our author made additions to it until the eighth edition of the
“Characters” saw the light, in 1694. He had heard all the best
preachers of his time, such as the Jesuit Claude de Lingendes (See page
323, note 2), and the Oratorians Le Jeune and Senault, who both died in
1672, whilst Bossuet preached in Paris from 1659 to 1669. Bourdaloue
began preaching there in 1663, Mascaron in 1666, Fléchier in 1670, and
Fénelon in 1675. The only great pulpit-orator our author did not hear
was Massillon, who did not preach in the capital until 1696. Several
sermons on pulpit oratory were preached in France, and many books on
the same subject had been published there before and after this chapter
was printed.
[832] Three barristers of repute in the seventeenth century, Antoine
le Maître (1608-1658), whose _Recueil de Plaidoyers_ has been printed;
Claude Pucelle, and Bonaventure Fourcroy, a friend of Molière and
Boileau, who died in 1691 and was a poet as well as a lawyer.
[833] See the Chapter “Of Certain Customs,” § 42.
[834] A certain Abbé le Tourneur or le Tourneux, who died in 1680 at
the age of forty-six, is said to have been such a man, but was, of
course, not allowed to remain long at court.
[835] Bourdaloue (1632-1704) set the fashion of introducing in his
sermons “portraits” or “Characters” of well-known individuals: a
fashion which was much exaggerated by his imitators, and which also
for some time prevailed in England. The Sermons of Dr. R. South
(1633-1716), Prebendary of Westminster and Canon of Christ Church,
Oxon, contain also many “portraits.”
[836] Our author says in a note; “This was Father Seraphin, a Capuchin
monk.” Others have been less favourably inclined towards this preacher
than La Bruyère was. This monk, who had been holding forth in Paris as
early as 1671, preached in the parish church of Versailles, and four
years later before the court and the king, in the palace.
[837] Saint Basil (329-379) was bishop of Cesarea; Saint John
Chrysostom was (347-407) bishop of Constantinople, called the
“golden-mouthed” for his great eloquence.
[838] Our author makes the same observation about dramatic poets. See
his Chapter “Of Works of the Mind,” page 9, § 8.
[839] Compare in Racineʼs comedy of _Les Plaideurs_ the speech of
“LʼIntimé” (act iii, scene 3), to ridicule similar quotations.
[840] The Pandects of the Roman emperor Justinian were a cyclopædia of
legal decisions of Roman lawyers; and after they had been discovered
at Amalfi in Italy about the year 1137, they changed the whole of the
legal aspect of Europe.
[841] There were three saints of the name of Cyrillus, but the one
mentioned above was probably bishop of Jerusalem (315-388); Saint
Thascius Cæcilius Cyprianus (210-285) was bishop of Carthage: whilst
Saint Aurelius Augustinus (354-430) was the celebrated author and
bishop of Hippo.
[842] The preachers accused of a florid style were, according to the
“Keys,” the Oratorian Senault, and Fléchier, who in 1685 had been
appointed bishop of Nîmes.
[843] Theodorus is supposed to be Bourdaloue (see page 165, note 3).
Some other celebrated preachers have also been named.
[844] Charles Boileau, _abbé_ de Beaulieu, and a member of the French
Academy, who died in 1704 (see page 49, note 2), is said to have
preached a morality such as is mentioned in the above paragraph.
[845] A certain Abbé de Roquette, a nephew of the Bishop of Autun (see
page 226, note i.), had to preach one Holy Thursday before the king,
but through some unfortunate accident Louis XIV. could not be present,
and the preacher, disconcerted at the absence of the monarch, for whom
probably he had prepared the most fulsome flatteries, did not dare to
mount the pulpit and deliver his sermon.
[846] In the original _clercs_, to which our author added a note
in the first four editions to say that he meant “clergymen.” The
whole paragraph alludes to the missionaries sent into the provinces
to convert the Protestants. Did La Bruyère, in speaking of the
“converts who had already been made for these clergymen,” hint at the
_dragonnades_ and at the other wretched and inhuman means employed to
compel people to change their religion? I am afraid not, though he
admits some persons could not be converted.
[847] Saint Vincent de Paul (1566-1660), a well-known philanthropical
preacher, very successful in his missions; Saint Francis Xavier
(1506-1553), a Jesuit missionary, who made many converts in the East
Indies.
[848] See page 173, note 1.
[849] See the chapter “Of Works of the Mind,” page 8, § 3.
[850] Some scribbler of the time, a certain Gédéon Pontier, author
of the _Cabinet des Grands_, is said to have written almost similar
nonsense.
[851] In 1689, the same year this paragraph first appeared,
seventy-nine royal censors had been appointed, and no book could be
printed without their permission.
[852] The last sentence of the above paragraph was added in the fifth
edition of the “Characters,” published in 1690, about one year after
Fénelon had been appointed teacher of the Duke of Burgundy, the
grandson of Louis XIV. Fénelon became archbishop of Cambrai in 1695.
[853] See page 27, note 2. Several eminent divines had already written
against “freethinkers,” and about a year before the first edition of
the “Characters” appeared, Fénelon preached a sermon against them.
Those freethinkers were not deists nor atheists, but somewhat like
those persons, at present called agnostics, who neither affirm nor
deny anything, but simply state that they know nothing for certain.
Among their sect might be reckoned at the time our author wrote the
celebrated traveller Bernier, Saint Evremond, Bayle, Fontenelle,
Chaulieu, La Fare, the Dukes de Nevers and de Bouillon, the Grand Prior
de Vendôme, and many others.
[854] The French name for “freethinker” is _esprit fort_, literally
“strong mind.”
[855] Another play on words in the original on _esprit fort_ and
_esprit faible_.
[856] This is perhaps an allusion to the traveller F. Bernier, a pupil
of Gassendi, who visited Assyria, Egypt, and India, and published a
narrative of his travels in 1670.
[857] _Libertin_ was another name for freethinker in French. See p.
161, note 1.
[858] The original has _une personne libre_, to which our author adds
in a note, _une fille_.
[859] An allusion to some such men as the Duke de la Feuillade, the
Minister de Louvois, and the Marquis de Seignelay, who have been
mentioned before, and who almost all died after a very short illness.
[860] Whenever our author has an opportunity he always opposes _esprits
forts_ to _esprits faibles_, or _faibles génies_, as in the above
paragraph.
[861] Leo I., bishop of Rome, called the Great, died 461; St. Jerome
(331-420) was one of the fathers of the Latin Church. For Basil and
Augustine (see page 446, note 1, and page 447, note 1.)
[862] _Spécieux_ in the original, with the Latin meaning.
[863] This is perhaps a hit at Malebrancheʼs _Nouvelle Métaphysique_.
[864] At the time our author wrote it was the custom to allow masked
people to enter a ball-room.
[865] In “A New Historical Relation of Siam,” by M. de la Loubère
(see page 155, note 2), we find: “The priests are the Talapoins....
They have umbrellas in the form of a screen which they carry in their
hand.... In Siamese they call them ‘Talapat,’ and it is probable that
from hence comes the name of ‘Talapir’ or ‘Talapoin,’ which is in use
among foreigners only.” The embassy from the King of Siam to Louis XIV.
took place in the year 1686. See page 338, note 3.
[866] In 1685, when this paragraph was first published, La Bruyère was
forty years old.
[867] St. Augustin (see page 447, note 1) and Descartes (see page 150,
§ 56) had already made use of the above argument.
[868] Our author adds in a note: “An objection to the system of
freethinkers.” An allusion to the system of Spinosa, which Fénelon also
attempted to refute in his _Traité de lʼexistence de Dieu_.
[869] “This is what freethinkers bring forward,” says La Bruyère in a
note. He means probably the disciples of Gassendi, and followers of the
systems of Epicurus and Lucretius.
[870] This is Descartesʼ doctrine.
[871] Lucilius is supposed to have been the Duke of Bourbon, the pupil
of La Bruyère, and the spot of ground, the park of Chantilly, the seat
of the Condé family. (See page 25, § 48.)
[872] Instead of the Nonette and the Thève, two small rivers canalised
by order of the Prince de Condé, our author names two other small
streams, the Yvette, which has its source near Rambouillet, and the
Lignon, an affluent of the Loire.
[873] André le Nôtre, a celebrated landscape-gardener, laid out the
gardens of Versailles and Chantilly, and died in 1700.
[874] The calculations of La Bruyère were not always exact; thus the
mass of the moon is eighty-nine times less than the earthʼs; it is 2165
miles in diameter, and revolves at a mean distance of 238,800 miles
round the earth.
[875] Our author argues as if he were no believer in the system of
Copernicus (1473-1543), but he only states that the sun appears to move
through the firmament, for on page 484 he distinctly mentions that “the
earth is carried round the sun.”
[876] If we suppose that the earth is immovable, the moon moves at a
rate of more than eighteen hundred thousand miles a day, but in reality
it moves at the rate of about sixty thousand miles during twenty-four
hours.
[877] Sound travels at the rate of more than nine hundred miles per
hour.
[878] It is in reality a hundred and ten times more.
[879] Its absolute diameter is 860,000 miles.
[880] The volume of the sun is equivalent to about one and a quarter
million times the volume of our earth; but its mean density is only a
quarter of that of the earth.
[881] The mean distance of the sun from the earth, is, according to the
latest results, about 92,400,000 miles.
[882] Saturnʼs volume is 686.7 that of the earth; it is the sixth
planet in order of distance from the sun, and describes in 10,795,22
days, or twenty-nine years five months and fourteen days, an orbit
whose semi-major axis is 872,137,000 miles. In our authorʼs time Saturn
was supposed to be the planet the farthest from the sun. See page 135,
note 4.
[883] “Immensurable” is a word La Bruyère tried to naturalise
in French, but he did not succeed, yet it exists in English;
“incommensurable” is to be found in both languages.
[884] According to Aragoʼs _Leçons dʼAstronomie_ the star nearest the
earth is still 22,800,000,000,000 leagues distant from it.
[885] No south polar star exists.
[886] Though the number of stars visible to the naked eye is not more
than five thousand, thousands of millions of stars are in existence of
which only about a hundred thousand have been observed.
[887] See page 479, note 2. The sun is not the centre of the universe,
but of our planetary system.
[888] The atomic system of philosophy started by Leucippus, and adopted
by Epicurus, Democritus, and many other philosophers, was that the
universe, material and mental, consisted of minute, indivisible,
and impenetrable atoms, which atoms were assumed to be the ultimate
ground of nature, whilst necessity was supposed to be the cause of all
existence.
[889] According to Descartesʼ _Discours de la Méthode_, animal spirits,
which are so often mentioned in the philosophical and moral works of
his time, “are like a very subtle mind, or rather like a very pure and
bright flame, which is continually and in great abundance ascending
from the heart to the brain, proceeds from thence through the nerves
into the muscles, and produces motion in all the members of the body.”
[890] Pascal already in his _Pensées_ (i. 6.) had called man “a
thinking reed ... nobler than the universe, even if it were to crush
him, because he knows he has to die.”
[891] In the original _ouvrier_. See page 159, note 1.
[892] Similar ideas as those expressed in the above paragraph are to
be found in a sermon “On Providence” preached by Bossuet at the Louvre
in 1662, which was not printed until long after he and La Bruyère were
dead. But as the two men were great friends, it is not unlikely that
our author may have heard them expressed by the eloquent pulpit orator,
either in private conversation or in a sermon.
[893] See the chapter “Of Opinions,” page 364, § 104.
THE END.
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