best men of that century against the church, its creeds, and its book.
At one time, as will be seen from a passage which will be quoted by and
by, his leanings were towards that vague and indefinable doctrine which
identifies God with all the forces and their manifestations in the
universe. Afterwards even this adumbration of a theistic explanation of
the world seems to have passed from him, and he lived, as many other not
bad men have lived, with that fair working substitute for a religious
doctrine which is provided in the tranquil search, or the acceptance in
a devotional spirit, of all larger mortal experiences and higher human
impressions. There is a _Meditation on the Faith_, including a _Prayer_,
among his writings; and there can be little doubt, in spite of
Condorcet's incredible account of the circumstances of its composition,
that it is the expression of what was at the time a sincere feeling.[17]
It is, however, rather the straining and ecstatic rhapsody of one who
ardently seeks faith, than the calm and devout assurance of him who
already possesses it. Vauvenargues was religious by temperament, but he
could not entirely resist the intellectual influences of the period. The
one fact delivered him from dogma and superstition, and the other from
scoffing and harsh unspirituality. He saw that apart from the question
of the truth or falsehood of its historic basis, there was a balance to
be struck between the consolations and the afflictions of the faith.[18]
Practically he was content to leave this balance unstruck, and to pass
by on the other side. Scarcely any of his maxims concern religion. One
of these few is worth quoting, where he says: 'The strength or weakness
of our belief depends more on our courage than our light; not all those
who mock at auguries have more intellect than those who believe in
them.'[19]

The end came in the spring of 1747, when Vauvenargues was no more than
thirty-two. Perhaps, in spite of his physical miseries, these two years