in many respects the most valuable expression of his views. There is
something slightly repellent in the stern concision, the "imperious
brevity," of the _Manual_. In the _Manual_, says M. Martha,[66] "the
reason of the Stoic proclaims its laws with an impassibility which is
little human; it imposes silence on all the passions, even the most
respectable; it glories in waging against them an internecine war, and
seems even to wish to repress the most legitimate impulses of generous
sensibility. In reading these rigorous maxims one might be tempted to
believe that this legislator of morality is a man without a heart, and,
if we were not touched by the original sincerity of the language, one
would only see in this lapidary style the conventional precepts of a
chimerical system or the aspirations of an impossible perfection." The
_Discourses_ are more illustrative, more argumentative, more diffuse,
more human. In reading them one feels oneself face to face with a human
being, not with the marble statue of the ideal wise man. The style,
indeed, is simple, but its "athletic nudity" is well suited to this
militant morality; its picturesque and incisive character, its vigorous
metaphors, its vulgar expressions, its absence of all conventional
elegance, display a certain "plebeian originality" which gives them an
almost autobiographic charm. With trenchant logic and intrepid
conviction "he wrestles with the passions, questions them, makes them
answer, and confounds them in a few words which are often sublime. This
Socrates without grace does not amuse us by making his adversary fall
into the long entanglement of a captious dialogue, but he rudely seizes
and often finishes him with two blows. It is like the eloquence of
Phocion, which Demosthenes compares to an axe which is lifted
and falls."

[Footnote 66: Moralistes sous l'Empire, p. 200.]