surface of the earth would be different? Imagine, in a word, 'a number
of men in chains, and all condemned to death; some of them each day
butchered in the sight of the others, while those who remain watch their
own condition in that of their fellows, and eyeing one another in
anguish and hopelessness, wait their turn; such is the situation of
man.'[3]

It was hardly possible to push the tragical side of the verities of life
beyond this, and there was soon an instinctive reaction towards
realities. The sensations with their conditions of pleasure no less than
of pain; the intelligence with its energetic aptitudes for the discovery
of protective and fruitful knowledge; the affections with their large
capacities for giving and receiving delight; the spontaneous inner
impulse towards action and endurance in the face of outward
circumstances--all these things reassured men, and restored in theory to
them with ample interest what in practice they had never lost--a
rational faith and exultation in their own faculties, both of finding
out truth and of feeling a very substantial degree of happiness. On
this side too, as on the other, speculation went to its extreme limit.
The hapless and despairing wretches of Pascal were transformed by the
votaries of perfectibility into bright beings not any lower than the
angels. Between the two extremes there was one fine moralist who knew
how to hold a just balance, perceiving that language is the expression
of relations and proportions, that when we speak of virtue and genius we
mean qualities that compared with those of mediocre souls deserve these
high names, that greatness and happiness are comparative terms, and that
there is nothing to be said of the estate of man except relatively. This
moralist was Vauvenargues.

Vauvenargues was born of a good Provençal stock at Aix, in the year