The result of this habit of ruthless criticism is to concentrate the Frenchman's attention, even to excess, on the motives of conduct, and to bring him more and more inevitably to regard self-love, self-preservation, personal vanity in its various forms, as the source of all our apparent virtues. Even when we appear to be most disinterested, even when we are most clearly actuated by unselfish devotion, by _honour_, we are really the prey, as Lintier saw it, of the wish to save our lives and to preserve the good opinion of others. Underneath the transports of patriotism, underneath the sincerity of religious fervour, the Frenchman digs down and finds _amour-propre_ at the root of everything. This attitude or habit of mind is particularly shocking to all those who live in a state of illusion, and there is probably no aspect of French character which is more difficult for the average Englishman to appreciate than this tendency towards sceptical dissection of the motives of conduct. Yet it is quite certain that it is widely disseminated among those of our neighbours who are most prompt and effective in action, and whose vigour is in no degree paralysed by the clairvoyance with which they seek for exact truth even in the most romantic and illusive spiritual circumstances. To throw light on this aspect of French character, I propose to call attention to a little book, which is probably well-known to my readers already, but which may be regarded from a point of view, as I venture to think, more instructive than that which is usually chosen. In the year 1665 there appeared anonymously in Paris, in all the circumstances of well-advertised secrecy, a thin volume of "Maximes," which were understood to have exercised for years past the best thoughts of a certain illustrious nobleman. Mme de Sable, who was not foreign to the facts, immediately wrote a review, intended for the _Journal des Scavants_, in the course of which she said that the new book was "a treatise on movements of the human heart which may be said to have remained until now unrecognized." The book, as every one knows, was the work of the Duke of La Rochefoucauld, and the subject of it was an unmasking of "the veritable condition of man."