His own views, however, were more emphatically defined, and more directly urged, in the other contribution to literature published by Vauvenargues in his lifetime, the "Reflexions sur divers sujets." Here he abandons the attempt at forming a philosophical system, and admits that his sole object is "to form the hearts and the manners" of his readers. Perhaps the most penetrating of all his sentences is that in which he says: "If you possess any passion which you feel to be noble and generous, be sure you foster it." This was diametrically opposed to all the teaching of the seventeenth-century moralists who had preceded him, and also had taught us that we should mistrust our passions and disdain our enthusiasms. To see how completely Vauvenargues rejected the Christian doctrine of the utter decrepitude and hopeless inherent badness of the human mind, we have but to gather some of his sparse thoughts together. He says, in defiance of Pascal and the Jansenists, "Mankind is the only source of our happiness, outside that there is nothing." Again, "As it is the heart, in most people, that doubts, so when once the heart is converted, all is done; it leads them along the path to virtue." He deprecated the constant checking and blaming of children which was part of the system of education then in vogue; he declared that it sapped the confidence of the young, their inherent sense of virtue; and he exclaimed, "Why does no one dream of training children to be original, bold and independent?" Those who knew Vauvenargues recognized in the purity and sweetness and severity of his teaching the record of his own conduct. Marmontel speaks of the "tender veneration" with which all the more serious of his early comrades in the army regarded him. In his works we trace the result of a curious thing, experience superseding, taking the place of, education. "He observed the weaknesses of mankind before he had time to reflect upon their duties," says a contemporary. His mind, although assaulted by such a crowd of disadvantages, remained calm, and free from prejudice; remained gently indulgent to human weakness on the one hand, rigid in allegiance to his ideal pursuit of "la gloire" on the other. The noble movements of his mind were native, not acquired, and he had not been hardened or exasperated by the pressure of a mortifying theology. He does not take so exalted or so pitiless an attitude as the classic seventeenth-century moralist. Pascal scourges the mass of humanity down a steep place into the sea; Vauvenargues takes each wanderer by the hand, and leads him along the primrose path.