f
the original suggestions were started, indeed it is he who seems to
have first laid down the formula that "the mind is the servant and
even the dupe of the instincts," which both Pascal and La
Rochefoucauld were presently to expand in such brilliant forms. But it
is quite an error to presume, as some writers have done, that there
was a kind of factory for maxims, out of which sentences were turned
which really belonged to no one in particular. The "Maximes" of Mme de
Sable and those of the Abbe Esprit--the latter contained in a
Jansenist volume called "The Falsity of Human Virtues"--were published
independently, but in the same year, 1678. Any one who has the
patience to refer to these works may satisfy himself that Mme de
Sable, as an artist, is superior to Esprit, but immeasurably inferior
to La Rochefoucauld, who is the one unapproachable master of the
maxim.[3]

[Footnote 3: A good deal of the prejudice which successive
critics, and (very mischievously) Brunetiere in particular,
have shown with regard to the character of La Rochefoucauld,
is due, in my opinion, to the influence of Victor Cousin,
who published, in 1854, a disjointed and diffuse, but in
many ways brilliantly executed volume on Mme de Sable.
Cousin, who examined, for the first time, a vast array of
MS. sources, deliberately lowered the value of La
Rochefoucauld in order to enhance the merit of the lady, of
whom the learned academician wrote like a lover. Even Esprit
was thrown into the scale to lighten the weight of the
Duke's originality. Cousin was borne gaily on the stream of
his heroine-worship, and others less profoundly acquainted
with the facts have let themselves be carried with him. But
it is time that we should cease to imitate them in this.]

For six or seven years the Duke worked away at the polishing of his
incomparable epigrams, and it was not until October 27, 1665, that the
little famous book made its anonymous appearance. The importance of
the work was perceived immediately in the close circle of the _salons_
which regulated literary opinion in Paris. For half a century past
Frenchmen had been regarding with jealous attention the causes and
effects of human passion, culminating, for the moment, in the treatise
written by Descartes for the daughter of the Queen of Bohemia. The
Jansenists and the Jesuits, the playwrights, the novelists, Hobbes and
Spinoza, a