Flattery is a profusion of false or exaggerated compliments that personal interest inspires to the one who gives them. It is more or less shameful, base, and puerile, according to one’s motives, goal and circumstances. It is born among men, from some who need to deceive and from others who need to be deceived. It is in court where self-interest lavishes the most exaggerated compliments on those dispensing undeserved positions and favors: one seeks to please them by reassuring them of their weaknesses which one would be sorry to cure; the more they have, the more one compliments, because they are respected less and are known to need to be complimented more. One renounces for them one’s own feelings, privileges of rank, will and behavior.

This limitless deference is a flattery of action that is more seductive than the most affected praise. There is another, still more refined flattery , often used by men without any strength of character, who have vile souls and ambitious views.

It is a flattery of imitation, which spreads vices in the court through two or three people, and vices from a court to an entire nation. The success of these different types of flattery has been made into an art that is cultivated under the name the art of pleasing : it has its difficulties, not everyone is suited to conquer them; and one barely succeeds when one is born to serve his prince and his country.

Far from it, flattery always has motives of making one’s fortune, men in position as its objective, and the court as refuge. In countries where the love of distinction in the name of honor moves all men from the highest to the lowest ( see Honor), compliments are the food of self-esteem on all levels and conditions: one lives for the opinion of others; everyone worries about his position in the esteem of men, and this anxiety grows in proportion to the lack of merit and excess of vanity. Praise is pursued furiously, it is sought basely; it is given without restraint and received without modesty. Sometimes it would be barbarous to refuse it to those so filled with their own ambitions, so tormented by the fear of being ridiculed or of being ignored.

They want to be noticed, which is everyone’s wish; they want to cover their faults or their inanity with a veil: Compliments give them a temporary appearance which satisfies them; and loyalty to work, study of their duties, humanity only would give them merit and virtue.

Gallantry, that vestige of the customs of bygone chivalry, which is kept up by the taste for pleasure and the form of the government, makes flattery indispensable concerning women; a continual adulation and fake submissiveness make them forget their weakness, their dependency and their duties: they become necessary to them; it is only by flattery that we make them satisfied with us and themselves, and that we get their support and approval. See Gallantry.

From this multitude of needs for vanity in a superficial nation; from the necessity to please with compliments, deference, and imitation; from the pettiness of some, the cowardice of others, the falseness of everyone, the result is a general flattery that is unbearable to common sense. It teaches putting a great deal of dangerous differences between the exercise of virtue and manners; it is a puerile business where dishonesty is returned for dishonesty, and where everything is good except the truth. It has its own language, customs, even duties from which one cannot go away without danger and to which one cannot be subjected without weakness.

Philosophers, who through their own merit were meant to correct or, at least, to temper the idiosyncrasies of their fellow citizens, too often encouraged flattery by their own example, and it has only been in this century that the best of men no longer debase themselves through their knowledge.