His aim
in edification is to train us to dig through the crust of social sham
to the limpid truth which exists in the dark centre of our souls--
"If there is a pure love, he says, exempt from all admixture with
other passions, it is that which lies hidden at the bottom of the
heart, and of which we ourselves are ignorant."
Unlike Mandeville, our own great cynic of the eighteenth century, La
Rochefoucauld, while calling in question the reality of almost all
benevolent impulses, stopped short of denying the existence of virtue
itself. He would not have said, as the author of the "Fable of the
Bees" (1714) did, that the "hunting after this _pulchrum et honestum_
is not much better than a wild-goose chase." But he had a strong
contempt for the humbugs of the world, and among them he placed
unflinching optimists. One of the main forms of humbug in his day was
the legend that everybody acted nobly for the sake of other people.
This La Rochefoucauld stoutly denied, but he was not so excessive as
his commentators in his condemnation of that self-love which he
declares to be the source of all our moral actions.
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