To talk in this way was to bring men out from the pits which cynicism on the one side, and asceticism on the other, had dug so deep for them, back to the warm precincts of the cheerful day.  The cynic and the ascetic had each looked at life through a microscope, exaggerating blemishes, distorting proportions, filling the eye with ugly and disgusting illusions.[40] Humanity, as was said, was in disgrace with the thinkers.  The maxims of Vauvenargues were a plea for a return to a healthy and normal sense of relations.  ‘These philosophers,’ he cried, ’are men, yet they do not speak in human language; they change all the ideas of things, and misuse all their terms.’[41] These are some of the most direct of his retorts upon Pascal and La Rochefoucauld: 

’I have always felt it to be absurd for philosophers to fabricate a Virtue that is incompatible with the nature of humanity, and then after having pretended this, to declare coldly that there is no virtue.  If they are speaking of the phantom of their imagination, they may of course abandon or destroy it as they please, for they invented it; but true virtue—­which they cannot be brought to call by this name, because it is not in conformity with their definitions; which is the work of nature and not their own; and which consists mainly in goodness and vigour of soul—­that does not depend on their fancies, and will last for ever with characters that cannot possibly be effaced.’

’The body has its graces, the intellect its talents; is the heart then to have nothing but vices?  And must man, who is capable of reason, be incapable of virtue?’

’We are susceptible of friendship, justice, humanity, compassion, and reason.  O my friends, what then is virtue?’

’Disgust is no mark of health, nor is appetite a disorder; quite the reverse.  Thus we think of the body, but we judge the soul on other principles.  We suppose that a strong soul is one that is exempt from passions, and as youth is more active and ardent than later age, we look on it as a time of fever, and place the strength of man in his decay.’[42]

* * * * *

The theological speculator insists that virtue lies in a constant and fierce struggle between the will and the passions, between man and human nature.

Vauvenargues founded his whole theory of life on the doctrine that the will is not something independent of passions, inclinations, and ideas, but on the contrary is a mere index moved and fixed by them, as the hand of a clock follows the operation of the mechanical forces within.  Character is an integral unit.  ’Whether it is reason or passion that moves us, it is we who determine ourselves; it would be madness to distinguish one’s thoughts and sentiments from one’s self....  No will in men, which does not owe its direction to their temperament, their reasoning, and their actual feelings.’[43] Virtue, then, is not necessarily a condition of strife between