Vauvenargues and the Whole Truth

Author(s): Jack Undank

Source: PMLA, Vol. 85, No. 5 (Oct., 1970), pp. 1106-1115
Published by: Modern Language Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1261552 .
Accessed: 16/12/2014 04:13

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Modern Language Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to PMLA.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Tue, 16 Dec 2014 04:13:58 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 VAUVENARGUES AND THE WHOLE TRUTH
BY JACKUNDANK
THE study of man was, for Vauvenargues,
what the pursuit of "la verite dans les
sciences" was so dramatically for Descartes: a
question of personal salvation as well as the sal-
vation of mankind. The truth or, better still, the
method for arriving at it, once revealed, would
ultimately lead to a perfecting of man's moral
nature, and, ideally, it would usher in an epoch
of harmony among men. For Vauvenargues, on
the more personal level, it would loosen and alter
the rigid social and psychological attitudes that
denied him the position and recognition he
thought he deserved. It would unseal the eyes of
entrenched authorities, provide a more humane,
"scientific" mirror for princes, and put an end to
useless prejudice and conflict. This is not only to
say that Vauvenargues's philosophical specula-
tions have ultimately a very practical function,
but also that his suggestions for reform, for a
change in interpersonal attitudes, are grounded
in a notion of truth and a method for arriving at
it. What is most striking about Vauvenargues's
works, taken as a whole, is precisely the manner
in which these two realms, the social (the world
of politicians, courtesans, orators, and kings)
and the philosophical (the world of thinkers and
ideas), feed upon one another and fuse. As
Vauvenargues sees them, they pose analogous
problems, have similar structures, comparable
villains and heroes. Each calls for some final
unification or, more accurately, "conciliation"-
Vauvenargues's own expression for the task.
Vauvenargues is remarkably consistent in his
vision of both realms. In order therefore more
fully to understand the peculiar form and
urgency of his philosophical solution, his notion
of "the whole truth," and the literary genres he
uses to expose it, it may be helpful first to for-
mulate a brief synthesis of his special view of
men as social beings.
I people and events. The blur around the edges of
When Vauvenargues, like Hobbes, describes
life as "un long combat"' or when he speaks of
wolves, hawks, and falcons as the "rivaux de la
barbare cruaute des hommes" (I, 218), he has in
mind man's struggle for preeminence and power.
He often grumbles at unfair advantages such as
inherited wealth and position, but like many
before him,2 he can justify and even recommend
the struggle-what he calls the pursuit of
"gloire"-as a school for virtue. What matters
1106
This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Tue, 16 Dec 2014 04:13:58 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
most for Vauvenargues is that there be pos-
sibilities for movement and interaction. The
world gives pain principally when the conflict is
frozen, when one side excludes the other from
consideration or consciousness. Men in general
"n'ecoutent point, ils n'entendent point quand
on leur parle d'autre chose que d'eux-memes"
(I, 92). Vauvenargues's discomfort is, in this
respect, not entirely new. It brings to mind the
misery of La Bruyere's callers gritting their
teeth in ministerial waiting rooms, and the com-
plaints of a Dorine or a Philinte arguing with
Moliere's psychologically deaf heroes. It recalls
too Pascal's comparison of men and horses,
with its ironic comment on men's constantly
frustrated need to draw assent from one another.
Vauvenargues works with and elaborates this
inherited and pervasive premise of a world of
intransigent egocentricity, in which people are
mutually dependent but in which there is always
the threat of a failure of communication.
It is not surprising that in his Maximes and
Caracteres,and elsewhere, Vauvenargues sets up
his villains metaphorically as hard, heavy,
unyielding, blind, or narrow. One ought, how-
ever, to note straight off that these qualities are
not exclusively moral. The longest portrait of
"l'homme dur," in a letter to Mirabeau (II,
184-85), does concentrate on self-righteousness,
severity, and hypocritical high-mindedness, but
these are only important facets, actually the
result, of a total mode of being. What distin-
guishes these men, as the metaphors suggest, is
their thing-like qualities and their self-imprison-
ment. Besides being rigid in themselves, they
seem to be set in unswerving motion along a
single path, catching sight of only so much as
their natures-made "tout d'une piece" (I,
185)-allow, that is to say, a very limited scene,
one discrete or temporally isolated aspect of
their perception, and therefore of their sympa-
thies, makes these men fretful, or, to use Vau-
venargues's adjectives in describing an unchari-
1 (Euvresde Vauvenargues,
ed. D.-L. Gilbert(Paris, 1857),
p. 88. A secondvolumeeditedby Gilbertand called(Euvres
posthumes etineditesde Vauvenargueswas publishedthe same
year.Subsequentreferencesareto this edition.
2 See ArthurLovejoy, "The 'Love of Praise' as the In-
dispensableSubstitute for 'Reason and Virtue' in Seven-
teenth- and Eighteenth-CenturyTheories of Human Na-
ture," in Reflectionson Human Nature (Baltimore,Md.,
1961),pp. 153-93.
 Jack Undank
table man, "defiant[s] et inquiet[s]" (I, 80). They
prefer to have a world safely ordered and homo-
geneous, a mirror image of themselves. Their
intolerance therefore easily sours into the ag-
gressive "austerite farouche et orgueilleuse des
reformateurs" (I, 96). They attempt to control
others, to "dominer les esprits par [leur] tempera-
ment" (ii, 184), as if with enough sheer, brutal
projection of themselves into the outer world
they could succeed in transforming it. What
will not succumb is dismissed or destroyed.
Anselme of the Caracteres burns his son's books
and papers because they have nothing to do with
his own family history. He cannot accept the
independent existence of others or understand
the notions of multiplicity, time, and growth.
Fixed once and for all in some undefined but
remote period of personal development, these
men are, at any present moment, filled with
necessarily "vieilles idees." They try nevertheless
to squeeze the expanding and complex present
into their "maximes etroites" (ii, 184): the very
form of their thinking expresses their short-
sightedness. And so it is with the lesser social
villains in Vauvenargues's work, the "gens a la
mode," the "homme du monde" and the "bel
esprit" who, in their own compulsive way,
express in their "traits," "saillies," and "epi-
grammes" a nervous discontinuity of superficial
truths (I, 14-15, 107). In short, "il semble qu'ils
soient convenus de ne plus rien dire de suivi, et
de ne saisir dans les choses que ce qu'elles ont de
plaisant, et leur surface" (I, 15). The man
manipulating these epigrammatic forms does not
explain his ideas. He has hit upon an esthetic
weapon that conceals his ignorance, while it
subtly subjugates and silences his listeners.
Vauvenargues's heroes, those ideal figures who,
incidentally, have received the lion's share of
critical attention and are largely responsible for
Vauvenargues's reputation as a champion of
"gloire" and "action," are clearly set in opposi-
tion to the hard, unperceptive, and authoritarian
types I have just described. Just how feasible or
imminent the battle between the two may be
is, however, problematical. Invariably Vau-
venargues fits his heroes into a purely imaginary
or historical fiction so that elements of fantasy
and nostalgia constantly bring into question the
very possibility of their real existence. Then,
studying them, their attitudes, their solutions,
their possibilities of success, one becomes aware
of the moody dialectic of Vauvenargues's mind,
shifting from discouragement and guilt to anger
and exultation. These men are alternately, some-
times even simultaneously, victims, rebels, and
This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Tue, 16 Dec 2014 04:13:58 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
1107
rulers. What one can, however, clearly detect in
them, taken as a whole, is the expression of two
psychological moments, the first violent and im-
pulsive when, suffering and repressed, they face
the enemy directly; the second, conciliatory and
peaceful when, viewing the entire field from
above, they momentarily forget their involve-
ment with single figures and concern themselves
with the entire, divisive world. In the first in-
stance, the work is done swiftly, in an eruption
of "passion" and "vehemence." The hero, Cata-
lina or Clodius, for example, reaching for a
"liberte sans bornes dans l'esprit et dans le
cceur" (ii, 186), turns actively rebellious and
forcefully overthrows the opposition. Often, as in
the case of Brutus, the sword that slays the
tyrant swings back against the assassin so that
direct self-assertion precipitates a self-destructive
guilt. In the second instance, the hero continues
to act upon recalcitrant human presences, but
not by attacking them. Instead, he makes them
supple, accepting, receptive to conciliation.
After long preparation in "les seductions de
l'eloquence," involving the "secret," the "max-
imes," and the "lumieres" for understanding
others (I, 88), he tries to neutralize conflict and
harmonize differences.3Vauvenargues repeatedly
pictures him as an orator gathering together
crowds of self-interested citizens. His char-
acteristic "profondeur," "penetration," "etendue
d'esprit," his ability to see beyond himself, and
his almost deliberate flexibility make him a
suitable mediator for apparently contradictory
opinions. Like Vauvenargues's friend, P.-H. de
Seytres-who, we are told, "entrait aisement
dans toutes les passions et dans toutes les opin-
ions que le monde blame le plus, et qui semblent
les plus bizarres; elles ne le surprenaient point:
il en penetrait le principe, il trouvait dans ses
reflexions des vues pour les justifier, marque
d'un genie eleve que son propre caractere ne
domine pas" (I, 142-43)-he is not possessed
or controlled by his own character. He is suf-
ficiently "available" to entertain the widest pos-
sible range of conventional or unconventional
ideas.
The orator re-creates within himself as well as
among his silent listeners his ideal of a smoothly
articulated humanity. As for his own relation-
ship with them, all barriers cease to exist. His
listeners, going far beyond simple acknowledg-
ment and approbation, merge with him in mood
3 Corrado Rosso, in his "Vauvenargues, l'ideale del-
l'eloquenza e la morale della gloria," Filosofia, 15 (July 1964),
sees this as an attempt especially to put an end to Pyrrho-
nistic dilemmas of the preceding generation.
 1108 Vauvenarguesand the WholeTruth
and spirit. Paradoxically, in the act of com-
munication that frees him from the restrictive
tyranny of inflexible minds, the orator described
in "Demosthene et Isocrate" becomes himself a
figure of authority enjoying the pleasures of
complete freedom and spiritual domination: "Je
voudrais qu'un homme eloquent fut en etat de
pousser toutes ses idees au-dela de l'attente de
ceux qui l'ecoutent, qu'il sortit des limites de
leur jugement, et qu'il les maitrisat par ses
lumieres, dans le meme temps qu'il les domine
par la force de son imagination, et par la vehe-
mence de ses sentiments" (II, 15). In this extreme
phase, the orator resembles Vauvenargues's more
violent rebel heroes, who themselves replace the
tyrants they overthrow. He may even be com-
pared, in a limited sense, to the self-destructive
rebels, like Brutus, since ultimately the crowd,
like the assassinated tyrant, loses its inhibiting
force, and the orator, having sloughed off the
weight of his personality and transformed him-
self into imaginative energy, sacrifices his in-
dividual identity. In fact, as we have seen, the
training in understanding that he imposes upon
himself is in itself an attempt to get beyond the
self and its individual disposition. The orator
tends therefore in the end personally to disap-
pear together with the conflicts he sets out to
remedy. If he now rules over the opposition, it is
purely as a spirit enveloping other spirits.
The orator does not then strictly mediate be-
tween factions; he seems to swallow them whole
and become one flesh with them. In this coming
together of individuals, none of them is changed;
they simply continue living independently in the
new medium the orator's mind supplies. Louis
XI, Vauvenargues's model king, who in his
larger sphere fully realizes the talents of the
orator, assimilates (the image is Vauvenargues's)
not only persons and opinions, but the dimen-
sions of time and space, so that conflicting ages
and different cultures are drawn into the same
field of comprehension: "Le passe, le present et
l'avenir sont immobiles devant ses yeux; elle
[une grande ame] porte sa vue loin d'elle; elle
embrasse cette distance enorme qui est entre les
grands et le peuple, entre les affaires generales
de l'univers et les interets des particuliers les
plus obscurs; elle incorpore a soi toutes les choses
de la terre; elle tient a tout; tout la touche; rien
ne lui est etranger: ni la difference infinie des
moeurs, ni celle des conditions, ni celle des pays,
ni la distance des temps, ne l'empchent de
rapprocher toutes les choses humaines, de s'unir
d'interet a tout" (II, 29). The ruler absorbs the
entire universe without disturbing any of its
This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Tue, 16 Dec 2014 04:13:58 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
elements. He himself remains miraculously
diaphanous, weightless, the antithesis of "un
esprit borne et pesant" (II, 28).
II
As we turn from Vauvenargues's vision of the
social and political scene to his vision of the
more purely philosophical one, it becomes clear
that similar conditions exist and that his pre-
scriptions for change run along parallel lines. In
Vauvenargues's works, the ideal philosopher
faces the problems of conflict, lack of communica-
tion, and authoritarianism that characterize
men's relationships in society. The philosopher,
however, has to contend as much with the pres-
ence of stubborn, inveterate ideas as with men
whose attitudes are fixed and unbending. The
challenge calls for qualities of mind and mea-
sures as heroic as those of the rebel and the
orator. Not surprisingly, Descartes, for example,
is sandwiched between Luxembourg and Turenne
on Vauvenargues's list of great names in the
Discours sur la gloire (I, 132, Add. 1). We
recognize him as a striking double to D'Alem-
bert's Descartes in the Discours preliminaire:
"un chef de conjures, qui a eu le courage de
s'elever le premier contre une puissance despoti-
que et arbitraire." Working in the shadow of
repressive opposition, he overthrows the old
doctrine of antiquity, yet he gathers together the
"maximes eparses" (I, 1, n. 1) of the Aristotelian
legacy. Instead of forcing his way through a
forest of settled opinion, he embraces the entire
terrain. His originality and power lie not so
much in uncovering new truths as in joining old
ones that seemed irreconcilable, in a "systeme
raisonnable" (I, 1). This method, especially the
last, conciliatory gesture, which transcends the
revolutionary impulse, is Vauvenargues's con-
stantly reiterated suggestion for any future
philosophy. It is vague. We know that it has to
do with managing a huge, accumulated mass of
unassorted notions: "nous plions sous le poids de
tant d'idees" (I, 151). We know, too, that this
mass contains contradictory material that, when
somehow set in order, will show no contradic-
tion. The order cannot be rigid. Old, hard,
closed systems wither in Vauvenargues's work
as they do in Fontenelle's and Condillac's,
though where they stress the dangers of a prioris-
tic reasoning, Vauvenargues warns against
rigidity itself. Even systematic thinking is sus-
pect. Fenelon, for example, whom we would
scarcely now accuse of it, receives harsh treat-
ment for being carried away by "l'esprit syste-
matique" and for proposing certain "regles
 Jack Undank
etroites" of behavior (II, 6). Clearing his con-
science in a dialogue with Pascal, Fenelon is
made to confess that he actually constructed "un
systeme de morale," that he was "comme tous les
esprits systematiques, qui ramenent sans cesse
toutes choses a leurs principes." The old systems,
like Vauvenargues's old villains, focus in com-
pulsively narrow ways. They pick and choose
what fits; and what does not, they discard or
ignore. They open the door to further conflict.
Any attempt to reduce the world to principles or
an imposed cohesiveness leads to an unmanage-
able multiplicity and then to contradictions that
seem naturally to polarize out of multiplicity.
That much is clear. The difficulty in under-
standing Vauvenargues's recommended method
arises in large part because Vauvenargues con-
ceives of the act of conciliating ideas-or men's
minds-and of the final "systeme"4 in terms of a
spiritual discipline or orientation rather than as
a purely noetic possibility. And the "principes"
of Vauvenargues's "systeme" are the guideposts
of an individual and personal awareness that
cannot be reached without a special grace. His
method, as Emile Brehier noticed, is elitist; it has
none of Descartes's egalitarianism: "Le plus
grand nombre des hommes sera toujours peuple"
(I, 152). One has to have certain qualities to
begin with, especially those he mentions most
frequently, "penetration," "profondeur," and
"etendue d'esprit"-qualities that make the
right perception possible and may be said them-
selves to constitute the method. We learn that it
is "faute de penetration que nous concilions si
peu de choses" (I, 415), and then that those who
make mistakes are "incapables de concilier toutes
leurs idees" (I, 152, n. 3). "Profondeur" and
"penetration," as Vauvenargues uses the words,
enable the philosopher, as they did the orator, to
get beyond himself and to see objects as whole
and autonomous. They give a view not of dis-
crete segments or aspects of things (such as the
"hard man" has), but of a simultaneous, con-
tinuous reality. Lacking "penetration," thinkers
"prennent les divers cotes d'une meme chose
pour des contradictions de sa nature. Leur vue
se trouble et s'egare dans cette multitude de
rapports que les moindres objets leur offrent;
cette pluralite de relations detruit a leurs yeux
l'unite des sujets" (I, 152, n. 3). Truths prolifer-
ate again. But with "penetration," that is, as we
grasp objects (or people) from within, in their
own contexts, they become, in our perception,
more clearly themselves and integral, and we
accept them as such, without prejudice, and al-
most without judgment. If we are bad at judging
This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Tue, 16 Dec 2014 04:13:58 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
1109
the acts of others, for example, it is because
"nous ne nous mettons jamais a la place de ceux
que nous blamons" (II, 4). If we criticize a man's
ideas, we would do so less "si on les concevait
comme l'auteur" (I, 374). People are, in fact, less
alien to one another than they think: "Les
hommes ne se comprennent pas les uns les autres:
il y a moins de fous qu'on ne croit" (I, 492).
"Penetration" allows this kind of internal and
essential-what we would perhaps today call
phenomenological-understanding.
"Etendue d'esprit," one of the other requi-
sites, does for the whole what "penetration" does
for the individual parts. Defined as a "disposition
admirable des organes, qui nous donne d'em-
brasser beaucoup d'idees a la fois sans les con-
fondre" (I, 13), it resembles nothing so much as
the ideal ruler's ability to scan the universe and
keep it suspended, "immobile devant ses yeux."
Objects maintain their independent qualities
while assembling in a single perspective.5 Com-
bined with "penetration," "etendue d'esprit"
deadens the urge to evaluate. It encourages in-
stead a kind of wide-eyed trance of self-forget-
fulness and knowing. Phenomena, at peace with
themselves, keep their place, though they have
mobile, interdependent parts and variable rela-
tionships within a larger structure. We concen-
trate on the peculiar style of being, the inner
laws of each of the parts or of the whole, realiz-
ing, as we do, that "tout ce qui a l'etre a un
ordre, c'est-a-dire, une certaine maniere d'exister
qui lui est aussi essentielle que son etre meme:
4 Vauvenargues's editors, Suard and Gilbert, repeatedly
indicate that Vauvenargues's philosophic vocabulary is
unsure and confusing. Fernand Vial discusses the problem in
Une Philosophie et une morale du sentiment: Luc de Clapiers,
Marquis de Vauvenargues(Geneva: Droz, 1938), pp. 7-8. As
so frequently happens, the original thinker finds himself
forced to pour new wine into old bottles. Vauvenargues does
speak of an ultimate "systeme," and this has misled many
critics into thinking that they could find one in his work that
resembled the systems Vauvenargues himself attacked. In his
"Plan d'un livre de philosophie," Vauvenargues says that
"C'est a nous prendre des vues generales, et a nous former
un esprit vaste de tant d'esprits particuliers" (II, 72). The
expression "vues generales" is less misleading than "systeme"
for Vauvenargues's purposes. See the following note.
6
Vauvenargues's "etendue d'esprit" produces a result
analogous to Descartes's lumen naturalis, Locke's "intui-
tion," and D'Alembert's "seul point de vue," that is, a cer-
tainty and a sense of unity as immediate and as self-evident
as the testimony of sight. Vauvenargues's vocabulary
varies with the context and the particular aspect of his
method he chooses to emphasize. At times he stresses its
comprehensiveness, as in the use of "vues generales," at
others its unifying qualities, with his insistence on "une
seule perspective," at still others the instantaneous con-
sciousness of truth, with the adverbial expression "d'un seul
coup."
 1110 Vauvenargues and the Whole Truth
petrissez au hasard un morceau d'argile; en
quelque etat que vous le laissiez, cette argile
aura des rapports, une forme et des proportions,
c'est-a-dire un ordre" (I, 218). We do not react;
we accept, with Leibniz or Spinoza, that "tout
ce que la nature a fait est a sa place, tel qu'il
doit etre, et qu'il est aussi sot d'en rire que d'en
pleurer" (i, 314).
A kind of peace, then, descends in this final
vision vouchsafed those capable of practicing
Vauvenargues's method. But can a method that
admittedly depends upon personal qualities be
in fact communicated? Can the "systeme," or
unified vision, to which the method leads and
which would consist of nothing less than the dis-
play and cross-referencing of all things, be set
down? Though he has made contact with the
world or, more precisely, communed with it,
eliminating conflict and contradiction, the phi-
losopher, like the model king, finds himself alone
in his awareness-and he faces the additional
problem of articulating it. Vauvenargues strug-
gles not only with an inherited philosophical
vocabulary, as we have seen, with words like
"concilier" and "systeme" that he forces into
new meanings, but with the problems of literary
form. He consciously aspires to a kind of ex-
pression that would move in two directions at
the same time. He wants to be concise, even
aphoristic, to "eviter les longueuis et les details,"
as he explains in his Plan d'un livre de philosophie,
because in order to "conciliate" and avoid error
one has to reduce multiplicity. If truth comes
like a light, "les esprits pesants" resemble crys-
tals that break up the beam and "multiplient
les objets" (I, 413, n. 2). And he wants also a
comprehensive, connected corpus of truths,6 to
"rapprocher en peu de mots toutes les verites
importantes" (II, 73). The literary form would
then not only convey knowledge, or the whole
truth, but it would also duplicate the form of the
experience of knowing. The trouble, Vauve-
nargues recognized, is that most people are some-
what leaden in their comprehension and need
long explanations (I, 412); that presenting truths
in their own compelling luminosity is not always,
he fears, within his own capacity; and that, as
one concludes from his writings, the desire to
reduce reality to as simple a statement as pos-
sible can work against the equally imperious
need to be comprehensive and to show inter-
relatedness.7 In his Reflexions et maximes, for ex-
ample, he uses genres recommended by his friend
Mirabeau (II, 150), genres notable for their con-
cision and already bearing the lettres de noblesse
of a safe tradition. But to judge from the variants
This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Tue, 16 Dec 2014 04:13:58 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
and changes that occur between the two editions
of the work, Vauvenargues repeatedly attempted
to expand, explain, and connect the abstractions
of his initial composition. He lengthens and
elaborates single fragments, he strings several
aphorisms together in a paragraph, or he sets
them in numbered sequence so that they can
elucidate one another: "il y en a plusieurs," he
says in his Avertissement,"que se suivent et qui
pourraient paraitre hors d'ceuvre si on les sep-
arait" (I, 373-74).8 His need to describe the com-
plexities of any matter and to unify it works
against the separative and discrete nature of the
forms he uses. The best he can do in the Re-
flexions is to sweep scattered materials into com-
mon bins.
III
The Reflexions are, in any case, a kind of
scrapbook or journal of thoughts, and clearly
Vauvenargues did not intend them to be a sys-
tematic presentation of his concept of truth or
the method for arriving at it. But they do suggest
the nature of the formal difficulties Vauvenargues
was to encounter in works more clearly designed
for that kind of presentation. When, as we shall
see, Vauvenargues finds a solution to the prob-
lem of literary form, he is also able to convey the
strategy and quality of his vision. Form and
content in his earlierwritings seem to work against
one another or at least to lend each other little
support. In large part this may be because, for
reasons of immediate prestige, he consciously
uses already established genres and gets bogged
down in thought processes that had come to be
6 See Vauvenargues's letter to Voltaire of 4 April 1743
(II, 246) in which he praises the "profondeur methodique de
M. Locke" at the expense of "la memoire feconde et decousue
de M. Bayle."
7 See his
ambiguous letter to Mirabeau, dated 30 May
1739 (ii, 134-35), in which he first speaks of lacking the
genius for brevity but then goes on to explain that even the
greatest aphorists create confusions by the very fact that
they do not explain or prove. In one of his Causeries du
lundi, xiv (Paris: Garnier, n.d.), 39, Sainte-Beuve simplifies
the issue and explains unequivocally that Vauvenargues
"n'est pas de ceux qui etranglent leur pensee ou qui la
gravent et la frappent en quelques mots splendides," whereas
Margot Kruse, in Die Maxime in der franzosischen Literatur
(Hamburg, 1960), pp. 143-48, bewilders the reader by
attributing Vauvenargues's failure as an aphorist to the
impossibility for any Enlightenment philosopher to recover
the seventeenth-century sense of paradox necessary, she
believes, for the composition of good maximes.
8 For
changes between the editions, see, e.g., the earlier
versions of Maxims 118, 122, 178, 218, 302, and 316. The
question of what Vauvenargues's intentions were in arrang-
ing the maxims as he did has never been studied. It is the
subject of a forthcoming article by this writer.
 Jack Undank
associated with them. Vauvenargues invariably
introduces innovations, but they are always
muted or curiously thrown off their logical course
by the patterns of expression he adopts.
Difficulties of this kind crop up in an early
work of Lockean inspiration called Introduction
d la connaissance de l'esprit humain. Here Vau-
venargues sets out programmatically to illustrate
the process of "conciliation." It is a work full of
brilliant but paradoxically unrealizable promise,
centering on that "connaissance de l'homme"
(I, 3) which is, he states in his Discours pre-
liminaire, the basis for all knowledge. Vauve-
nargues is concerned, especially at the outset,
with qualities of mind-not, I believe, with dif-
ferent kinds of minds--and, as his title suggests,
not with explaining them or searching for their
origins in the then usual Lockean fashion, but
with knowing them. He does mention briefly the
physical theory of mental life and the role of
knowledge and habit in the development of
mind, but he stresses that he is studying "les
effets dont ils etudient les principes" (I, 6). These
"effets" form "des contrarietes inexplicables"
(i, 5) in some eyes, and it is once again an illusory
conflict, here projected into man himself, but
affecting relationships among men, that Vau-
venargues aims to dispel. Misunderstandings of
any mind derive from confusions and conflations
of its several functioning elements, "qualites,"
"principes," "facultes," or "partis de l'esprit"-
Vauvenargues is not sure what to call them. And
there is only further muddle when these elements
are not kept analytically separate from qualities
of "caractere" or of the "passions." Vauvenargues
wants, in Book I, to introduce a perfect illumina-
tion into the machinery of the mind so that it
appears as a self-contained order distinct from
other structures of the whole man, such as those
of the passions and character. The interplay or
"rapports" between structures is, in the Intro-
duction, secondary. Vauvenargues's primary ef-
fort is to make functional and descriptive dis-
tinctions that in form instantly recall La Roche-
foucauld's definitions of such things as "un esprit
fin" and "un esprit de finesse" or "un esprit
adroit" and "un bon esprit," but that are very
different in intent. La Rochefoucauld aims at
semantic clarification for improving social in-
telligence and evaluation; he pinpoints the mean-
ings of words that are critical in the salon, but
that constantly change, or grow limp, or drop
away. Vauvenargues's descriptions deal with the
permanent features of all men, such as "memoire"
or "vivacite," which vary only in intensity from
man to man. His terms are no more evaluative
This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Tue, 16 Dec 2014 04:13:58 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
1111
than those used to describe organs of the body:
some parts seem more privileged, though all are
necessary.
The largest structure we can apprehend is
man's "caractere": "Tout ce qui forme l'esprit
et le cceur est compris dans le caractere" (I, 24).
It is also the most visible and therefore probably
deceptive. People judging things "par leur
ecorce" (I, 24) are apt to throw everything into
that catchall word and mistake one component
for another. A man of "humeur vive et legere" is
credited with "l'esprit vif," and so on. Starting
with the outer manifestation (character), one has
to work backward and inward toward the hidden
components. Vauvenargues tries. At the end of
Book I, following the various definitions I have
mentioned, he lists "les caracteres les plus ge-
neraux," but after an initial attempt with "Du
serieux," he throws up his hands: "mais combien
de causes differentes n'a-t-il pas, et combien de
caracteres sont compris dans celui-ci!" (I, 24).
And he hurriedly and disappointingly ends Book
I with several sections on certain personality
manifestations (e.g., "Du sang froid," "De la
distraction"), explaining their causes in terms
of the "partis de l'esprit," accidents of humors,
heart, and habit. As Vauvenargues rises to con-
ventional surfaces and faces them with his
readers, his awareness of innumerable, hidden
combinations and underpinnings only discour-
ages him. The possibilities, once he thinks of
specific people, seem inexhaustible. Likewise, in
Book II, when he investigates the manifestations
of passions, using the labels by which we usually
recognize them, though he has a general theory
of their single cause, he realizes that they can be
studied only in connection with the mind, body,
and character of some real individual. How can
one know "ambition"?-"il ne faut pas con-
fondre tous les ambitieux" (I, 32); or what passes
for "l'amour du monde"?-"Que de choses sont
comprises dans l'amour du monde!" (I, 32); or
"courage"?-"on ne trouve pas seulement plu-
sieurs sortes de courages, mais dans le meme
9 May Wallas
speaks of the Introduction as "simply a set
of notes analyzing different types of mind," in Luc de Clapiers,
Marquis de Vauvenargues (Cambridge, Eng., 1928), p. 225.
It was Joachim Merlant, in his De Montaigne d Vauvenargues
(Paris, 1914), p. 398, who first made the point, and Emile
Brehier who gave it full prominence by making interpersonal
incommunicability a basic postulate of Vauvenargues's
thought (Histoire de la philosophie, Paris, 1930, II, 427).
Professor Wallas' later article, "Vauvenargues in 1948,"
FSt, 3 (Jan. 1949), 19-21, praises Brehier's interpretation
but speaks of it as "in some respects a statement of the logical
conclusions which may be drawn from [Vauvenargues's
works] rather than a completely accurate account of their
content."
 1112 Vauvenargues and the Whole Truth
courage bien des inegalites" (I, 59). The phe-
nomenal world is forever opening out upon vari-
able, inner particularities. And, as the abstract
ties that bind them together loosen, individual
phenomena themselves proliferate and want to
be understood in their own terms. They can no
longer be lumped together in traditional or rigid
categories such as those of "caracteres" and
"passions," as Vauvenargues somehow defeat-
edly continues to do in Books In and III, his least
original. By the end of Book III, Vauvenargues
has so lost the original perspective of Book I,
with its notions of "conciliation" and "struc-
tures," that he trails off with a series of "courtes
definitions" of "qualites humaines" in the style
of La Rochefoucauld: "La probite est un at-
tachement a toutes les vertus civiles," "La droi-
ture est une habitude des sentiers de la vertu,"
and so on (I, 60). He becomes tedious and merely
imitative.
In the Introduction a la connaissance, Vau-
venargues wrestles with the articulation of a new
concept and stumbles over the problem of join-
ing his vision of the entire field of inner realities
with the reader's outer view. The task is to
account for appearances whose apprehension is
commonly conditioned by "les vues courtes,"
which "multiplient les maximes et les lois, parce
qu'on est d'autant plus enclin a prescrire des
bornes a toutes choses qu'on a l'esprit moins
etendu" (I, 428), and yet to convey an image of
the whole truth, which, like Nature itself, "se
joue de nos petites regles; elle sort de l'enceinte
trop etroite de nos opinions" (I, 428). What the
spectator calls "bizarreries" and contradictions
(poet-kings, learned women, sensitive soldiers,
to use Vauvenargues's own examples in Maxim
361) have to be understood as organically co-
hesive characteristics. There is already implicit
in Vauvenargues's uneasiness and impatience
with the Introduction?'some notion that the only
way to convey his understanding of men is by
referring to specific people, as many people as
there are combinations of traits, which is to say
an inexhaustible series. Individual beings en-
close and hold in suspension only apparently
irreconcilable qualities. They have ultimately,
by being described, to be freed from constricting
categories. Vauvenargues turns naturally, there-
fore, to the concrete example, the illustration.
After taking the discursive approach of the In-
troduction as far as it would go, he moves, it
would seem, toward the more presentational in
his masterful, posthumous Caracteres. Here at
last he demonstrates most clearly the method or
style of perception that leads to the kind of
This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Tue, 16 Dec 2014 04:13:58 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
peace through truth that the philosopher-hero
can achieve, the conciliation of contradictory
ideas and judgments that he had heretofore only
imperfectly suggested.
Vauvenargues is aware that he is creating, in
the CaractMres,a new kind of literature. In the
Preface, he speaks of "ces nouveaux Caracteres,"
and then says that he intentionally restricted
the number of the "new" ones, which he calls
"definitions," because the common reader, whom
Vauvenargues typically considers to be super-
ficially visual in observation, may tire of them:
"On aurait aime a developper en quelques en-
droits, non-seulement les qualites du cceur, mais
meme ces differences fines de l'esprit qui echap-
pent quelquefois aux meilleurs yeux; mais, parce
que de tels caracteres auraient ete des defini-
tions plutot que des portraits, on n'en a hasarde
qu'un petit nombre, de peur que beaucoup de
lecteurs ne fussent plus fatigues qu'amuses de ce
nouveau genre. Les hommes ne sont vivement
frappes que des images, et ils entendent toujours
mieux les choses par les yeux que par les oreilles"
(I, 287). He warns the reader, in addition, that
his "caracteres" will not be humorous because,
as he explains, ridicule ordinarily presents men
"d'un seul cote" or, what comes out to the same
thing, "l'exterieur des hommes" (I, 286, n. 2).
Vauvenargues is becoming involved in a new
esthetic that moves away from the visual and
theatrical "caractere" of La Bruyere, with its
mocking detachment and its harping on single,
obdurate qualities, toward a new realism and
complexity of vision that captures a greater full-
ness of being within a wider but still unifying
perspective. It would, in fact, be possible to find
rewarding analogies between Vauvenargues's use
10In the first edition of his
works, Vauvenargues stated
that a long lifetime would not be sufficient for him to write
a fully detailed development of the principles outlined in his
Introduction: "Detourne de ses avantages par de vains
desirs, et borne a lier mes reflexions, je cours rapidement au
but" (I, 47, n. 3). He did, however, have time to write or
revise other works before he died. In the second edition, he
simply stated that he had "ni la volonte ni le pouvoir de
donner plus d'application a cet ouvrage." Critics, from Gil-
bert (who frequently uses the expression Pendent opera
interrupta) to Roger Mercier (La Rehabilitation de la nature
humaine, 1700-1750, Villemomble, 1960, p. 419), for whom
Vauvenargues was "enleve par la mort avant d'avoir pu
composer de longs ouvrages," do not see that Vauvenargues
had no desire to continue working within certain literary
forms, that he was searching for an expression adequate to a
not entirely conscious and evolving view of things. The
traditional interpretation assumes a fully formulated phi-
losophy that Vauvenargues did not live to express. It over-
looks Vauvenargues's method of working, his repeated
rewritings and experimentation with literary genres. In short,
it ignores esthetic considerations.
 Jack Undank
of the technique of the "definition" and the in-
fusion into the eighteenth-century novel (Les
Illustres Franfaises, for example) or the theatri-
cal "genre serieux" of what has been called
"philosophical realism"-the growing esthetic
tendency to favor particularity at the expense
of categorical abstractions." There is too a paral-
lel between Vauvenargues's concept of truth as
he gives it form in the CaractMres and at least one
interpretation of the rococo world view, accord-
ing to which "the geometry of the universe" is
"animated with organic rhythms" and beauty
occurs when organic variety is given order.'2The
general effect of the genre, which interests us
here, and as Vauvenargues uses it, is to provoke
a mood of serious contemplation, and this it
accomplishes by creating the engrossing illusion
of a particular internal, psychological process
that we follow to its outer manifestations.
Whether intentionally or not, Vauvenargues
ends by showing the inadequacy of labels. Those
of his characters who have epithets alongside
their names manage for the most part to escape
them. Polidore is more than "l'Homme faible,"
although the result of his special kind of shame,
fear, imagination, indolence, violence, and pas-
sion is weakness. And even that weakness is of a
special kind. The same can be said for Horace as
"l'Enthousiaste." Pison, who is supposed to be
an "Impertinent," and is, as far as we can tell,
only one in reputation, turns out to be a complex
individual whom we see in one brief paragraph
as "un esprit hardi," "facile," "laborieux," "pa-
tient," "complaisant," "capable de se moderer,"
"tres-brave a la guerre," "trop leger," "peu sur
au jeu," and "esclave des grands." The result is
that Vauvenargues's titular epithets sound like
popular, misguided name-calling, and his "defi-
nitions" strike us as critiques of his own epithets.
What do we mean when we speak of a "scelerat"
or an "homme ferme" or an "esprit moyen" or
"profond" or "agite"? Have we an idea of what
lies behind a man we accuse of "Sotte ambition"
or "Folle ambition"? Vauvenargues answers with
portraits of particular people whose internal
makeup occasionally or principally results in the
appearance to which we give a name. These
people do not represent vices and virtues that
can be seen as separable from them or that have
so enveloped them that they have become more
embodiment than person. Vices are not La Bru-
yere's incurable, freakish diseases of a standard,
Aristotelian model. They are attached, like vir-
tues, to hidden traits of mind and heart so that
they evolve by some inner necessity and show
themselves for what we take them to be, accord-
This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Tue, 16 Dec 2014 04:13:58 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
1113
ing to time and circumstance.'3 When he juxta-
poses what would appear to be contradictory
characteristics, Vauvenargues is hinting at an
even less apparent level of being, where all
qualities converge, and vices and virtues lose
their identity. It is here that "l'ambition est
habilete, le courage est sagesse, les passions sont
esprit, l'esprit est science, ou c'est tout le con-
traire; car il n'y a rien qui ne puisse etre bon ou
mauvais, utile ou nuisible, selon l'occasion et
les circonstances" (I, 468). The Caracteresserve
then as slightly unsettling and cautionary de-
scriptions for those who cannot see the reverse
side of the tapestry of phenomena. As such they
continue, in another form, the mode of criticism
Vauvenargues tried in the section of Conseils a
un jeune homme called "Du faux jugement que
l'on porte des choses" (I, 124-26) and in his
Paradoxes, the original and more significant title
of his Reflexions et maximes.
Vauvenargues has a predilection for characters
whose behavior most dramatically deceives the
spectator, like Eros ou lefat or L'homme inconse-
quent "qu'on accuse a tort de faussete ou de
folie." In fact, some of their normally undis-
cernible traits are often intentionally and there-
fore doubly concealed, as in the case of Cyrus ou
l'esprit agite who "cache sous un exterieur simple
et calme un esprit ardent et inquiet" or Cleon ou
la Folle ambitionwhom Fortune obliges to "cacher
l'etendue de son ambition et la violence de ses
11See Ian Watt, The Rise of The Novel, 4th ed. (Berkeley,
Calif., 1964), pp. 11-34. The subtitle of Les Illustres Fran-
qaises is "Histoires veritables. Oh l'on trouve, dans des
Caracteres tres-particuliers& fort differents, un grand nombre
d'exemples rares & extraordinaires." Describing one of the
stories in his Introduction to the recent edition of the novel
(Paris, 1959), Frederic Deloffre notes: "On voit ce qu'une
telle histoire apporte de nouveau: essentiellement une psy-
chologie individuelle, fondee sur le temperament, le milieu,
le passe, rempla;ant la verite morale d'un La Bruyere,
d'un Le Sage, et meme, dans une certaine mesure, d'un
Moliere" (p. xliv). The remark might apply as well to Vau-
venargues's Caracteres.Pierre Richard, in La Bruyere et ses
caracteres (Amiens, 1946), p. 191, did see something of the
same operating in Vauvenargues's Caracteresin his comment
on their "menus traits impressionistes" that, for him,
detract from "la portee generale dont la Bruyere avait su
prolonger l'actualite des siens."
12 Wylie Sypher, Rococo to Cubism (New York,
1963), p.
34. Vauvenargues himself approved of Crouzas's definition
of the beautiful, which matches Sypher's of the rococo
esthetic: "Le beau nait de la variete reductible a l'unite,
c'est-a-dire d'un compose qui ne fait pourtant qu'un seul
tout et qu'on peut saisir d'une vue" (I, 62).
13From a subjective point of
view, a chance conflation of
character, circumstance, passion, and reason brings about
happiness. No one, in Vauvenargues's view, is therefore
inevitably or invariably imprisoned in his unhappiness. See
"Du Bonheur" in the Reflexions.
1114 Vauvenargues and the Whole Truth
desirs." Vauvenargues's best characters read
like revelations, and most obviously when they
strike down to an unsuspected but intensely
active inner life, as in Titus, Horace, Polidore,
and L'homme inconsequent. These men tend to
be volatile, "incapable[s] de se fixer" (I, 318, n. 2),
restless, imaginative, frustrated. Their qualities,
like their desires, cancel one another before they
can come out into the open, or, if they do appear,
they seem contradictory. What finally asserts
itself is a question of chance. Each character is
a unique event. But by exaggerating or reversing
one or several traits, a character can be trans-
formed into another. Lentulus ou le factieux can
become Turnus ou le chef de parti; Midas ou le
sot qui est glorieux can become Lacon ou le Petit
homme; and, as Gilbert notes, "Theobalde, c'est
encore Eumolpe, mais moins ridicule, et plus
mechant" (I, 363, n. 1). Delicate adjustments
engender new beings, just as qualities wear one
look, then another, according to the occasion.
This simultaneous vision of surface and depth
produces, in the Caractres, a slightly melancholy
irony, one that accepts the paradox of beings who
are surprising or mysterious on one level but
transparent on another. It does not attempt, in
baroque style, to reduce one level to mask and
the other to man, eventually conjuring away
everything but the reality of vice and organic
disposition. There is, for Vauvenargues, no dis-
tinction between the outer and the inner that
makes one the cover for the other, and there are
no qualities that are more real than others. Cut-
ting through surfaces, one does not find the
whole truth at the bottom, but in the entire,
exposed structure. This, Vauvenargues thought,
was the point at which La Rochefoucauld went
wrong in his Maximes; he overlooked the reality
of manifestations in an effort to find the causes
of those manifestations.'4 Though appearances
deceive, they are not deliberate or unconscious
disguises. We understand people in a "penetrat-
ing" glance. We release them from narrow judg-
ments, from categories and from reductions that
make important realities disappear. Nothing in
man is incomprehensible or strange, as La Bru-
yere supposed: "Tout a sa raison; tout arrive
comme il doit etre; il n'y a donc rien contre le
sentiment ou la nature." To which Vauvenargues
adds, despairingly, "Je m'entends; mais je ne
me soucie guere qu'on m'entende" (I; 428).
The temptation is great, reading the Caracteres
especially, to disregard the style of perception
that shows Vauvenargues's method at work and
to pay attention to the characters themselves and
their situations. Vauvenargues so obsessively re-
This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Tue, 16 Dec 2014 04:13:58 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
hearses here as elsewhere more or less the same
cast in what becomes a familiar story that the
reader watches them alone for clues to meaning.15
The tendency of this reading is to emphasize
praxis, to see in the way men handle themselves
and their predicament the recommendation of
possible attitudes toward life, like stoicism or
activism-a Lebensweisheit, a "sagesse," more
than a "science."'6 If this "sagesse" includes, in
some cases, the acquisition of knowledge, it does
not seek knowledge as an end in itself, but as a
tool for mastering oneself and controlling others.
Nizard was not the last to read the Caracttres
this way, and he was bothered by what seemed
to him an intrusion of irrelevant and incoherent
characteristics ("une foule confuse") in the por-
traits.17 What he overlooked was that Vauve-
nargues's method aims less to advise than to ex-
pose; it works toward knowledge of phenomena
rather than activity. While the characters get
caught up in revolutions or ruin themselves in
wasted efforts to master the citizenry of Rome,
the reader manages partially to save them from
the frustration that drove them into involve-
14
II, 79. La Rochefoucauld's reductio is not unlike Locke's
or Condillac's search for origins. Vauvenargues disapproves.
Here is what he says of La Rochefoucauld's "La force et la
faiblesse de l'esprit sont mal nommees; elles ne sont en effet
que la bonne ou la mauvaise disposition des organes du
corps": "On pourrait dire, sur ce fondement: La sagacite et
l'imb6cillite sont malnommees,elles ne sont en effet, etc. Mais
qui ne voit la faussete de cette maxime? L'imbecillite et la
sagacite, la force et la fabilesse de I'esprit sont-elles moins
reelles et moins distinctes, pour etre fondees sur la disposition
de nos organes?"
15This meaning has invariably been linked by critics with
Vauvenargues's own life, beginning with Voltaire's and
Marmontel's praise of the nobility of Vauvenargues's life
and character, through Gilbert's search for a "biographie
morale de Vauvenargues dans son oeuvre meme" (I, 430, n.
1), to Rene Le Senne's discovery of Vauvenargues's "poly-
psychisme" (TraitMde caracterologie,4th ed., Paris, 1952, p.
273), and even beyond. The major change has been a darken-
ing of the image to include Vauvenargues's more turbulent,
imaginative responses to inhibitions and mistreatments of
many kinds, concentrating on the "vehement" heroes,
leading "une existence obscure et violente" (I, 90), and
filled with "tentations secretes" (I, 97). This wholly auto-
biographical stress leads to such cul-de-sac evaluations of
Vauvenargues's works as Bruce A. Morrissette's: "the
desire-dreams of a sick introvert" (MLN, 55, 1940, 314).
16 Typically, Robert Mauzi,
e.g., sees in Vauvenargues
"un psychologue et un moraliste de l'action" and believes
that "Toute la morale de Vauvenargues se resume en quatre
mots: activite, courage, gloire, ambition" (L'Idee du bonheur
au XVIII6 sicle, Paris, 1960, p. 489). He earliermakes a case
for Vauvenargues as sentimental philosopher, without a
"plan philosophique" (pp. 261-63), by referring to Vauve-
nargues's letters but not to his work itself.
17 Histoire de la litterature
franKaise, 3rd ed., iv (Paris,
1863), 311.
 Jack Undank
ments and resignations to begin with: their being
neglected, unrecognized, or misunderstood. In a
sense, then, Vauvenargues's style of perception
is an answer to the problems his characters face,
even if they produce solutions of another kind
for themselves.
The principles of that style of perception enable
some few gifted men, "les grandes ames"-and,
with Vauvenargues's help, perhaps the common
reader-to re-create within the understanding a
world parallel to the world in which the charac-
ters operate, but a truer one, free of illusory con-
tradiction and conflict. Vauvenargues doubts
that anyone is capable of grasping the whole
truth. "I1 n'y a aucun esprit qui soit capable de
toutes les verites et de tous les talents; les bornes
des plus beaux genies sont etroites" (I, 399, n. 1).
He also thinks that no one could possibly express
it fully, since "La langue et l'esprit ont leurs
bornes; la verite est inepuisable" (I, 480)-a
thought that, significantly, ends the first book of
the first edition of the Maximes. And there is
also the implication that the vision, however in-
complete, drifts perceptibly away from the real
world and comes to rest almost wholly within
the individual mind.18When Vauvenargues says,
in the frequently cited Maxim 366, that "c'est
dans notre propre esprit, et non dans les objets
exterieurs, que nous apercevons la plupart des
choses: les sots ne connaissent presque rien,
parce qu'ils sont vides, et que leur cceur est
etroit; mais les grandes ames trouvent en elles-
memes un grand nombre de choses exterieures;
elles n'ont besoin, ni de lire, ni de voyager, ni
d'ecouter, ni de travailler, pour decouvrir les
This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Tue, 16 Dec 2014 04:13:58 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
1115
plus hautes verites," he is not simply echoing
Montaigne's and Descartes's paradox about
learning being an introspective process. He
means, rather, as the phrase about "les sots"
especially implies, that the heart and mind of
"great souls" at some point dilate to enclose the
world, to refashion it in the image of truth, and
that they hardly need thereafter to dip anywhere
but into themselves for knowledge. The thinker
does, we presume, go on traveling, listening, and
working in the world, using what he knows, so
that he makes some return to it for what he has
received from it. But the temptation simply to
partake of knowledge, to enjoy, as a release from
confusion and injustice, the perception of the
whole truth within the restricted area of the self,
creates that tension we noticed as characteristic
of the orator and king, who try to connect with
the world but at the same time transcend it.
RUTGERSUNIVERSITY
New Brunswick, N. J.
18 Corrado Rosso (p. 517) disagrees with Georges Poulet's
idea that Vauvenargues's thinker "transforme le monde en
son etre propre" (La Distance interieure, Paris, 1952, p. 55):
"La conclusione piui profondo del pensiero di Vauvenargues
sembra invece l'appodo a una pace che non sia quella della
conscienza che ha risolto le altre e tutto il mondo in se, ma
sia di tutti, e fra tutti le conscienze." Neither critic is wrong,
I believe. Vauvenargues's thought moves dialectically be-
tween the not always complementary needs to bring the self
and the external world to salvation. Rosso stresses Vauve-
nargues's positive faith in social action, though he admits
later that Vauvenargues's ideal is "una pace non ancora
sociale... ma per lo meno interiore" (p. 517), while Poulet
describes the attitudes of the self as it meditates upon social
problems.