'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 the will and the rest of our faculties and passions; no such strife is possible, for the will obeys the preponderant passion or idea, or group of passions and ideas; and the contest lies between one passion or group and another. Hence, in right character there is no struggle at all, for the virtuous inclinations naturally and easily direct our will and actions; virtue is then independent of struggle; and the circumstance of our finding pleasure in this or that practice, is no reason why both the practice and the pleasure should not be unimpeachably virtuous.
It is easy to see the connection between this theory of the dependence of the will, and the prominence which Vauvenargues is ever giving to the passions. These are the key to the movements of the will. To direct and shape the latter, you must educate the former. It was for his perception of this truth, we may notice in passing, that Comte awarded to Vauvenargues a place in the Positivist Calendar; 'for his direct effort, in spite of the universal desuetude into which it had fallen, to reorganise the culture of the heart according to a better knowledge of human nature, of which this noble thinker discerned the centre to be affective.'[44]
This theory of the will, however, was not allowed to rest here; the activity of man was connected with the universal order. 'What prevents the mind from perceiving the motive of its actions, is only their infinite quickness. Our thoughts perish at the moment in which their effects make themselves known; when the action commences, the principle has vanished; the will appears, the feeling is gone; we cannot find it ourselves, and so doubt if we ever had it. But it would be an enormous defect to have a will without a principle; our actions would be all haphazard; the world would be nothing but caprice; all order would be overturned. It is not enough, then, to admit it to be true that it is reflection or sentiment that leads us: we must add further that it would be monstrous for this to be otherwise.[45] ...
'The will recalls or suspends our ideas; our ideas shape or vary the laws of the will; the laws of the will are thus dependent on the laws of creation; but the laws of creation are not foreign to ourselves, they constitute our being, and form our essence, and are entirely our own, and we can say boldly that we act by ourselves, when we only act by them.[46] ...