"
It would be idle not to admit that La Rochefoucauld has been almost
exclusively regarded as the chief exponent of egotism among the great
writers of Europe. He has become--he became during his own lifetime--
the bye-word for bitterness. He is represented as believing that
egotism is the _primum mobile_ of all human action, and that man is
wholly the victim of his passions, which lead him whither they will.
He denies all spirituality and sees a physical cause for everything we
do. His own words are quoted against him. It is true that he says,
"All the passions are nothing but divers degrees of heat or cold in
the blood." It is true that he says, "All men naturally hate one
another," and again, "Our virtues are mostly vices in disguise." Yet
again, he defines the subject of his mordant volume in terms which
seem to exclude all bountiful theories concerning the disinterested
instincts of the human soul, for he says "_Amour-propre_ is the love
of one's self and of all things for one's self; it turns men into
their own idolators, and, if fortune gives them the opportunity, makes
them the tyrants of others.
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