BACON: I have observed among the well-informed and the ill-informed nearly the same quantity of infirmities and follies; those who are rather the wiser keep them separate, and those who are wisest of all keep them better out of sight. I have persuaded men, and shall persuade them for ages, that I possess a wide range of thought unexplored by others, and first thrown open by me, with many fair enclosures of choice and abstruse knowledge. One subject, however, hath almost escaped me, and surely one worth the trouble. HOOKER: Pray, my lord, if I am guilty of no indiscretion, what may it be? BACON: Francis Bacon. LA ROCHEFOUCAULD Reflections and Moral Maxims Rochefoucauld's "Reflections, or Sentences and Moral Maxims," were published in 1665. In them his philosophy of life is expressed with a perfection of form which still remains unrivalled and unequalled. The original work contains only 314 short sentences; the last edition he published contains 541; but when one examines the exquisite workmanship of his style, one does not wonder that it represents the labour of twenty years. La Rochefoucauld (see Vol. X, p. 203) is one of the greatest masters of French prose, as well as one of the great masters of cynicism. He has exerted a deep influence both on English and French literature, and Swift and Byron were among his disciples. _I.--Of Love and of Women_ To judge love by most of its effects, it seems more like hatred than kindness. In love we often doubt of what we most believe. As long as we love, we forgive. Love is like fire, it cannot be without continual motion; as soon as it ceases to hope or fear it ceases to exist. Many persons would never have been in love had they never heard talk of it. Agreeable and pleasant as love is, it pleases more by the manners in which it shows itself than by itself alone. We pass on from love to ambition; we seldom return from ambition to love. Those who have had a great love affair find themselves all their life happy and unhappy at being cured of it. In love the one who is first cured is best cured. The reason why lovers are never weary of talking of each other is that they are always talking of themselves. Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy which makes our heart attach itself in succession to all the qualities of our beloved, and prefer, now this trait and now that; so that this constancy is only a kind of inconstancy fixed and enclosed in a single object. If there is a love pure and exempt from all mixture with our other passions, it is that which is hidden in the depth of our heart and unknown to ourselves. The pleasure of love consists in loving, and our own passion gives us more happiness than the feelings which our beloved has for us. The grace of novelty is to love like the fine bloom on fruit; it gives it a lustre which is easily effaced and never recovered. We are nearer loving those who hate us than those who love us more than we desire.