[152] Aristotle’s Rhetoric, book II., ch. xii., xiii., xiv., Bohn’s translation.
[153] Psychology is the science which treats of the faculties and operations of the soul.
[154] Diagnosis in medicine is the art of determining a disease by means of the symptoms or signs it presents.
[155] Imitation of Jesus Christ, I., xii.
[156] We should, however, make a distinction between the passion for wine and drunkenness. One can have this passion without giving up to it. Drunkenness is the habit of yielding to it.
[157] Sentimentality is false sensibility, and not exaggerated sensibility. Softness is a vague expression. Patriotism may by exaggeration become fanaticism; but this is equally true of other sentiments—of the religious sentiment, for example.
[158] Chap. III., 19.
[159] Plato in the Phædo (trad. de Saisset, p. 31) seems to condemn the idea of combating passion by passion: “To exchange one sensual pleasure for another,” he says, “one grief for another, one fear for another, and to do like those who get small change for a piece of money, is not the path which leads to virtue. Wisdom is the only true coin against which all the others should be exchanged.... Without wisdom all other virtues are but shadows of virtues, a virtue the slave of vice, wherein there is nothing wholesome nor true. True virtue is free from all passion.” Nothing more true and more noble; but there is in this doctrine nothing contrary to that of Bossuet. The question is not to exchange one passion for another, for such an act is devoid of all moral character, but to exchange passion against wisdom and virtue; and all we want to know is the means. Now experience confirms what Bossuet has said, namely, that one cannot immediately triumph over a passion, especially when at its zenith, and that it is necessary to turn one’s thoughts upon other objects and appeal to more innocent passions or to passions, if not less ardent, at least more noble, such as patriotism or the religious sentiment.
[160] Confessions, VIII., v.
[161] The virtues of the pagans have been often depreciated, and St. Augustine himself, great an admirer as he was of antiquity, called them, nevertheless, splendid vices (vitia splendida). They are often regarded as induced by pride rather than by a sincere love of virtue. We should beware of such interpretations, for once on the road of moral pessimism, there is no reason for stopping at anything. We may as well maintain that there are a thousand forms of pride, and that self-love often sets its glory in pretending to overcome itself. “We must therefore not wonder to find it coupled with the greatest austerity, and, in order to destroy itself, make us bravely a companion of it, for whilst it ruins itself in one place, it starts up again in another.” It may be seen by this passage of La Rochefoucauld, that it is of no use to interpret the pagan virtues in a bad sense, for the argument can be retorted. It is better to regard virtue as sincere and true wherever we meet with it, so long as there are no proofs to the contrary.