
lines. It would hardly be just to the author to omit the competent
criticism of M. Anatole France upon one of these:-"I understand
nevertheless that there is a moral in the book of M. Rod,-that to
the vain all is vanity, to the lying all is lies.
But even in its
desolation of sadness, the book warns us to fear egoism as the worst
of evils. It teaches us purity of heart and simplicity. It brings
back to our memory that verse of the 'Imitation': 'For in whatever
instance a person seeketh himself, there he falleth from love. '»
'Moral Ideals of the Present Time' is a volume of essays upon
those masters who have appeared to M. Rod to exercise a direct
moral influence upon the public. It opens with a worthy dedication
to M. Paul Desjardins, and passes in review Renan, Schopenhauer,
Zola, Bourget, Lemâitre, Scherer, Dumas, Brunetière, Tolstoy, and De
Vogüé. The most succinct expression of the worth of the work is,
that it is an invaluable and indispensable document to any literary
student or demonstrator of the literary influences of the century.
Grace King
MARRIAGE
From The Sense of Life'
I
SHOULD like to find a word to express a being who is tran-
quil, sweet, good, confiding; one whose presence alone gives
repose; a being of grace and charm, breathing peace.
While I work she is there behind me, watchful not to disturb
XXI-772


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ÉDOUARD ROD
me; from time to time I am conscious of the noise of the worsted
she draws through the canvas, or the page she turns, or of her
light breathing. Sometimes I turn and no longer see her; she
has silently disappeared: after a moment she returns in the same
way, without even a creak of the floor beneath her little slip-
pers; and I feel her look resting on me as a continual caress,
the look of her great, deep, clear eyes, wherein there is only
goodness, tenderness, and devotion. And always also I feel her
thought following mine, and traveling side by side with it across
the dreams, as across the cares of the day.
What mystery is there, then, in this sentiment of intimate
union, which lessens disquietude and doubles joys? I suffered so
much formerly in feeling myself alone! I passed nights wander-
ing amid crowds to evade myself; forcing myself to the illusion
that I was something to those others who were moving before my
eyes. I have fled with horror from my home, so pitilessly filled
with myself; where the smallest objects-the bibelots, books,
paper on the wall, pictures and easy-chairs-sent back to me
like multiplied mirrors my odious image. It seemed to me that
I might leave it behind me as I went in the streets
this me;
or forget it in a café, or deposit it in a theatre; and I haunted
theatres, cafés, and streets. Often I fastened myself on to
trumpery friends,- friends met by chance,- and recounted to
them my affairs, sharing with them fragments of my soul, with-
out allowing myself to be rebuffed by their indifference. How
many times has not my heart beat out to strange hearts, without
hearing aught but its own palpitations beating in a vacancy?
How many times after having forgotten myself for an hour or
a night in gay company,- in salons, casinos, or taverns; after
laughing from full lips, and talking boisterously; after having
diffused myself in confidences to others, and received with a
friendly air theirs in return,- have I not felt with tenfold bit-
terness on the morrow that I was still alone, irremediably alone;
that the noises had vanished, leaving naught behind; that the
fumes of alcohol,- all had exhaled into sadness, like the friend-
ship or love of the day before.
Well, it seems to me now that my solitude is vanquished;
certainly not because I see unceasingly near me the same known
form, but because that form is loved. Something of her passes
continually into me, like a beautiful warmth; like another, bet-
ter life; and something of me passes into her. It is no longer a
-
-


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12339
strange soul, which remains a stranger in spite of frequent meet-
ings, in spite of closeness of relation; it is a continuous penetra-
tion, which little by little, of two beings makes only one.
It is strange how one permits oneself to be taken and swept
on by the machinery of life. We yield one finger carelessly; it
takes the whole body. We think we can play with it; take from
it what we wish; give up to it, through laziness, through las-
situde or indifference, fragments of ourselves, and yet remain
masters and maintain our independence. Illusion! After the
revolt of first youth, one day we see that we have surrendered
ourselves, that we are bound! It is the trifling and treacherous
habits whose insinuating sweetness has insensibly conquered you;
it is the ambition for a long-disdained aim, which yet developed
itself across your disdain; it is love-your powerlessness to
feel which made you for a long time doubt it, which you even
denied because you had experienced it under none of its known
forms, and which glides into you in a guise you never expected.
It is duty.
Heavens! Yes, duty,-the sentiment unjusti-
fied among all; that convention, that absurdity, that imperative,
whose non-existence your reason has a thousand times demon-
strated; which sets itself to cry out its orders, and makes itself
obeyed. All these ties bind me; all these voices govern me; I
feel that I no longer belong to myself.
How many times before, when I suffered without cause, or
when some dolorous shock produced agonizing thoughts in me,
have I consoled myself by saying, "After all, I am master of my
existence; when the measure shall be full, nothing shall prevent
my delivering myself; a few precautions so as not to be remarked,
the least noise possible, and all these worries will be forever
away from me! " Now I can no longer thus console myself: I
have by an act of will bound myself, my destiny, to another
destiny; and this double chain which I imprudently linked, I
have not the right to break. . The right! -oh, the absurd
word which comes and imposes itself upon my mind! Whence
comes that unknown force which can weigh upon my decision?
whence the mysterious fluid which paralyzes my egoism?
know that the moment I close my eyes, the world will cease to
exist, with her of whom I think, with the affection which grows
in my heart, with the ideas I forge around myself, and with my
wranglings about the right, duty, liberty, and all the rest. I
know that I shall know nothing of the tears, sorrows, struggles,
·
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ÉDOUARD ROD
12340
which will exist after me; that in my repose I shall feel noth-
ing, absolutely nothing, of the ill caused by my act, which may
even possibly result in good. I know all this; an effort of my
imagination lets me touch nothingness: and yet I feel myself
a slave. Destiny may strike with redoubled blows upon me; I
may be harassed by the troop of enemies from without, or by
a worse one which we carry within ourselves; I may find myself
in the clutches of those two adversaries which in other times I
would not have hesitated to rid myself of at the price of life,—
misery and suffering.
I shall probably have to struggle
with them for a long time; to bear their frightful wiles: my
relations with men may become a source of continual goadings,
on which my imagination will pour the boiling oil of its dreams.
I must support all this,-patient beast of burden bending under
the lash,
without a way of issue, without being able to
look once more toward the Great Liberator; without ever dream-
ing again in sweet hours of the means of putting an end to all
the evils.
•
Sometimes at nightfall we go and sit beside that Auteuil
pond, which we have taken to loving for its silence, and its old
trees that bathe their branches in its sleeping waters. Generally
it is deserted; and, separated from the road by a thick curtain
of leaves, we are very far from the Bois, very far from Paris,
very far from life. To-day, by chance, a young woman was there
with her children: one still in swaddling-clothes, sleeping on her
lap; while the other, a little girl, was playing at her side with
a shovel in the gravel. We seated ourselves opposite this pretty
group; and soon the little girl observed us and came toward us,
her finger in her mouth, with an adorable air of timidity and
roguishness. She greatly wanted to come to us, yet dared not
quite do so. Ever looking at us, she stooped to gather a few
daisies in the turf; then deciding suddenly, she came running
and laid them on my wife's knee, with a pretty "Here," friendly
and satisfied. We embraced her, and she told us many charming
things, and we played with her until her mother called her back
again. She left, throwing us kisses. Then, left alone, we began
to speak of children. She, like all women, a mother by instinct,
desired to have them. I do not.
I do not. I fear the responsibilities; fear
the disturbances: our intimacy of two suffices me; it seems to
me that we lack nothing. "Nevertheless," said she, "they are
so beautiful, and put so much life into the house. Imagine how


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12341
much gayer our house would be with a pretty little girl,— such
a one as you have just kissed. "
"But the anxieties about the mother, the cares, the noise night
and day, the worry with the nurse, the sacrifice of our independ-
ence! Would it not be necessary to renounce our walks, our
project of traveling, change all our plans for the future, which
we have made as though we were always to be tête-à-tête ? »
«< But when we are old? »
"Well, when we are old,- and after all it is not certain that
we ever shall be old,-our affection will be all the more solid
because we are alone. God knows the storms which await our
common life; escaping together, wearied it may be, we shall
press one to the other to brave the common sadness of our fate.
Our days being fewer, will be dearer to us; we shall not have
one too many in which to love on; and how well off we shall be
amid the revolutions of human affairs, which will scarcely touch
us any longer! Detached from all save one another, having
inclosed our entire horizon with our affection, life-whose pos-
sible caprices we now dread—will have glided away behind our
footsteps; we shall look upon it as from the summit of a traveled
road, of which we no longer see the rough places or pebbles;
recalling together good and bad recollections, which in the mirage
of memory will appear equally good to us. We shall love each
the other all the more, for we shall have proved each other
for a long time: for the heart grows old only to the world; it
remains a temple wherein are piously preserved sacred affections:
and if we too come to be cold, that indifference towards every-
thing, which obscures the eyes of the aged, shall not prevent our
cultivating the feeling which shall still unite us, but rather the
contrary. Who knows but that some night, bent and leaning one
upon the other, going out once more to breathe the spring air,—
our last, perhaps,—our talk of to-day will come back to us like
a gust of air from the past? And I am sure that, taught by our
experience, we shall say then, 'Decidedly it is best it should
have been so. '»
She looked at the murmuring water with an unconvinced air,
hesitating to answer. "But," she said at last, after a silence in
which we both heard the other think, «< one of us two will go
first. If we have no child, the other will remain alone. ” This
was precisely the idea that had come to me, and had silenced
Both of us shivered and said no more.
me.
Translation of Grace King.


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PATERNITY
From The Sense of Life'
WIFE has gravely propounded the question of
M Before, when I was an aggressive unbeliever, I loved to
say in a peremptory tone that my children should never be
baptized. She would never reply, and her silence irritated me:
I divined a menace; I understood that it announced a resistance,
and that I should never be able to impose my opinion except by
an act of tyranny. This perspective troubled me a little, although
I was determined to remain firm. But time has progressed since
that epoch, which already seems far away; I have just made an
examination of conscience in order that I may answer in perfect
sincerity my wife's question. I find I have no longer any tem-
per against religion,- quite the contrary. When I had broken
the chains that it had so firmly bound about me, I had a period
of hatred and revolt, in which I dreamed of exciting the world
to the great combat for Truth against Faith.
Then this hatred changed into a profound indifference; the
meaning of the word "truth" wavered in my mind; I no longer
found either criterion or proof: I said to myself that my nega-
tion was a religion also, just as much so as affirmation; just as
gross, no more certain, no better, worse probably.
Then why trouble simple souls? Why prevent them from
deceiving themselves holily? Why teach them that the source
at which they quench their thirst is imaginary? Is their error
greater than mine? In the ocean of uncertainty on which we
float, is my plank any safer than theirs? I have therefore prom-
ised myself to remain neutral in the contest.
I had reached thus far, when I recognized that it was the
free-thinkers who had disgusted me with free thought.