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This illustrates what an aphorism should not be. Contrast its clumsiness with the brevity of the famous and admirable saying of Vauvenargues, that "great thoughts come from the heart."
The Trappist theory of the conditions of virtue found no quarter with him. Mirabeau for instance complained of the atmosphere of the Court, as fatal to the practice of virtue. Vauvenargues replied that the people there were doubtless no better than they should be, and that vice was dominant. 'So much the worse for those who have vices.
But if he never laughed, this martyr of the soul never ceased to smile. His perpetual sufferings did not affect his gentle sobriety of conversation. Those whose privilege it was to see Vauvenargues during these last years of his brief existence are united in their report of his magnanimity. Voltaire wrote, "I have always found him the most unfortunate of human beings and the most tranquil."
Is it really good psychology when Vauvenargues writes: “All men are born sincere and die impostors,” or, when Brillat-Savarin insists: “Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you who you are”? Or can we really trust Mirabeau: “Kill your conscience, as it is the most savage enemy of every one who wants success”; or Klopstock: “Happiness is only in the mind of one who neither fears nor hopes”; or Gellert: “He who loves one vice, loves all the vices”? Can we believe Chamfort: “Ambition more easily takes hold of small souls than great ones, just as a fire catches the straw roof of the huts more easily than the palaces”; or Pascal: “In a great soul, everything is great”; or the poet Bodenstedt when he sings: “A gray eye is a sly eye, a brown eye is roguish and capricious, but a blue eye shows loyalty”? And too often we must be satisfied with opposites.
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.
We seek in vain amid the positivity of Bacon, or the quaint and timorous paradox of Browne, or the acute sobriety of Shaftesbury, for any of that poetic pensiveness which is strong in Vauvenargues, and reaches tragic heights in Pascal. Addison may have the delicacy of Vauvenargues, but it is a delicacy that wants the stir and warmth of feeling.
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.
You will not find in the pages of Vauvenargues a distinct revival of that passion for the very soil of France, "la terre sainte, la douce France," which inspired the noble "Chanson de Roland" and has been so strongly accentuated in the recent struggle for Alsace-Lorraine.
He was notable for his "indulgent goodness," his "constant peace," his "justice of heart," his "rectitude of soul." His conversation, so Marmontel reports to us, had something more animated, more delicate, than even his divine writings. The same acute observer noted that in the heart of Vauvenargues, when he reflected upon the misery of mankind, pity took the place of indignation and hatred.
After the death of the philosopher, Voltaire wrote a brief, but invaluable, account of their relations, which had lasted, without a cloud, until the death of Vauvenargues. He reminded Voltaire of Pascal, whose "incurable disease was consoled by study," but the elder friend noted a striking distinction; the eloquence of Pascal was fiery and imperious, that of Vauvenargues was "insinuating."
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