Happiness is often egotistical. It is even a question whether a certain egotism is not necessary to the acquirement of a certain happiness. Helvétius gave a peremptory denial to these sorry notions. Happy himself, he had but one passion: the happiness of humanity. He noticed, in his observation of mankind, that the natural desire to be happy, which each of us bears within, is opposed by a thousand prejudices, the most terrible of which are the religious prejudices, and he determined to combat them with all his strength. M. Albert Keim, who knows Helvétius better than any other man in France, has just republished certain notes written in the philosopher's hand; the first of which runs thus: "Prejudices. They are to the mind what ministers are to monarchs. The latter prevent their rivals from approaching the king, and in the same way prejudices prevent truths from reaching the mind, for fear of losing the power they usurp over it." One of the most widespread prejudices is that which considers it impossible to attain happiness; as that does not prevent us from desiring it, such an idea corrupts life and often renders it unbearable. Priests have believed that they could remedy this by inventing a second life, where the person who has consented to be quite unhappy in the first will find at last a sort of equivocal happiness, little calculated to tempt one of intelligence. The people, nevertheless, snap at this bait and accept, in view of future recompense, the direst tribulations of the present life. Thus a frightful slavery is perpetuated, for it is very evident that all this is nothing but a hoax and an imposition. Whoever wishes to taste happiness, if this word stands for anything more than a dream, should set about it in this life, since the other one is but a chimera, lucrative for the clergy alone. But how be happy? Through virtue? Very well, what is virtue? "Virtue," replies Helvétius, "is only the wisdom which harmonizes passion with reason and pleasure with duty." He assigns a large place in life to pleasures and passions; but he does not consider them only as elements of happiness; he makes of them sources of activity. Man instinctively seeks pleasure. When he has experienced it, and later loses it, he will work with all his might to win it anew. All forms of pleasure, then, are easily reconcilable to virtue. Who knows whether pleasure taken in wise moderation is not virtue itself? And he dares to write this maxim, which will perhaps frighten some: _One is never guilty when one is happy._ Helvétius, who was a very gentle and kind person, is often, in his writings, rashly bold. His intimate notes are violent, impassioned, even brutal. He speaks in them of love with magnificent frankness, and one readily divines that it is chiefly in the exercise of this amiable virtue that he found happiness.