Instead of mockery--the besetting sin of his generation--this man, and this man alone, had for men’s follies and absurdities only infinite compassion. Of him has been aptly quoted Bacon’s beautiful phrase, ‘he had an aspect as though he pitied men.’ His philosophy remains for ever to the unquiet heart at once balm and tonic--the cool hand of compassion on the burning forehead--the touch of a friend, who knows--the strong grasp of help to raise the feeble from his weakness and despair, and to make him do what he can. Some of the axioms have become part of men’s speech, if not part of their soul. ‘Great thoughts come from the heart.’ ‘We should comfort ourselves for not having fine talents, as we comfort ourselves for not having fine positions; we can be above both by the heart.’ ‘Great men undertake great things because they are great, and fools because they think them easy.’ ‘Would you say great things? Then first accustom yourself never to say false ones.’ ‘Who can bear all, can dare all.’ ‘Envy is confessed inferiority.’ ‘Few sorrows are without remedy: despair is more deceptive than hope.’ ‘Who gives his word lightly, breaks it.’ ‘He who has great feeling, knows much.’ ‘To the passions one owes the best things of the mind.’ Into that mad devotion to wit which was the snare of all his compeers, Vauvenargues never fell. He worshipped at the shrine of a diviner goddess called Truth. There is not a single example--even in his maxims, when the temptation would naturally be strongest--of his sacrificing fidelity to smartness. In February 1746, after he had been less than a year in Paris, he published anonymously that book by which he has gone down the ages and up to the gods, and which contains only the ‘Introduction to the Knowledge of the Human Mind,’ some ‘Reflections,’ the ‘Counsels to a Young Man,’ a few critical articles, the ‘Meditation on Faith,’ and the ‘Maxims.’ Clear, clean, and vigorous in style, as sharp and brief as a military order--it was well said by a friend that its author ‘wanted first of all to get along quickly and drag little baggage after him;’ and better said by himself that, ‘when an idea will not bear a simple form of expression, it is the sign for rejecting it.’ It was not the sort of work likely to bring him present fame, or money. He did not expect them. As he worked in his miserable lodgings, ill lit and ill warmed, already a prey to consumption, and suffering often acutely from the old frost-bites--no such hopes had buoyed him. But he did what he had told other men to do--worked for the work’s sake--and he found what he had told them they would find, joy in the working and satisfaction in a noble aim, be it unrewarded for ever.