Preface

Sébastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort was born in 1741 and died in 1794. Thus he traversed almost the whole of the latter half of the century, that in France began with the closing years of one great ruler and ended with the accession to supreme power of another—the century of social license and colloquial philosophy, of encyclopædists and actresses, of blue-stockings and wits. He knew every one worth knowing—Voltaire, Madame Dubarry, Diderot, Charlotte Corday, Helvetius, Mademoiselle de L’Espinasse, St. Just, Marie[Pg 6] Antoinette, and all the other prominent figures of that fascinating age. Most essentially he was a man of his time, a misanthrope who shone in society, a cynic with a curious vein of humanitarian optimism.

About his birth hangs much mystery. A. M. Mège has proved, to his own satisfaction at least, that Chamfort was the lawful offspring of a respectable grocer, but all other authorities agree that he was an illegitimate child, though they are far from being unanimous in assigning his father and mother. That paternity is a matter of opinion, maternity a matter of fact is an old piece of wisdom, but in this case even the latter is doubtful. The one point certain is that the only name to which our author was legally entitled was Nicolas. The Chamfort with its aristocratic “de” was his own invention,[Pg 7] just as Molière was that of Poquelin, Voltaire of Arouet, D’Alembert of Jean Lerond. Influence won Chamfort a good education, and at school and college he played the part of youthful prodigy in two ways; he carried off prizes and in the end was rusticated for writing lampoons on the professors. A few months’ nomad existence in Normandy with two other scapegraces followed, and then the prodigal returned, was forgiven and became an abbé.

Lest he be accused of hypocrisy in thus taking orders, I must hasten to say that no particular sanctity of life or opinions was essential to an abbé of that period. “The abbés,” says M. Houssaye, “were amiable pagans living gaily outside the Church, who read a different sense into the scriptures from that in vogue now. They went to the Court, to balls and the Opera;[Pg 8] they masked and dabbled in adventure—and they said their prayers after supper.”

Chamfort’s instincts naturally drew him to literature both as a means of support and as a path to society. But, like other aspirants, he found editors and publishers unappreciative, and he was growing weary of his efforts when one day he happened on an old schoolfellow who had entered the Church, but, so he confessed, was always at a loss for words in the pulpit. “Listen to me,” said Chamfort, and he delivered a glowing apostrophe to his ill fortune. Lost in admiration the priest promptly offered a louis apiece for any sermons Chamfort would write for him. The bargain was concluded, a sermon was composed weekly and the preacher declaimed his second-hand thunder to the satisfaction of himself and his flock. But Chamfort[Pg 9] aimed higher than devilling for the clergy and won a reputation in competing successfully for the Academic prizes then in vogue. The Éloge de Molière is perhaps his most accomplished essay in this direction, though it is of no particular significance as criticism. With these honours and the successful production, in 1764,

of his comedy La Jeune Indienne, we find Chamfort fairly launched in Parisian society, faring sumptuously every day—in other people’s houses, petted by great ladies, for he was goodlooking and had a gift for flirtation, and under the affectionate care of the “nursing mother of the philosophers,” Madame Helvetius. Henceforth his career seemed shaped out for him. Though never rich, he had too many wealthy friends for penury to be again a menace to him or his mother, whom, to his credit be it said, he[Pg 10] supported loyally; if his health was uncertain it was his own hard living that made it so.

It is easy to mistake the real nature of aristocratic French society in the eighteenth century. We are apt to think of it as haughtily exclusive, divided by a great gulf from the classes below it. The great gulf might be there in theory, but in practice any one of agreeable presence, good manners and a pretty wit was assured a safe passage across. To maintain his position Chamfort had not, it seems, to play the part of toady; indeed he apparently found the opposite tactics the better. In one of his anecdotes he tells us of a respectful admirer of women who has to confess that, had he despised them, he would have enjoyed the favours of more. In like manner it may be that Chamfort’s professed contempt for society endeared him to[Pg 11] it. The acidity of his reflections no doubt had its charm for a world which delighted in verbal encounters, in dialectic and philosophy, and, while studiously avoiding the practice of morality, showed appreciation of it by packing it into maxims, dialogues, and tales. It is, moreover, one of the redeeming features of a

corrupt and frivolous society that, as a rule, it has a sense of humour and can laugh at its own follies. This is what your earnest fanatic cannot do, and accordingly when Chamfort, with his power of seeing more than one side to a question, aimed his sarcasms at the revolutionaries in their turn, he drew down their wrath upon his head.

With Chamfort’s progress in society I have not space to deal adequately. Suffice it that he made influential friends, especially amongst[Pg 12] women, including Marie Antoinette, got various comfortable little pensions settled upon him, travelled, was elected to the Forty Immortals, and, much to the surprise of his friends, married and was devoted to his wife, a clever woman of the world, till her death six months later. Among his best friends was Mirabeau, and, curious as it may seem to those who remember the prominent part taken by the latter in the history of the time, his relation to Chamfort was that of disciple to master. With all Mirabeau’s vigour he lacked the other’s subtlety and tact, and he came to regard him as a kind of external conscience. “Never a day passes ... in which I do not find myself saying—“Chamfort froncerait le sourcil, ne faisons pas, n’écrivons pas cela.”” So far indeed did Mirabeau carry his admiration, that he employed Chamfort, as the[Pg 13] young preacher had done, to write his speeches for him. So says Rivarol, to whom Mirabeau

appeared “a great sponge always swollen with the ideas of others,” and documentary evidence bears him out.

On the outbreak of the revolution, Chamfort, much to the indignant surprise of his aristocratic friends, who had not perhaps taken his advanced views very seriously, threw in his lot with the popular party. For a time he was secretary of the Jacobin Club, and we discover the fine gentleman of the salons among the stormers of the Bastille. The sincerity of Chamfort’s revolutionary fervour has been questioned, and brooding over the stigma of his birth assigned as its real cause. But we may allow, I think, that he genuinely believed the overcharged political and social atmosphere required a[Pg 14] beneficent revolutionary thunderstorm to clear it. Had not he, moreover, been among the prophets? To him the final outburst was no matter for surprise. Whatever his motives, he was a valuable acquisition to his new associates, and his biting wit won him in the Clubs the nickname of “La Rochefoucauld Chamfort.” But in time he developed an unfortunate habit of finding the weak points of the ruling party and pointing them out in his pungent fashion.

In his famous “sois mon frère ou je vous tue,” he tersely summed up Jacobin pretensions, and the Jacobins not unnaturally resented this and other witticisms. In short he was haled before the tribunal, imprisoned, then released, but only to be threatened with imprisonment again. This harassed existence was too much for poor Chamfort, and, rather than endure a new[Pg 15] captivity, he attempted suicide with a pistol and a razor. Unluckily he only succeeded in wounding himself horribly, and lingered on for some months longer. His death took place on April 13, 1794. Chamfort’s is not altogether a sympathetic personality, but one cannot grudge a regret over the miserable end of a brilliant career.

It was not, one must insist, the career of a great man of letters. Had Chamfort left nothing behind him but the mediocre literary baggage which fills the greater part of the five volumes of his works edited by M. Auguis in 1824, he would be no more than a name to us, one of the mob of gentlemen who write with ease and most assuredly do not write for posterity. His verses, his éloges, his comedies, the tragedy which he wrote since everybody had[Pg 16] to father a tragedy, have the dust of oblivion thick upon him, dust little like to be disturbed save by the curious student. It is as a talker, the greatest of his age, that Chamfort survives. His collection of anecdotes, told with inimitable verve and terseness, forms a document of capital importance to the social historian; but it is in the maxims and pensées, coinage of his own incisive wit, that we find the man at his best. Comparison with his great predecessor in this field, La Rochefoucauld, is inevitable, but Chamfort emerges from it with little loss of credit. If he lack La Rochefoucauld’s breadth,

serenity, restraint, and universality of penetration, he surpasses the elder moralist in passion, daring, and, one may add, sincerity. Chamfort does not stand aloof from the world whose weak points he touches, now in pity, now in scorn;[Pg 17] his sayings are instinct with personality; behind the aphorism we behold the man, a latter-day Ecclesiastes, who, nevertheless, has visions at times of a Promised Land beyond the wilderness.

As regards form, Chamfort’s pensées are well nigh perfect. He had of course the advantage of writing them in the language best fitted for the purpose, but even this allowed, they are masterpieces of pregnant brevity. “Those people,” said Balzac of Chamfort and his contemporary Rivarol, “put whole volumes into a single bon mot, while nowadays ’tis a marvel if we find a bon mot in a volume.” This is the extravagance of praise. In more measured terms John Stuart Mill and Schopenhauer expressed their admiration of the genius displayed in Chamfort’s pensées, those “flèches acérées,” to quote Sainte-Beuve, “qui arrivent[Pg 18] brusquement et sifflent encore.” Yes, for, after all, we have not made such wonderful progress since Chamfort’s day, but that some of these keen arrows of his find their mark still.

W. G. H.

January, 1902.

⁂ It is perhaps a point of some interest from a bibliographical point of view, that this is the first translation into English of any of Chamfort’s writings.

[Pg 19]

The Cynic’s Breviary

Nature has not said to me: Be not poor; still less: Be rich. But she cries out to me: Be independent.

“The difference between you and myself,” said a friend to me, “is that you have said to all the masqueraders: ‘I know you,’ whilst I have left them the hope that they are deceiving me. That is why the world favours me more than you. It is a masked ball, the interest of which you have spoiled for others and the amusement for yourself.”

A man of wit is lost, if to his wit he does not join energy of character. If you have the lantern of Diogenes, you must also have his cudgel.

[Pg 20]

There are more fools than wise men, and even in the wise man himself there is more folly than wisdom.

The worst wasted of all days is that during which one has not laughed.

The best philosophical attitude to adopt towards the world is a union of the sarcasm of gaiety with the indulgence of contempt.

We must be just before being generous, as we must possess shirts before having lace embroideries.

Education must have two foundations—morality as a support for virtue, prudence as a defence for self against the vices of others. By letting the balance incline to the side of morality, you only make dupes or martyrs; by letting it incline to the other, you make calculating egoists. The one great social principle is to be just both to yourself and to others. If you must love[Pg 21] your neighbour as yourself, it is at least as fair to love yourself as your neighbour.

Public opinion is a jurisdiction which the honest man must never fully recognize, and which he must never ignore.

It must be admitted that to live in the world without from time to time acting a part is impossible. What distinguishes the honest man from the knave is, that the former only does so when absolutely obliged and to escape a danger, while the latter seeks for opportunities.

A man who is not only honest but wise owes it to himself to add to the prudence that satisfies his conscience, the prudence that foresees and disarms calumny.

I cannot conceive of a wisdom that lacks distrust: according to the Scriptures the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God—I believe it is rather the fear of men.

[Pg 22]

We must needs have the power of uniting contrarieties: love of virtue with indifference to public opinion, taste for work with indifference to glory, attention to health with indifference to life.

There are few vices that prevent a man from having many friends so much as his too high qualities prevent him.

Vanity is often the motive that forces a man to summon up all the energy of his soul. Wood added to a steel point makes a dart, two feathers added to the wood make an arrow.

A man of no principles is also, as a rule, a man of no character, for had he been born with character, he would have felt the need of forming principles.

Nearly all men are slaves for the same reason that the Spartans assigned for the servitude of the Persians—lack of power to pronounce the syllable, No. To be able to utter that word and[Pg 23] live alone, are the only two means to preserve one’s freedom and one’s character.

What I have learnt I no longer know; what I still know has come to me by intuition.

Man can aspire to virtue; he cannot reasonably aim at finding truth.

Man reaches each stage in his life as a novice.

The majority of human beings in the world pass their lives in it so heedlessly and think so little, that they do not know that world which they have before their eyes every day. They do not, M. de B. wittily remarked, for the same reason that cockchafers have no acquaintance with natural history.

’Tis not generally known how much wit a man requires to avoid being ridiculous.

“Are you not ashamed to wish to speak better than you can?” said Seneca to one of[Pg 24] his sons who could not work out the exordium of an oration he was composing. One might say the same to those who adopt principles stronger than their character will bear. “Are you not ashamed of wishing to be more of a philosopher than you can be?”

In great actions men show themselves as they ought to be, in small actions as they are.

Vain is equivalent to empty; thus vanity is so miserable a thing, that one cannot give it a worse name than its own. It proclaims itself for what it is.

He is far advanced in the study of morals who can lay his finger on all the points that distinguish pride from vanity. The first is lofty, calm, dignified, imperturbable, resolute; the second mean, inconstant, easily swayed, restless, unsteady. One raises a man, the other puffs him up. The first is source of a thousand virtues, the second that of nearly all vices and all caprices. There is a kind of pride in which[Pg 25] are comprised all the commandments of God, a kind of vanity that embodies the seven deadly sins.

Celebrity: the advantage of being known to those who do not know you.

The love of glory a virtue! A strange virtue truly, that calls to its aid the co-operation of all the vices, that finds stimulants in ambition, envy, vanity, sometimes even avarice! Would Titus have been Titus had he had as his ministers Sejanus, Narcissus, and Tigellinus?

In order to forgive reason for the evil it has wrought on the majority of men, we must imagine for ourselves what man would be without his reason. ’Tis a necessary evil.

Thought consoles us for all, and heals all. If at times it does you ill, ask it for the remedy for that ill and it will give it you.

That to feel makes one think is pretty generally admitted; that to think makes one feel finds less acceptance, but is almost as true.

[Pg 26]

The intelligence is often to the heart what the library of a mansion is to the person of its master.

A bad man will occasionally do a good action. One might say that he wishes to see whether it gives as much pleasure as honest folk assert.

Stupidity would not be absolute stupidity did it not fear intelligence. Vice would not be absolute vice did it not hate virtue.

One suspects the idleness of a knave and the silence of a fool.

Generosity is the pitifulness of noble hearts.

All passions are exaggerated, otherwise they would not be passions.

“The manner in which I see you distributing praise and blame,” said M. de B—— to a friend, “would make the best man in the world anxious to be defamed.”

False modesty is the most decent of all deceptions.

[Pg 27]

There are certain failings that preserve one from some epidemic vices, just as it may be noted that in time of plague fever-stricken patients escape contagion.

The philosopher who would fain extinguish his passions resembles the chemist who would like to let his furnace go out.

One of the great misfortunes of man is that even his good qualities are sometimes useless to him, and that the art of profiting by them and governing them wisely is often the tardy fruit of experience alone.

Nature in causing reason and the passions to be born at one and the same time apparently wished by the latter gift to distract man from the evil she had done him by the former, and by only permitting him to live for a few years after the loss of his passions seems to show her pity by early deliverance from a life that reduces him to reason as his sole resource.

[Pg 28]

Hope is but a charlatan that ceases not to deceive us. For myself happiness only began when I had lost it. I would fain inscribe upon the gate of Paradise the line that Dante wrote upon that of Hell—“Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.”

Our reason sometimes makes us as unhappy as our passions, and in such a case one can say of a man that he is a patient poisoned by his physician.

It is nature’s will that wise men have their illusions as well as fools, to the end that they be not made too unhappy by their own wisdom.

That tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Bible is a fine allegory. Is it not intended to signify that when one has penetrated to the depths of things, the consequent loss of illusions brings about the death of the soul—that is to say a complete detachment from all that moves and interests other men?

[Pg 29]

The physical world appears the work of a good and mighty Being who has had to abandon the execution of part of his plan to a maleficent Being. But the moral world seems rather the production of a crazy fiend’s caprices.

When I hear it argued that, taking everything into account, the least sensitive folk are the happiest, I remember the Indian proverb: “Better to be seated than standing, better to be lying than seated, but better than all else to be dead.”

Living is a disease from the pains of which sleep eases us every sixteen hours; sleep is but a palliative, death alone is the cure.

Time diminishes for us the intensity of absolute pleasures, to use the metaphysician’s term, but apparently it increases relative pleasures; and I suspect that this is the artifice by which nature is able to attach men to life after the loss of the objects or pleasures which most rendered it agreeable.

[Pg 30]

Some one described Providence as the baptismal name of chance; no doubt some pious person will retort that chance is the nickname of Providence.