inclines the heart to love.

    15. Eloquence, which persuades by sweetness, not by authority;
as a tyrant, not as a king.

    16. Eloquence is an art of saying things in such a way (1) that
those to whom we speak may listen to them without pain and with
pleasure; (2) that they feel themselves interested, so that
self-love leads them more willingly to reflection upon it.

    It consists, then, in a correspondence which we seek to
establish between the head and the heart of those to whom we speak, on
the one hand, and, on the other, between the thoughts and the
expressions which we employ. This assumes that we have studied well
the heart of man so as to know all its powers and, then, to find the
just proportions of the discourse which we wish to adapt to them. We
must put ourselves in the place of those who are to hear us, and
make trial on our own heart of the turn which we give to our discourse
in order to see whether one is made for the other, and whether we
can assure ourselves that the hearer will be, as it were, forced to
surrender. We ought to restrict ourselves, so far as possible, to
the simple and natural, and not to magnify that which is little, or
belittle that which is great. It is not enough that a thing be
beautiful; it must be suitable to the subject, and there must be in it
nothing of excess or defect.

    17. Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we
desire to go.

    18. When we do not know the truth of a thing, it is of advantage
that there should exist a common error which determines the mind of
man, as, for example, the moon, to which is attributed the change of
seasons, the progress of diseases, etc. For the chief malady of man is
restless curiosity about things which he cannot understand; and it
is not so bad for him to be in error as to be curious to no purpose.

    The manner in which Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie
wrote is the most usual, the most suggestive, the most remembered, and
the oftenest quoted, because it is entirely composed of thoughts
born from the common talk of life. As when we speak of the common
error which exists among men that the moon is the cause of everything,
we never fail to say that Salomon de Tultie says that, when we do
not know the truth of a thing, it is of advantage that there should
exist a common error, etc.; which is the thought above.

    19. The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one
should put in first.

    20. Order.- Why should I undertake to divide my virtues into
four rather than into six? Why should I rather establish virtue in
four, in two, in one? Why into Abstine et sustine* rather than into
"Follow Nature," or, "Conduct your private affairs without injustice,"
as Plato, or anything else? But there, you will say, everything is
contained in one word. Yes, but it is useless without explanation, and
when we come to explain it, as soon as we unfold this maxim which
contains all the rest, they emerge in that first confusion which you
desired to avoid. So, when they are all included in one, they are
hidden and useless, as in a chest, and never appear save in their
natural confusion. Nature has established them all without including
one in the other.

    * "Abstain and uphold." Stoic maxim.

    21. Nature has made all her truths independent of one another. Our
art makes one dependent on the other. But this is not natural. Each
keeps its own place.

    22. Let no one say that I have said nothing new; the arrangement
of the subject is new. When we play tennis, we both play with the same
ball, but one of us places it better.

    I had as soon it said that I used words employed before. And in
the same way if the same thoughts in a different arrangement do not
form a different discourse, no more do the same words in their
different arrangement form different thoughts!

    23. Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and
meanings differently arranged have different effects.

    24. Language.- We should not turn the mind from one thing to
another, except for relaxation, and that when it is necessary and
the time suitable, and not otherwise. For he that relaxes out of
season wearies, and he who wearies us out of season makes us
languid, since we turn quite away. So much does our perverse lust like
to do the contrary of what those wish to obtain from us without giving
us pleasure, the coin for which we will do whatever is wanted.

    25. Eloguence.- It requires the pleasant and the real; but the
pleasant must itself be drawn from the true.

    26. Eloquence is a painting of thought; and thus those who,
after having painted it, add something more, make a picture instead of
a portrait.

    27. Miscellaneous. Language.- Those who make antitheses by forcing
words are like those who make false windows for symmetry. Their rule
is not to speak accurately, but to make apt figures of speech.

    28. Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that
there is no reason for any difference, and based also on the face of