... It exists in all states of life and in
all conditions; it lives everywhere and it lives on everything; it
lives on nothing." He does not admit that Christianity itself is
immune from the ravages of this essential cankerworm, which adopts all
disguises and slips from one Protean shape into another. "The
refinements of self-love surpass those of chemistry," and the purpose
of La Rochefoucauld is to resolve all our virtues in a crucible and to
show that nothing remains but a poisonous deposit of egotism.
No wonder that La Rochefoucauld has been generally regarded as a
scourge of the human race, a sterile critic of mankind without
sympathy or pity. It is true that his obstinate insistence on the
universality of egotism produces a depressing and sometimes a
fatiguing impression on the reader, who is apt to think of him as
Shakespeare's Apemantus, "that few things loves better than to abhor
himself." But when the First Lord goes on to add "He's opposite to
humanity," we feel that no phrase could less apply to La
Rochefoucauld. We have, therefore, immediately to revise our opinion
of this severe dissector of the human heart, and to endeavour to find
out what lay underneath the bitterness of his "Maximes.
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