and weaknesses of mankind, enlighten the judgment of the public far less
than they deprave its inclination.'[39] This principle was implied in
Goethe's excellent saying, that if you would improve a man, it is best
to begin by persuading him that he is already that which you would have
him to be.

To talk in this way was to bring men out from the pits which cynicism on
the one side, and asceticism on the other, had dug so deep for them,
back to the warm precincts of the cheerful day. The cynic and the
ascetic had each looked at life through a microscope, exaggerating
blemishes, distorting proportions, filling the eye with ugly and
disgusting illusions.[40] Humanity, as was said, was in disgrace with
the thinkers. The maxims of Vauvenargues were a plea for a return to a
healthy and normal sense of relations. 'These philosophers,' he cried,
'are men, yet they do not speak in human language; they change all the
ideas of things, and misuse all their terms.'[41] These are some of the
most direct of his retorts upon Pascal and La Rochefoucauld:

'I have always felt it to be absurd for philosophers to fabricate a
Virtue that is incompatible with the nature of humanity, and then after
having pretended this, to declare coldly that there is no virtue. If
they are speaking of the phantom of their imagination, they may of
course abandon or destroy it as they please, for they invented it; but
true virtue--which they cannot be brought to call by this name, because
it is not in conformity with their definitions; which is the work of
nature and not their own; and which consists mainly in goodness and
vigour of soul--that does not depend on their fancies, and will last
for ever with characters that cannot possibly be effaced.'

'The body has its graces, the intellect its talents; is the heart then