REFLECTIONS;
OR, SENTENCES AND MORAL MAXIMS
Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.
0.
[This epigraph which is the key to the system of La
Rochefoucauld, is found in another form as No. 179 of the maxims
of the first edition, 1665, it is omitted from the 2nd and 3rd,
and reappears for the first time in the 4th edition, in 1675, as
at present, at the head of the Reflections.—Aimé
Martin. Its best answer is arrived at by reversing the predicate
and the subject, and you at once form a contradictory maxim
equally true, our vices are most frequently but virtues
disguised.]
This remark of the translators I agree with
more than not, so I have let it stand in my comments to Rochefoucauld's text.
But what seems more true to me is that
Rochefoucauld's maxims are mostly based on the assumption that human actions
depend most on egoism and vanity rather than the more noble motives people
pretend to, and that his maxims are often less aimed at the truth than at
shocking his readers.
Both weaknesses - for such they are, apart from
the fact that moralizing by ways of maxims may not be the most adequate way to
do so, if it is the wittiest - seem to derive from the facts that Rochefoucauld
lived, thought and wrote as a courtier.
*
1. Virtuous acts are often done for
vile reasons, and vile acts for virtuous reasons. The worst deeds are
often done for the best of reasons and nearly always excused by a
pretense of the noblest intentions.
*
The translators supplied a verse of
Pope:
["Who combats bravely is not therefore brave,
He dreads a
death-bed like the meanest slave;
Who reasons wisely is not
therefore wise,
His pride in reasoning, not in acting, lies."
Pope, Moral Essays, Ep. i. line 115.]
2. People explain all human acts in
terms pleasing to themselves.
*
3.
It is not egoism that is bad, but its
abuse.
Lack of self-control is a much more
important human weakness than is self-love, which seems mostly
unavoidable anyway, since all that any man ever knows and feels are
his (or her) own beliefs and feelings.
*
The translators supply this note,
that seems mostly correct:
[This is the first hint of the system the author tries to
develop. He wishes to find in vice a motive for all our actions,
but this does not suffice him; he is obliged to call other
passions to the help of his system and to confound pride, vanity,
interest and egotism with self love. This confusion destroys the
unity of his principle.—Aimé Martin.]
5. We cannot will feelings, but we
can will beliefs that enhance or decrease the feelings.
*
6. Noone can be rational when
passionate (though one may be reasonable).
*
7. Events can be predicted and
produced by plans, but extraordinary events require extraordinary
circumstances.
*
8. It seems to me that - in spite of Hume's ageeing:
"Reason is and must be always the slaves of the passions" - it is not
true that "The passions are the only advocates which always persuade":
In between our feelings,
passions, needs, values and desires and our acting upon these stand
judgement, free will, conscience, or deliberation, which are four
names for the same faculty.
If it were otherwise, no
imputation of personal responsibility makes sense, for these all
involve the notion that one could have acted differently, if only one
had thought better, deliberated better, chosen better, had more
self-control, or done's one duty like other men in similar
circumstances.
*
9. Every passion excludes others,
and noone impassioned can impartially survey all possible evidence
about the subject of his passions.
*
10. People live adrift an ocean of
moods, tossed about by waves of feelings. Noone can control his
emotions, but all may control their expressions and the beliefs that
embed them.
*
11. People identify with what they
have strong positive feelings about and have strong positive feelings
about what they identify with. People feel attacked when they feel
their interests criticized.
*
12. Hypocrisy can usually be
seen, heard, or felt, and when it is not, it usually is not because people are
wilfully blind to those hypocrisies they agree with as proper.
*
The translators supply this, which seems right:
[The 1st edition, 1665, preserves the image perhaps
better—"however we may conceal our passions under the veil,
etc., there is always some place where they peep out."]
14. It is easier to be ungrateful
than grateful, and apart from passion the great motivators are ease
and comfort.
*
16. Moral qualities in most men are
mostly conformism. There are far more loyal people than there are
principled people. For most men, being a social animal is being a
conforming animal. Few people have sufficient courage to stand on
their own feet and make independent personal judgements unbiased by
the fear of what their acquaitances may think of them.
*
19. People only can feel their own
feelings and are forever locked up within the limits of their own
incapacities. All fellow-feeling depends on the imagination or
instinct.
Even so... the English translation of
this maxim, with my stress added "We have all sufficient strength to
support the misfortunes of others" does seem to express a fact
often missed by more forgiving translations:
Most of the misfortunes of men exist
because other men don't think it worth their trouble to do anything
about them: They choose to be indifferent, look away, keep
silent. Reason:
The vast majority of men are immoral
by their very own code of morals - and are so by choice, because this
is more profitable or more convenient for them.
*
22. Circumstances are stronger than
men.
*
24. Heroism is partial: One party's
heroes are another party's monsters or fools. If there is anything
commonly admired in heroes it are courage and loyalty.
But Rochefoucauld is mistaken in
levelling all heroes to the level of vain hypocrites, if only because
some human heroism just can't be explained properly that way.
*
25. Better opportunities are also
better opportunities for abuse: what can be used can be abused. And:
Power invites its own abuse, for it
tends to guarantee freedom from the consequences of such abuse.
*
The translators supply:
["Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth
best discover virtue."—Lord Bacon, Essays{, (1625), "Of
Adversity"}.]
29. Noone is valued for what he is;
all are valued for what they seem to be.
*
30. It is far easier to desire than
to do, and far easier to believe than to prove. In general, people
believe what they desire to believe and desire what serves their
self-interest. Few desire knowledge, but all desire pleasure, though
it is true that what pleases depends to a much larger extent on
beliefs than people believe.
*
34. The humble take great pride in
their humility. There is no virtue that cannot be simulated, and most
moral behaviour in society is motivated by self-interest, hypocrisy,
conformism or fear rather than by moral principles. Moral stances are
far more often hypocritical than honest, and for every hundred people
that desire something done at most one will attempt to do it, if it
takes trouble or brings personal danger or discomfort.
*
The translators supply:
["The proud are ever most provoked by pride."—Cowper,
Conversation 160.]
38. Promises are made
and kept proportional to expected benefits.
*
The translators supply:
["The reason why the Cardinal (Mazarin) deferred so long to
grant the favours he had promised, was because he was persuaded
that hope was much more capable of keeping men to their duty than
gratitude."—Fragments Historiques. Racine.]
47. Everything a man is and may be
depends on temperament: We all are creatures of our moods. The most
important ability insofar as one's well-being is concerned is the
ability to make and control one's moods.
*
48. It is we ourselves who design
our appreciation of the world, even if this is not done deliberately.
The facts are given to us, but we infuse the values and impose the
explanation.
*
49. All judgements involving oneself
are exaggerated and partial.
*
51. All are fickle; all are frail;
all are fallible, and constancy is death.
*
53. Every success is in part due to
design and in equal or greater part to luck.
*
54. Not all philosophers are
as contemptibly ordinary and hypocritical as ordinary hypocritical men try to
make them out to be.
*
The translators supply
["It is always easy as well as agreeable for the inferior
ranks of mankind to claim merit from the contempt of that pomp
and pleasure which fortune has placed beyond their reach. The
virtue of the primitive Christians, like that of the first
Romans, was very frequently guarded by poverty and
ignorance."—Gibbon, Decline And Fall, Chap. 15.]
56. In matters social, appearance is
far more important than reality.
*
57. The reasons people give for
deeds are rarely the reasons the deeds have, and usually the reasons
people desire the deeds to have.
*
59. Everything can be plausibly
explained and excused.
*
61. Human happines depends mostly on
mood.
*
64. Society is based on lies,
pretenses and hypocrisy, and could not exist without it.
*
65. Ordinary prudence does
help men not to give into their ambitions or feelings, but it is true this
mostly depends on self-interest and self-control.
*
66. Greed galls everything it lusts
after and seeks to possess where it is wiser to enjoy.
*
68. Love is the desire to help
others. The best illustration is the relation between parents and
children.
The love epigrammatical moralists
talk of is not love but sex or secual need or lust by another name.
*
69. Pure love is far more common
between parents and children than between parents.
*
76. Of course there is real
human love for other human beings: Without it, parents would butcher their
children for being such expensive and demanding nuisances.
*
The translators supply this - and see my
68.
["Oh Love! no habitant of earth thou art—
An unseen
seraph, we believe in thee—
A faith whose martyrs are the
broken heart,—
But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see
The naked eye, thy form as it should be."
—Lord Byron,
}Childe Harold, Canto iv., stanza 121.]
78. Most men love justice to the
extent they profit from it.
*
81. Whatever we think or feel is to
a considerable extent our own creation and relative to our own
position.
*
82. Peace exists between two parties
after one is defeated.
*
83. Friendship, if genuine, is
companionship based on some mutual interest and some mutual capacity
and willingness to please.
*
87. Social life is for the most part
mutual deceit to protect each other's feelings and further each self's
interests.
Indeed, see
Mandeville.
The translators supply this - and are
mistaken and misleading, or at least their Aimé Martin is:
[A maxim, adds Aimé Martin, "Which may enter into the
code of a vulgar rogue, but one is astonished to find it in a
moral treatise." Yet we have scriptural authority for it:
"Deceiving and being deceived."—2 TIM. iii. 13.]
In fact, II Timothy III.13 reads in full: "But
evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived" -
which is or should be fair enough, for Christians, if they believe mankind
consists of sinners mostly.
*
89. Everybody complains about the
judgements of others, but very few try to remedy the shortcomings in
their own judgements.
*
90. We are rarely valued for what we
are worth.
*
97. To be able to see things as they
are is almost as rare a capacity as to be able to explain why things
are as they are. Few are willing to see the facts; fewer are able to
see the facts; and fewer still are able to explain the facts.
*
98. Few deny they are good men,
though all know they are poor reasoners. Nothing blinds as well as
self-interest.
*
102. It is very
difficult to reason against one's feelings and inclinations - but one
can do so, namely on the basis of values and beliefs one arrived at
before the present feelings and inclinations.
*
103. It is much easier to understand
an argument than the things argued about.
*
104. Adequate perspective is
required for adequate judgement.
*
105. A rational man is one who
argues conclusions logically from assumptions and tests his
assumptions by comparing his conclusions with experience. However,
this will not be of any avail, unless one as a faculty for finding
adequate assumptions.
*
106. All knowledge is knowledge of
outlines only. If there were not so much capable of true summary
judgement, men would not have survived. The simplicity of the universe
corresponds to the finiteness of our understanding.
*
110. It is far easier to give advice
than to give help. Generally, the givers of advice are more helped by
their giving advice than the receivers are by the advice.
*
115. People deceive themselves as
easily as they deceive others. Besides, all know only the surface of
others, and few men have adequate knowledge of the character and lives
of those they depend on.
*
116. Between human beings,
things are rarely what they would seem, for all play roles nearly all of the
time, and even if they don't try most of the time to avoid hurting other's
feelings.
One of the things Rochefoucauld missed was that
there is some genuine disinterestedness in human beings - inclinations, values
and tastes that concern the things rathers their own interests, benefits, or
standing.
*
The translators supply:
["I have often thought how ill-natured a maxim it was which on
many occasions I have heard from people of good understanding,
‘That as to what related to private conduct no one was ever
the better for advice.' But upon further examination I have
resolved with myself that the maxim might be admitted without any
violent prejudice to mankind. For in the manner advice was
generally given there was no reason I thought to wonder it should
be so ill received, something there was which strangely inverted
the case, and made the giver to be the only gainer. For by what I
could observe in many occurrences of our lives, that which we
called giving advice was properly taking an occasion to show our
own wisdom at another's expense. On the other side to be
instructed or to receive advice on the terms usually prescribed
to us was little better than tamely to afford another the
occasion of raising himself a character from our
defects."—Lord Shaftesbury, Characteristics, i., 153.]
119. People quickly come to believe
their own pretensions about themselves. It tends to be much easier to
believe that one is as one likes to be than to be it, whereas imagined
qualities often are as pleasant and effective as real ones. In social
life it rarely matters what is - appearance and hypocrisy not only
count for but in many cases are what they pretend to be: A creditable
travesty of the real thing.
*
120. It is easier to be weak than to
be good.
*
121. Much good is done as necessary
precondition for remunerative evil.
*
122. Noone can resist his passions -
all one may hope to do is to act or fail to act wisely upon them.
*
125. Cunning consists in
three things: First, the desire to be better of oneself; second, the desire to
deceive others to achieve this; and third, the ability to lie and deceive while
not being found out.
The ability to lie and deceive while not being
found out is in all men and women who reached adulthood without being locked up
for deviances: It is the common currency of social transactions between people
not belonging to the same group.
*
135. Character is real, but much of
character is enacted. Both roles and character depend on purpose: We
play at being such and such person to further our ends, and if we
pretend long enough we will become what we pretend, if we have the
capacity.
*
136. Love tends to be a euphemism
for lust.
*
138. People like to talk of
themselves most of all.
*
The translators supply this:
["Montaigne's vanity led him to talk perpetually of himself,
and as often happens to vain men, he would rather talk of his own
failings than of any foreign subject."— Hallam, Literature
Of Europe.]
139. Few people care about subjects
that do not afford them to shine.
*
142. One basic human problem
is that the vast majority of men is not able to argue rationally: What they
think rational is their own prejudices, that tend to be based on ignorance, fear
and stupidity.
*
The translators supply:
"Men who are unequal to the labour of discussing an argument
or wish to avoid it, are willing enough to suppose that much has
been proved because much has been said."— Junius, Jan.
1769.]
148. The translators supply:
*
["Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And, without
sneering, teach the rest to sneer."
Pope {Essay On Man, (1733),
Epistle To Dr. Arbuthnot.}]
151. The only persons fit to rule
others are those who do rule themselves.
*
165. Public
appreciation is always of chimaeras: Mundus VULT decipi.
*
166. If people may choose between
appearance and reality they normally choose appearance, because it
fits better with their beliefs and desires.
*
171. To believe that at bottom all
people seek to do and avoid is due to self-interest confuses the
interest people may take in others with the fact that all can only
feel their own feelings. Besides, a considerable amount of apparent
self-interest is not so much self-interest as cowardice (and cowardice
is not the same as self-interest, because it is the motive that keeps
many would be thieves from indulging their self-interest).
*
175. Where love is the veneer of
lust there is no constancy. Most succesful marriages are not based on
love for each other but on friendship, succesful cooperation and love
for the offspring.
*
180. Noone feels for another what
one feels for oneself, for noone feels another's feelings. All
sympathy is based on the imagination (though some instinct is
involved).
*
186. In fact,
societies of thieves, pirates and thugs also have their morals, and
most of these are quite ordinary.
In general, appreciation of
people follows rank. Few can see the worth of a person apart from his
social status.
*
The translators supply
["If individuals have no virtues their vices may be of use to
us."—Junius, 5th Oct. 1771.]
196. We remember what we desire to
remember, and endeavour to forget the rest.
*
200. There is no such thing as a
pure motive. All motives are mixed.
*
201. Noone is irreplacable in
society.
*
205. The common virtues are based on
conformism. Hence the least interesting people tend to be the most
virtuous.
*
207. People do not grow mentally
after age 25, nor do they grow older mentally. There is little wisdom
based on understanding - most wisdom consists of prettified
disillusions and is based on bitter experience.
*
213. Personal power, personal glory
and personal riches are the ends of social actions, beyond the need
for survival. The egoism that
moves all is beneficent to most because (and only if) the egoism of
each is checked and balanced by the egoism of others.
*
216. People turn into different
people when they believe themselves to be watched by other people, and
the more so they believe they depend on these. The difference between
people and the roles people play is as between one skinned and one
unskinned.
*
218. Hypocrisy is the foundation of
most moral actions. Most good is done for no better reason than to
avoid the sanctions imposed on not doing good. Few people
spontaneously help others, and those who do help only a few of those
in need of help.
*
219. Wars are fought because the
combatants on each side rather murder unknown persons who have never
harmed them than incur the disapproval of their own fellows.
*
220. Most personalities are mostly
pretense. Very few have the courage to say what they think and do as
they feel, and of those who do most are drunk or mad.
*
230. All social behaviour is based
on role-playing; all role-playing is based on imitation; all imitation
consists in aping others in the hope to acquire what they acquire by
their behaviour.
*
234. The social radicals tend to be
the ambitious with little chance on a career by normal means.
*
237. The good all too often are the
bad without courage.
*
240. Much that goes for human beauty
is symmetry of otherwise normal features combined with some childish
features.
*
247. Loyalty is based on adulation
of authority; fear of others; and love of ease. The easiest and surest
way to preferment is to be a loyal fool.
*
250. True eloquence speaks in
original similes and maxims.
*
254. All humility is a stratagem to
avoid offense to the pride of others. The truly humble are without
self-interest; and those without self-interest are dead.
*
255. Except in simple cases, the
expressed emotions and the felt emotions are as different as taste and
digestion.
*
256. The world is composed of persons playing roles: "person" comes
from "persona" i.e. mask. But while it is true that who functions in
society functions in it by playing some role, and also true that most
men are hypocrites besides playing roles - and thus wilful deceivers,
usually for personal benefit - it is not true all men are.
*
The translators supply:
["All the world's a stage, and all the men and
women merely players."—Shakespeare, As You Like It{, Act II, Scene VII,
Jaques}.
"Life is no more than a dramatic scene, in
which the hero should preserve his consistency to the last."—Junius.]
257. The translators supply:
*
["Gravity is the very essence of
imposture."—Shaftesbury, Characteristics, p. 11, vol. I.
"The very essence of gravity is design, and consequently deceit;
a taught trick to gain credit with the world for more sense and
knowledge than a man was worth, and that with all its pretensions
it was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit had
long ago defined it—a mysterious carriage of the body to
cover the defects of the mind."—Sterne, Tristram Shandy,
vol. I., chap. ii.]
264. Pity and
compassion are not barter or tit for tat, though they may be, neither
need they be based on the imaginary placing oneself in another
person's shoes: There does seem to be some natural human fellow
feeling, that takes joy in another's joys and commisserates with
another's misery.
*
The translators supply:
["Grief for the calamity of another is pity, and ariseth from
the imagination that a like calamity may befal himself{;} and
therefore is called compassion."—Hobbes' Leviathan{,
(1651), Part I, Chapter VI}.]
266. Passions mix like paints in
water. Except when in extreme emotion all motives are mixed.
*
269. Noone can see all the
consequences nor all the causes of one's acts.
*
323. Very few have good judgement in
all matters, for very few have good judgement. What special qualities
people have tend to be based on the development of some at the cost of
many others.
*
334. Women like to be seen; men to
see.
*
360. People do not care for people
in general. All love few; like some; and are indifferent to nearly
all.
*
382. The translators supply
this explanation:
*
[The Bouts-Rimés was a literary game popular in the
17th and 18th centuries—the rhymed words at the end of a
line being given for others to fill up. Thus Horace Walpole being
given, "brook, why, crook, I," returned the burlesque
verse— "I sits with my toes in a Brook, And if any one axes
me Why? I gies 'em a rap with my Crook, 'Tis constancy makes me,
ses I."]
375. Most harm is done by common
people: It is the common people who willingly serve as cannonfodder
and butchers for the ambitions of their leaders.
*
405. The translators supply:
*
["To most men experience is like the stern lights of a ship
which illumine only the track it has passed."—
Coleridge.]
414. Nearly all judgements of nearly
all people are based on the emotions and not on ascertainable fact and
logic.
*
433. The translators supply:
*
["Nemo alienae virtuti invidet qui satis confidet suae."
—Cicero In Marc Ant.]
447. In Dutch, "propriety" translates
i.a. as "zeden" or mores, and indeed the non-legal norms and usages of
"how things ought to be done" (felt, believed, thought) "in Our Group"
tend to go much further than the laws.
*