The distinctive point of interest, at the start, is that on which M. Gilbert lays stress, namely, "the man of action takes precedence of the writer in his [i.e. Vauvenargues'] case, and always inspires him1." To illustrate the truth of this statement, the briefest biographical outline must suffice.

Born in 1715, of a family noble but poor, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues, underwent a somewhat exiguous education in a manor-house near Aix. From the outset of life his health was poor, so indifferent indeed that though it appears to be uncertain whether he even went to college, it is known that he was unacquainted with both Latin and Greek. He is therefore one of those rare persons, a stylist who could not read the greatest masters of style in the original. When he was 24, he joined the Régiment du Roi, in which eventually he became a captain. Six years of arduous service left the delicate man incapable of following further the profession he had chosen. Disappointed but still undaunted, he turned to diplomacy. In spite however of his most earnest appeals, and his offers to serve without emolument if only those in high places would put him to the proof, he was left to languish for two years in unemployment and poverty. Yet unemployed is, in this connexion, a relative term; it was impossible that Vauvenargues should be idle, and his leisure was given to letters. At last, in spite of his optimistic courage, he perceived the uselessness of his efforts to enter the public service. Though, by this time, his health was shattered and death was approaching palpably, his devotion to literature and more especially to philosophy only increased in intensity. With serenity and courage and through severe bodily suffering he continued his philosophic speculations.

"True Fortitude," Locke wrote, "I take to be the quiet Possession of a Man's self, and an undisturb'd doing his Duty, whatever Evil besets, or Danger lies in his Way," words which seem to describe with prophetic precision this fine French

1 Eloge de Vauvenargues, p. xi.

gentleman. Vauvenargues died on May 28, 1747, at the early age of 32. That M. Gilbert's description of the "valiant athlete" is not exaggerated, the following passage from a letter which Vauvenargues wrote to his friend Saint-Vincens may shew. It was despatched on Nov. 24, 1746, about six months that is before his death: "I need your friendship my dear Saint-Vincens: all Provence is in arms1, and here am I sitting quietly by my fireside, the wretched state of my eyes and health are not sufficient justification, and I ought to be where the rest of the gentlemen of my Province are. Therefore, I beg, summon me at once if there be any post in our newly levied forces, and if I shall be certain to be employed if I come to Provence."

Well, surely all those, who for any reason or for none, distrust or are weary of the professional pedagogue, may give a hearing to a man of such spirit; for "spirit," so one would think, must have an important part to play in education.

A critic, dealing with a writer upon a definite subject, has a comparatively easy task. It is far otherwise when the author is an eighteenth century thinker, intent on the origin, purpose and performances of the human race, and when the critic desires to extract his views on one part of Man's achievement, on education for example.

Vauvenargues rejects explicitly the name philosopher which Mirabeau had applied to him: "You do me too great an honour when you try to stimulate me by the title of philosopher ..................it is a name I have not taken..............I do not deserve ito."

In order therefore to introduce something like method into this survey, it may be as well to divide it, attending first to the philosophic basis underlying the whole, and afterwards to the details, practical points of everyday intention and management. It is hardly disputable that the deplorable state of his health

1 This was on the occasion of the invasion of Provence by the Duc de Savoie.

2 To Mirabeau, March 1, 1739.

tinged Vauvenargues' thought with a streak of grey. Nevertheless, time after time, with an admirable courage, he drives off the temptation to despond: "corriger son humeur, blanchir ses idées1, se former un plan de vie, se conduire par principes, se soustraire aux prejugés, épurer ses inclinations, s'y livrer ensuite hardiment, et ne pas perdre de vue que la gaîté est le vrai bonheur; voilà, mon cher Mirabeau, l'essence de la morale." In view of the closing sentence is it quite out of place to remember that Grostête once observed to a Friar Preacher "Tria sunt necessaria ad salutem tempora, cibus, "somnus, jocus"; to recall that the compilers of the Daily Offices thought it worth while to include the wholesome petition, "And make Thy chosen people joyful"? Yet, in this particular matter, Vauvenargues was handicapped heavily. As some five weeks later, he explains to the same correspondent, it remains broadly true that the difference in physical health which separated him from ordinary men, reflected itself in his attitude to the whole of life. Of all men who think (and how many never do), perhaps he is, so he argues, the only one who is living actually "from hand to mouth"; "we all admit," he seems to say to Mirabeau, his friend, who remained so oddly insensible to the young philosopher's delicacy and constant desperate suffering, "we all admit that each day may be our last, but with me that is true, literally true." And so while, acutely observant as he is, he realises that other men have an object, in which all their happiness is bound up, in a future which they have a reasonable hope of enjoying, Vauvenargues snatches, with wistful hands, at the scanty opportunity of the precarious passing day: "tous mes désirs se concentrent, et forment une humeur sombre" (yet even here the "unconquerable hope" revives in the closing words), “que j'essaie d'adoucir par toute sorte de moyens3."

1 Two phrases suggested to him by Mirabeau's letter of Feb. 7, 1739. 2 To Mirabeau, March 1, 1739.

3 To Mirabeau, April 9, 1739.

à

Vauvenargues found himself in a literary period, a time when, as Mirabeau reminded him, "les savants et les gens talent font un espèce de république à part1." In such a commonwealth the young soldier-philosopher's talents would enable him to shine. Every literary age has its own distinguishing characteristic: that of the 18th century was its absorption in ideas ideas to which it applied a penetrating scepticism. Vauvenargues was abundantly aware of this: "men talk of many matters as if their principles were self-evident, and simultaneously they dispute every point as if everything were uncertain." He himself holds no dubious view as to the real existence somewhere of truth,-"la nature a son cours réglé, et elle a ses droits inviolables3"; in the general flux of speculation he will maintain that "the truth is independent of men's opinions and interests." Yet it is significant that these words. are made to fall from the lips of Demosthenes in his imaginary conversation with Isocrates, as if Vauvenargues felt here some necessity of falling back on antique authority.

If one idea more than another dominated the minds of thinking men in France in the 18th century, it was probably the conception of the perfection of primitive nature, a view connected so irrevocably with the name of Rousseau. It is quite true that Vauvenargues died two years at least before the publication of the earliest of Rousseau's writings. To clear up this point, it may be well to set down the important dates in Rousseau's literary life. The first of his works, a pamphlet which contained the germ of the theory developed and elaborated afterwards in Le Contrat Social and Émile, viz. Le Discours sur les Sciences et sur les Arts, appeared in 1749 or 1750. This was followed in 1754 by the Treatise entitled L'Origine et les Fondements de l'Inégalité parmi les Hommes. Then in 1762

1 To Vauvenargues, April 24, 1739.

2 Discours sur le Caractère des différents siècles, Vol. I. p. 152.
3 Ibid. Vol. II. p. 123.

4 Dialogues iv. Vol. II. p. 18.

appeared Le Contrat Social and Émile; the latter, though written first, being published last. Though it is thus clear that Vauvenargues could not have been influenced directly by Rousseau, yet a common cause may have operated on them both. What men call an accident appears to have turned Rousseau's attention to that line of thought from which nothing can ever separate him again.

In 1749, the Académie de Dijon set, as the subject of its prize essay in the following year, this proposition: Si le progrès des sciences et des arts a contribué à corrompre ou à épurer les mœurs. In a local newspaper, Rousseau saw a notice of this; his first Discours was the practical result. The mere fact that such a subject should have been chosen indicates that the minds of thinking men were directed towards this problem of primitive v. civilised men, and that therefore neither Vauvenargues nor Rousseau was original in considering it, but rather both were carried along by a speculation just then beginning to be popular.

Vauvenargues approaches the question in a fashion removed from the common path. He is trying to inquire with philosophical accuracy, in the minute exact way of the 18th century, into the actual conditions of modern life, and that necessitates, naturally enough, some treatment of the times preceding his own. He conducts this examination without blame or panegyric. Though he is ready enough to admit that the men of early times knew less than the happy occupants of the 18th century, yet he will not for that reason call them barbarians, he will not even allow their inferiority. "I think," he observes with one of his quiet flashes of wit, "I think I could have lived very happily in Thebes, at Memphis, in Babylon. I could do very nicely without our manufactures, our gunpowder, our compass, and all the rest of our modern inventions, and without our philosophy too'."

1 Discours sur le Caractère des différents siècles, Vol. 1. p. 156.