We see him, the cynic and sensual
brawler of 1640, turned within a few years into a model of regularity,
the anarchist changed into a serious citizen with a logical scheme of
conduct, the atheistical swashbuckler become the companion of saints
and pitching his tent under the shadow of Port Royal. More than do the
purely religious teachers, he marks the rapid crystallization of
society in Paris, and the opening of a new age of reflection, of
polish and of philosophical experiment. Moral psychology, a science in
which Frenchmen have ever since delighted, seems to begin with the
stern analysis of _amour-propre_ in the "Maximes."
It is obvious that my choice of three moral maxim-writers to exemplify
the sources of modern French sentiment must be in some measure an
arbitrary one. The moralists of the end of the seventeenth century in
France are legion, and I would not have it supposed that I am not
aware of the relative importance of some of them. But although La
Rochefoucauld and La Bruyere were not the inventors of their
respective methods of writing, nor positively isolated in their
treatment of social themes, I do not think it is claiming too much for
them to say that in the crowd of smaller figures they stand out large,
and with each generation larger, in any survey of their century.
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