ve
become known even to writers in the newspapers, and we all copy them from
each other.

Rochefoucauld says that a man may be too dull to be duped by a very
clever person. He himself was so clever that he was often duped, first
by the general honest dulness of mankind, and then by his own acuteness.
He thought he saw more than he did see, and he said even more than he
thought he saw. If the true motive of all our actions is self-love, or
vanity, no man is a better proof of the truth than the great maxim-maker.
His self-love took the shape of a brilliancy that is sometimes false. He
is tricked out in paste for diamonds, now and then, like a vain,
provincial beauty at a ball. "A clever man would frequently be much at a
loss," he says, "in stupid company." One has seen this embarrassment of
a wit in a company of dullards. It is Rochefoucauld's own position in
this world of men and women. We are all, in the mass, dullards compared
with his cleverness, and so he fails to understand us, is much at a loss
among us. "People only praise others in hopes of being praised in turn,"
he says. Mankind is not such a company of "log-rollers" as he avers.

There is more truth in a line of Tennyson's about

"The praise of those we love,
Dearer to true young hearts than their own praise."

I venture to think we need not be young to prefer to hear the praise of
others rather than our own. It is not embarrassing in the first place,
as all praise of ourselves must be. I doubt if any man or woman can
flatter so discreetly as not to make us uncomfortable. Besides, if our
own performances be lauded, we are uneasy as to whether the honour is
deserved. An artist has usually his own doubts about his own doings, or
rather he has his own certainties. About our friends' work we need have
no such misgivings. And our self-love is more delicately caressed by the
success of our friends than by our own. It is still self-love, but it is
filtered, so to speak, through our affection for another.

What are human motives, according to Rochefoucauld? Temperament, vanity,
fear, indolence, self-love, and a grain of natural perversity, which
somehow delights in evil for itself. He neglects that other element, a
grain of natural worth, which somehow delights in good for itself. This
taste, I think, is quite as innate, and as active in us, as that other
taste for evil which causes there to be something not wholly displeasing
in the m