were first exhibited as a course of lectures at
the Royal Institution in February of this year. They have been revised
and considerably enlarged. For the English of the passages translated
or paraphrased I am in every case responsible. The chapter on "The
Gallantry of France" appeared in the _Edinburgh Review_, and I thank
the editor and publisher of that periodical for their courteous
permission to include it here.

_April 1918_.

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

One of the most gifted of the young officers who gave their lives for
France at the beginning of the war, Quartermaster Paul Lintier, in the
admirable notes which he wrote on his knee at intervals during the
battle of the Meuse in August 1914, said--

"The imperative instinct for making the best you can of life, the
sentiment of duty, and anxiety for the good opinion of others, in a
word _honour_--these are the main educators of the soldier under fire.
This is not a discovery, it is simply a personal statement."

Taken almost at random from the records of the war, this utterance may
serve us as well as any other to distinguish the attitude of the
Frenchman in the face of violent and critical action from the equally
brave and effective attitude of other races. He has the habit, not
common elsewhere, of analyzing conduct and of stripping off from the
contemplation of it those voluntary illusions which drop a curtain
between it and truth.

The result of this habit of ruthless criticism is to concentrate the
Frenchman's attention, even to excess, on the motives of conduct, and
to bring him more and more inevitably to regard self-love,
self-preservation, personal vanity in its various forms, as the source
of all our apparent virtues. Even when we appear to be most
disinterested, even when we are most clearly actuated by unselfish
devotion, by _honour_, we are really the prey, as Lintier saw it, of
the wish to save our lives and to preserve the good opinion of others.
Underneath the transports of patriotism, underneath the sincerity of
religious fervour, the Frenchman digs down and finds _amour-propre_ at
the root of everything.

This attitude or habit of mind is particularly shocking to all those
who live in a state of illusion, and there is probably no aspect of
French character which is more difficult for the average Englishman to
appreciate than this tendency towards sceptical dissection of the
motives of conduct. Yet it is quite cer