Other great names of the French Revolution are obscured by the heat of the main struggle in 1793 by the fact that they perished or fell into oblivion or betrayed their original convictions. The violent prejudices that attach to the passions of such moments have made it difficult for the chief men of 1789-95 to be rightly judged. For whether we seek the testimony of friends or of enemies, we are aware of worthless exaggeration. In the case of Lafayette we do not suffer from these causes of distortion. He was indeed most bitterly denounced,--in the crisis of his life when he abandoned his army there was hardly anyone to praise him,--but he was not present among the French in those moments of superhuman exaltation which followed upon the great war, and therefore he escaped unbalanced praise and blame therein. On the other hand, he did not perish in that storm as did countless others, nor did he deserve or receive oblivion upon its close. On the contrary, he entered public life again and played a great part in it. Added to such opportunities for being rightly judged, his own rigid adherence to his original principles has gained him the reward which always attaches to such fidelity--an untroubled place in history. From all these causes he can, if we take the trouble to watch him narrowly, be seen clearly by posterity. Let us then attempt a summary judgment of his character. The central axis upon which that character turned may readily be perceived and defined, for it was at once so simple and fixed within so slight an accretion of secondary qualities that it is plainly visible through them. Lafayette was essentially of that type which has had for its philosophy, perhaps from the beginning of society, the scheme to which antiquity gave the title of “stoic.” He was immovable in the service of those truths which he perceived; but the truths which he perceived were few, obvious, and though of vast, yet not of the very last, importance. He conceived that an adhesion to such truths was sufficient for man and still more certainly sufficient for himself.