[589] La Bruyère adds in a note: “We can only mean that philosophy which is depending on the Christian religion.”
[590] An allusion to the theory of Descartes (see page [151], note 298), that beasts were only automatons without any consciousness of their acts.
[591] In French “Alain,” the name of a rustic servant in Molièreʼs École des Femmes.
[592] All the names given by our author have already been mentioned before, except that of Claude de Lingendes (1595-1660), one of the best preachers among the Jesuits, and whose reputation must have been great to quote him with such illustrious dead; and whilst Bossuet, Bourdaloue, and Fénelon were still alive.
[593] An allusion to the entertainments given by Louis XIV.
[594] Such places were, in our authorʼs time, Versailles, Fontainebleau, Marly.
[595] This seems to hit at the courtiers of Louis XIV., who pretended to become devout in order to please the monarch and Madame de Maintenon.
[596] La Bruyère is not in advance of his times in what regards corporal punishment: Montaigne was.
[597] For “caps” and “gowns” the original has mortier and fourrures (see page [168], note 331, and page [318], note 587); for fasces see page [139], note 278.
[598] Some commentators think that the Marshal de Villeroy (see page [54], note 151) is meant by Timon, but this cannot be, as the Marshal was rather ostentatious, and not at all a misanthrope. Perhaps our author thought of giving another version of Molièreʼs Alceste, as later on he gives another of Tartuffe, in his portrait of Onuphre, in the chapter “Of Fashion,” page 395, § 24.