| Title: | Vice |
| Original Title: | Vice |
| Volume and Page: | Vol. 17 (1765), p. 235 |
| Author: | Louis, chevalier de Jaucourt (biography) |
| Translator: | Mary McAlpin [University of Tennessee] |
| Subject terms: |
Natural law
Ethics
|
| Original Version (ARTFL): | Link |
| Rights/Permissions: |
This text is protected by copyright and may be linked to without seeking permission. Please see http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/terms.html for information on reproduction. |
| URL: | http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.010 |
| Citation (MLA): | Jaucourt, Louis, chevalier de. "Vice." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Mary McAlpin. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2002. Web. [fill in today's date in the form 18 Apr. 2009 and remove square brackets]. <http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.010>. Trans. of "Vice," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 17. Paris, 1765. |
| Citation (Chicago): | Jaucourt, Louis, chevalier de. "Vice." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Mary McAlpin. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.010 (accessed [fill in today's date in the form April 18, 2009 and remove square brackets]). Originally published as "Vice," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 17:235 (Paris, 1765). |
Vice is all that is contrary to natural laws and duties.
As the foundation of error lies in the false measurement of probability, the foundation of vice lies in the false measurement of good; and to the extent that this good is more or less great, the corresponding vice is more or less to be blamed. Some may be compensated for, so-to-speak, or at least hidden under the brilliance of great qualities. It is said that Henry IV once asked a Spanish ambassador the identity of his master the king's mistress. The ambassador answered pedantically that his master was a prince who feared God, and who had no other mistress but the queen. Henry IV, who felt the reproach, asked him with an air of disdain if his master had not enough virtue to cover a vice .
Vices , that thus may be hidden or covered, must stem more from temperament and natural character than from morality; they must also be accidental transgressions, passions, surprises: When they occur rarely and pass quickly they may be hidden, like spots caused by the sun, but they are no less spots. If not corrected, they cease to be spots, they spread a general shade, and obscure the light that they previously absorbed.
Remark how, in Racine, Hippolytus responds to his governor, act. I. scene i. It is a passage that one never ceases to admire. He says to Theramenes that his soul had been fired by the stories that he had told of his father's noble exploits; but, he continues, when you spoke to me of less glorious acts,
The faults that one encounters in the lives of great men are as small freckles that one remarks on a beautiful face, they do not make it ugly, but they keep it from perfect beauty: if this be the case, what is one to think of those who are entirely covered with vicious spots; I might make a hundred remarks on this subject, taken from moralists, but I will content myself with reporting only one thought from Montaigne, a man of the world who is to be believed in such matters. This reflection is from l. III. c. ij. of his essays.
Il n'est vice , dit-il, véritablement vice qui n'offense, & qu’un jugement entier n’accuse: car il a de la laideur, & incommodité si apparente, qu’à l’aventure, ceux-là ont raison, qui disent qu’il est principalement produit par bestile ignorance, tant est-il mal-aise d’imaginer, qu’on le cognoisse sans le hayr. La malice hume la plûpart de son propre venin, & s’en empoisonne. Le vice laisse comme un ulcere en la chair, une répentance en l’ame, qui toujours s’esgratigne, & s’ensanglante elle-même."
[There is no vice , no true vice that does not offend, and that is not entirely abhorrent: for it is of such an ugliness, and so disagreeable, that indeed, those who say that it is principally the product of bestial ignorance are right, so difficult is it to imagine that one might know it without hating it. Malice ingests the greater part of its own venim, and poisons itself. Vice leaves, like an ulcer in the skin, repentance in the soul, that is always scratching at itself, and bloodying itself.]
Usage differentiates between a defect and a vice ; all vices are defects , but not all defects are vices . One supposes in a man possessed of a vice the presence of a certain freedom that makes him guilty in our eyes; a defect is generally ascribed to nature; we excuse the man, we accuse nature. When philosophy examines such distinctions with scrupulous exactitude, it finds them to be often devoid of meaning. Is a man any more able to be cowardly, voluptuous, or angry, than he is to be cross-eyed, hunchbacked, or lame? The more one attributes to constitution, education, national mores, climate, to the circumstances that control our lives from the moment that we fall from nature's breast until that in which we presently exist, the less one is vain of the good qualities that one possesses and that one owes in so little respect to oneself, the more one is indulgent of others' defects and vices ; the more one is circumspect in employing the words vicious and virtuous, terms that one never pronounces without love or hatred; the more one tends to substitute for them fortunately or unfortunately born, terms always accompanied by feelings of commiseration. You feel pity for a blind man; and what is a vicious man, if not a man with limited vision, incapable of seeing past the moment in which he acts?