Part 2 (1/2)

7.--Great and striking actions which dazzle the eyes are represented by politicians as the effect of great designs, instead of which they are commonly caused by the temper and the pa.s.sions. Thus the war between Augustus and Anthony, which is set down to the ambition they entertained of making themselves masters of the world, was probably but an effect of jealousy.

8.--The pa.s.sions are the only advocates which always persuade. They are a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with pa.s.sion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent without.

[See Maxim 249 which is an ill.u.s.tration of this.]

9.--The pa.s.sions possess a certain injustice and self interest which makes it dangerous to follow them, and in reality we should distrust them even when they appear most trustworthy.

10.--In the human heart there is a perpetual generation of pa.s.sions; so that the ruin of one is almost always the foundation of another.

11.--Pa.s.sions often produce their contraries: avarice sometimes leads to prodigality, and prodigality to avarice; we are often obstinate through weakness and daring though timidity.

12.--Whatever care we take to conceal our pa.s.sions under the appearances of piety and honour, they are always to be seen through these veils.

[The 1st edition, 1665, preserves the image perhaps better--”however we may conceal our pa.s.sions under the veil, etc., there is always some place where they peep out.”]

13.--Our self love endures more impatiently the condemnation of our tastes than of our opinions.

14.--Men are not only p.r.o.ne to forget benefits and injuries; they even hate those who have obliged them, and cease to hate those who have injured them. The necessity of revenging an injury or of recompensing a benefit seems a slavery to which they are unwilling to submit.

15.--The clemency of Princes is often but policy to win the affections of the people.

[”So many are the advantages which monarchs gain by clemency, so greatly does it raise their fame and endear them to their subjects, that it is generally happy for them to have an opportunity of displaying it.”--Montesquieu, Esprit Des Lois, Lib. VI., C. 21.]

16.--This clemency of which they make a merit, arises oftentimes from vanity, sometimes from idleness, oftentimes from fear, and almost always from all three combined.

[La Rochefoucauld is content to paint the age in which he lived. Here the clemency spoken of is nothing more than an expression of the policy of Anne of Austria. Rochefoucauld had sacrificed all to her; even the favour of Cardinal Richelieu, but when she became regent she bestowed her favours upon those she hated; her friends were forgotten.--Aime Martin. The reader will hereby see that the age in which the writer lived best interprets his maxims.]

17.--The moderation of those who are happy arises from the calm which good fortune bestows upon their temper.

18.--Moderation is caused by the fear of exciting the envy and contempt which those merit who are intoxicated with their good fortune; it is a vain display of our strength of mind, and in short the moderation of men at their greatest height is only a desire to appear greater than their fortune.

19.--We have all sufficient strength to support the misfortunes of others.

[The strongest example of this is the pa.s.sage in Lucretius, lib. ii., line I:-- ”Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem.”]

20.--The constancy of the wise is only the talent of concealing the agitation of their hearts.