"Gratitude in the majority of men is
simply a strong and secret wish to receive still greater benefits."
Terrifying this must have been to a sentimental and exalted bosom, and
exclusive of all hope until the little word "majority" was observed, a
loophole offered for scared humanity to creep out at.
The design of La Rochefoucauld was to make people ashamed of their
egotism, and so to help them to modify it. He saw France deadened by a
universal sycophancy, and tyrannized over by a court life which made a
lie of everything. He insisted upon the value of individual sincerity,
but in a voice so harsh and bitter, and in such sardonic phrases--as
when he says: "Sincerity is met with in very few people, and is
usually nothing but a delicate dissimulation to attract the confidence
of others"--that the more timid of his auditors shrank from him, as if
he had been Hamlet or Lear. When he dared to suggest that none of
these maxims were intended to refer to the reader himself, but only to
all other persons, he invited the reaction which led Huet, Bishop of
Avranches, to appeal against the morality of the "Maximes," as suited
only to the vices of wicked persons, "improborum hominum vitiis," and
to issue a warning against the too-sweeping cynicism of
Roccapucaldius, as he called the Duke.
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