The advance of social refinement was very
rapid, and, especially in Paris, there was a determined and
intelligent movement in the direction of the amelioration of manners
and a studied elegance of life. M. Rebelliau has pointed out that it
was precisely at this moment that a great number of new words, and
among them _delicate, distinguer, moraliste, menagements, finesse_ and
many others, were accepted as part of the French language. These
served immediately to enrich the vocabulary of the men and women who
were anxious to push further and deeper their investigations into
psychological analysis. With this social tendency to dissect the human
heart and to seize its most secret movements, was combined the
religious and, as we may put it, protestant fashion of the hour, in
the spirit of Port Royal. To be a moralist was almost in itself to be
a Jansenist, and we see the author of the "Maximes" presently claiming
to be, after a fashion, evangelical.
There is so little said about theology, in the direct sense, in the
writings of La Rochefoucauld, that his various French critics have
given perhaps too little thought to his religious tendencies.
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