Pascal's Pensées
false. But what will you say is good? Chastity? I say no; for the world
would come to an end. Marriage? No; continence is better. Not to kill?
No; for lawlessness would be horrible, and the wicked would kill all the
good. To kill? No; for that destroys nature. We possess truth and
goodness only in part, and mingled with falsehood and evil.
386
If we dreamt the same thing every night, it would affect us as much as
the objects we see every day. And if an artisan were sure to dream every
night for twelve hours' duration that he was a king, I believe he would
be almost as happy as a king, who should dream every night for twelve
hours on end that he was an artisan.
If we were to dream every night that we were pursued by enemies, and
harassed by these painful phantoms, or that we passed every day in
different occupations, as in making a voyage, we should suffer almost as
much as if it were real, and should fear to sleep, as we fear to wake
when we dread in fact to enter on such mishaps. And, indeed, it would
cause pretty nearly the same discomforts as the reality.
But since dreams are all different, and each single one is diversified,
what is seen in them affects us much less than what we see when awake,
because of its continuity, which is not, however, so continuous and
level as not to change too; but it changes less abruptly, except rarely,
as when we travel, and then we say, "It seems to me I am dreaming." For
life is a dream a little less inconstant.
387
[It may be that there are true demonstrations; but this is not certain.
Thus, this proves nothing else but that it is not certain that all is
uncertain, to the glory of scepticism.]
388
_Good sense._--They are compelled to say, "You are not acting in good
faith; we are not asleep," etc. How I love to see this proud reason
humiliated and suppliant! For this is not the language of a man whose
right is disputed, and who defends it with the power of armed hands. He
is not foolish enough to declare that men are not acting in good faith,
but he punishes this bad faith with force.
389
Ecclesiastes[152] shows that man without God is in total ignorance and
inevitable misery. For it is wretched to have the wish, but not the
power. Now he would be happy and assured of some truth, and yet he can
neither know, nor desire not to know. He cannot even doubt.
390
My God! How foolish this talk is! "Would God have made the world to damn
it? Would He ask so much from persons so weak?" etc. Scepticism is the
cure for this evil, and will take down this vanity.
391
_Conversation._--Great words: Religion, I deny it.
_Conversation._--Scepticism helps religion.
392
_Against Scepticism._--[... It is, then, a strange fact that we cannot
define these things without obscuring them, while we speak of them with
all assurance.] We assume that all conceive of them in the same way; but
we assume it quite gratuitously, for we have no proof of it. I see, in
truth, that the same words are applied on the same occasions, and that
every time two men see a body change its place, they both express their
view of this same fact by the same word, both saying that it has moved;
and from this conformity of application we derive a strong conviction of
a conformity of ideas. But this is not absolutely or finally convincing,
though there is enough to support a bet on the affirmative, since we
know that we often draw the same conclusions from different premisses.
This is enough, at least, to obscure the matter; not that it completely
extinguishes the natural light which assures us of these things. The
academicians[153] would have won. But this dulls it, and troubles the
dogmatists to the glory of the sceptical crowd, which consists in this
doubtful ambiguity, and in a certain doubtful dimness from which our
doubts cannot take away all the clearness, nor our own natural lights
chase away all the darkness.
393
It is a singular thing to consider that there are people in the world
who, having renounced all the laws of God and nature, have made laws for
themselves which they strictly obey, as, for instance, the soldiers of
Mahomet, robbers, heretics, etc. It is the same with logicians. It seems
that their licence must be without any limits or barriers, since they
have broken through so many that are so just and sacred.
394
All the principles of sceptics, stoics, atheists, etc., are true. But
their conclusions are false, because the opposite principles are also
true.
395
_Instinct, reason._--We have an incapacity of proof, insurmountable by
all dogmatism. We have an idea of truth, invincible to all scepticism.
396
Two things instruct man about his whole nature; instinct and experience.
397
The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be miserable.
A tree does not know itself to be miserable. It is then being miserable
to know oneself to be miserable; but it is also being great to know that
one is miserable.
398
All these same miseries prove man's greatness. They are the miseries of
a great lord, of a deposed king.
399
We are not miserable without feeling it. A ruined house is not
miserable. Man only is miserable. _Ego vir videns._[154]
400
_The greatness of man._--We have so great an idea of the soul of man
that we cannot endure being despised, or not being esteemed by any soul;
and all the happiness of men consists in this esteem.
401
_Glory._--The brutes do not admire each other. A horse does not admire
his companion. Not that there is no rivalry between them in a race, but
that is of no consequence; for, when in the stable, the heaviest and
most ill-formed does not give up his oats to another, as men would have
others do to them. Their virtue is satisfied with itself.
402
The greatness of man even in his lust, to have known how to extract from
it a wonderful code, and to have drawn from it a picture of benevolence.
403
_Greatness._--The reasons of effects indicate the greatness of man, in
having extracted so fair an order from lust.
404
The greatest baseness of man is the pursuit of glory. But it is also the
greatest mark of his excellence; for whatever possessions he may have on
earth, whatever health and essential comfort, he is not satisfied if he
has not the esteem of men. He values human reason so highly that,
whatever advantages he may have on earth, he is not content if he is not
also ranked highly in the judgment of man. This is the finest position
in the world. Nothing can turn him from that desire, which is the most
indelible quality of man's heart.
And those who most despise men, and put them on a level with the brutes,
yet wish to be admired and believed by men, and contradict themselves by
their own feelings; their nature, which is stronger than all, convincing
them of the greatness of man more forcibly than reason convinces them of
their baseness.
405
_Contradiction._--Pride counterbalancing all miseries. Man either hides
his miseries, or, if he disclose them, glories in knowing them.
406
Pride counterbalances and takes away all miseries. Here is a strange
monster, and a very plain aberration. He is fallen from his place, and
is anxiously seeking it. This is what all men do. Let us see who will
have found it.
407
When malice has reason on its side, it becomes proud, and parades reason
in all its splendour. When austerity or stern choice has not arrived at
the true good, and must needs return to follow nature, it becomes proud
by reason of this return.
408
Evil is easy, and has infinite forms; good is almost unique.[155] But a
certain kind of evil is as difficult to find as what we call good; and
often on this account such particular evil gets passed off as good. An
extraordinary greatness of soul is needed in order to attain to it as
well as to good.
409
_The greatness of man._--The greatness of man is so evident, that it is
even proved by his wretchedness. For what in animals is nature we call
in man wretchedness; by which we recognise that, his nature being now
like that of animals, he has fallen from a better nature which once was
his.
For who is unhappy at not being a king, except a deposed king? Was
Paulus Æmilius[156] unhappy at being no longer consul? On the contrary,
everybody thought him happy in having been consul, because the office
could only be held for a time. But men thought Perseus so unhappy in
being no longer king, because the condition of kingship implied his
being always king, that they thought it strange that he endured life.
Who is unhappy at having only one mouth? And who is not unhappy at
having only one eye? Probably no man ever ventured to mourn at not
having three eyes. But any one is inconsolable at having none.
410
_Perseus, King of Macedon._--Paulus Æmilius reproached Perseus for not
killing himself.
411
Notwithstanding the sight of all our miseries, which press upon us and
take us by the throat, we have an instinct which we cannot repress, and
which lifts us up.
412
There is internal war in man between reason and the passions.
If he had only reason without passions ...
If he had only passions without reason ...
But having both, he cannot be without strife, being unable to be at
peace with the one without being at war with the other. Thus he is
always divided against, and opposed to himself.
413
This internal war of reason against the passions has made a division of
those who would have peace into two sects. The first would renounce
their passions, and become gods; the others would renounce reason, and
become brute beasts. (Des Barreaux.)[157] But neither can do so, and
reason still remains, to condemn the vileness and injustice of the
passions, and to trouble the repose of those who abandon themselves to
them; and the passions keep always alive in those who would renounce
them.
414
Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another
form of madness.
415
The nature of man may be viewed in two ways: the one according to its
end, and then he is great and incomparable; the other according to the
multitude, just as we judge of the nature of the horse and the dog,
popularly, by seeing its fleetness, _et animum arcendi_; and then man is
abject and vile. These are the two ways which make us judge of him
differently, and which occasion such disputes among philosophers.
For one denies the assumption of the other. One says, "He is not born
for this end, for all his actions are repugnant to it." The other says,
"He forsakes his end, when he does these base actions."
416
_For Port-Royal.[158] Greatness and wretchedness._--Wretchedness being
deduced from greatness, and greatness from wretchedness, some have
inferred man's wretchedness all the more because they have taken his
greatness as a proof of it, and others have inferred his greatness with
all the more force, because they have inferred it from his very
wretchedness. All that the one party has been able to say in proof of
his greatness has only served as an argument of his wretchedness to the
others, because the greater our fall, the more wretched we are, and
_vice versa._ The one party is brought back to the other in an endless
circle, it being certain that in proportion as men possess light they
discover both the greatness and the wretchedness of man. In a word, man
knows that he is wretched. He is therefore wretched, because he is so;
but he is really great because he knows it.
417
This twofold nature of man is so evident that some have thought that we
had two souls. A single subject seemed to them incapable of such sudden
variations from unmeasured presumption to a dreadful dejection of
heart.
418