ABSTRACT
If there is a pure love, exempt from admixture with our other passions, it is the love Hidden in the bottom of the heart, of which we ourselves are unaware. This is one of the maxims by which La Rochefoucauld reconquers our sympathy, if we were tempted, in respect of so many other parts of his drastic work, to refuse it. He is not anxious to be understood by the vulgar; he is too aristocratic in feeling. By consenting to recognize in ourselves the virulent nucleus of the same tendencies that we condemn in our contemporaries. This will only be an affront to our pride; but at this expense we shall regain some confidence in our species and our period; which is well worth a sacrifice, even the sacrifice of the bitter and arrogant pleasure or being in the right against the world.
