other people.
This La Rochefoucauld stoutly denied, but he was not so excessive as
his commentators in his condemnation of that self-love which he
declares to be the source of all our moral actions. He insinuates the
possibility of an innocent and even a beneficial egotism. He says,
"The praise which is given us serves to fix us in the practice of
virtue," and if that is true, _amour-propre_ must be practically
useful. Helvetius, who made some very valuable comments on the
"Maximes" a hundred years later, pointed out that _amour-propre_ is
not in itself an evil thing, but is a sentiment implanted in us all by
nature, and that this sentiment is transformed in every human being
into either vice or virtue, so that although we are all egoists, some
are good and some are bad.

La Rochefoucauld, therefore, while he takes a very dark view of the
selfishness of the human race, softens the shades of his picture by
admitting that egotism may be, and often must be, advantageous not
merely to the individual but to the race. And here we find the key to
one of the oddest passages in his works, that in which he attributes
his inspiration to two saints, St. Augustine and St. Epicurus! He
says--

Everybody wishes to be happy; that is the aim of all the acts of
life. Spurious men of the world and spurious men of piety only seek
for the appearance of virtue, and I believe that in matters of
morality, Seneca was a hypocrite and Epicurus was a saint. I know of
nothing in the world so beautiful as nobility of heart and loftiness
of mind: from these proceeds that perfect integrity which I set above
all other qualities, and which seems to me, at my present stage of
life, to be of more price than a royal crown. But I am not sure
whether, in order to live happily and as a man of the highest sense of
honour, it is not better to be Alcibiades and Phaedo than to be
Aristides and Socrates.

It would take us too far out of our path to comment on the relation of
this epicureanism to the religion of La Rochefoucauld's day, but a few
words seem necessary on this subject. He says extremely little about
religion, although he makes the necessary and perhaps not wholly
perfunctory, statement that he was orthodox. But the position of a
votary of St. Epicurus had grown difficult. Since the Duke's exile,
the enmity between the church and the world had become violent, so
violent that a man of prominent social and intellectual position was
bound to take one