Pascal's Pensées
knowledge of what God is, that he does not know what he himself is, and,
completely disturbed at the sight of his own state, dares to say that
God cannot make him capable of communion with Him.
But I would ask him if God demands anything else from him than the
knowledge and love of Him, and why, since his nature is capable of love
and knowledge, he believes that God cannot make Himself known and loved
by him. Doubtless he knows at least that he exists, and that he loves
something. Therefore, if he sees anything in the darkness wherein he is,
and if he finds some object of his love among the things on earth, why,
if God impart to him some ray of His essence, will he not be capable of
knowing and of loving Him in the manner in which it shall please Him to
communicate Himself to us? There must then be certainly an intolerable
presumption in arguments of this sort, although they seem founded on an
apparent humility, which is neither sincere nor reasonable, if it does
not make us admit that, not knowing of ourselves what we are, we can
only learn it from God.
"I do not mean that you should submit your belief to me without reason,
and I do not aspire to overcome you by tyranny. In fact, I do not claim
to give you a reason for everything. And to reconcile these
contradictions, I intend to make you see clearly, by convincing proofs,
those divine signs in me, which may convince you of what I am, and may
gain authority for me by wonders and proofs which you cannot reject; so
that you may then believe without ... the things which I teach you,
since you will find no other ground for rejecting them, except that you
cannot know of yourselves if they are true or not.
"God has willed to redeem men, and to open salvation to those who seek
it. But men render themselves so unworthy of it, that it is right that
God should refuse to some, because of their obduracy, what He grants to
others from a compassion which is not due to them. If He had willed to
overcome the obstinacy of the most hardened, He could have done so by
revealing Himself so manifestly to them that they could not have doubted
of the truth of His essence; as it will appear at the last day, with
such thunders and such a convulsion of nature, that the dead will rise
again, and the blindest will see Him.
"It is not in this manner that He has willed to appear in His advent of
mercy, because, as so many make themselves unworthy of His mercy, He has
willed to leave them in the loss of the good which they do not want. It
was not then right that He should appear in a manner manifestly divine,
and completely capable of convincing all men; but it was also not right
that He should come in so hidden a manner that He could not be known by
those who should sincerely seek Him. He has willed to make Himself quite
recognisable by those; and thus, willing to appear openly to those who
seek Him with all their heart, and to be hidden from those who flee from
Him with all their heart, He so regulates the knowledge of Himself that
He has given signs of Himself, visible to those who seek Him, and not to
those who seek Him not. There is enough light for those who only desire
to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition."
431
No other religion has recognised that man is the most excellent
creature. Some, which have quite recognised the reality of his
excellence, have considered as mean and ungrateful the low opinions
which men naturally have of themselves; and others, which have
thoroughly recognised how real is this vileness, have treated with proud
ridicule those feelings of greatness, which are equally natural to man.
"Lift your eyes to God," say the first; "see Him whom you resemble, and
who has created you to worship Him. You can make yourselves like unto
Him; wisdom will make you equal to Him, if you will follow it." "Raise
your heads, free men," says Epictetus. And others say, "Bend your eyes
to the earth, wretched worm that you are, and consider the brutes whose
companion you are."
What, then, will man become? Will he be equal to God or the brutes? What
a frightful difference! What, then, shall we be? Who does not see from
all this that man has gone astray, that he has fallen from his place,
that he anxiously seeks it, that he cannot find it again? And who shall
then direct him to it? The greatest men have failed.
432
Scepticism is true; for, after all, men before Jesus Christ did not know
where they were, nor whether they were great or small. And those who
have said the one or the other, knew nothing about it, and guessed
without reason and by chance. They also erred always in excluding the
one or the other.
_Quod ergo ignorantes, quæritis, religio annuntiat vobis._[160]
433
_After having understood the whole nature of man._--That a religion may
be true, it must have knowledge of our nature. It ought to know its
greatness and littleness, and the reason of both. What religion but the
Christian has known this?
434
The chief arguments of the sceptics--I pass over the lesser ones--are
that we have no certainty of the truth of these principles apart from
faith and revelation, except in so far as we naturally perceive them in
ourselves. Now this natural intuition is not a convincing proof of their
truth; since, having no certainty, apart from faith, whether man was
created by a good God, or by a wicked demon,[161] or by chance, it is
doubtful whether these principles given to us are true, or false, or
uncertain, according to our origin. Again, no person is certain, apart
from faith, whether he is awake or sleeps, seeing that during sleep we
believe that we are awake as firmly as we do when we _are_ awake; we
believe that we see space, figure, and motion; we are aware of the
passage of time, we measure it; and in fact we act as if we were awake.
So that half of our life being passed in sleep, we have on our own
admission no idea of truth, whatever we may imagine. As all our
intuitions are then illusions, who knows whether the other half of our
life, in which we think we are awake, is not another sleep a little
different from the former, from which we awake when we suppose ourselves
asleep?
[And who doubts that, if we dreamt in company, and the dreams chanced to
agree, which is common enough, and if we were always alone when awake,
we should believe that matters were reversed? In short, as we often
dream that we dream, heaping dream upon dream, may it not be that this
half of our life, wherein we think ourselves awake, is itself only a
dream on which the others are grafted, from which we wake at death,
during which we have as few principles of truth and good as during
natural sleep, these different thoughts which disturb us being perhaps
only illusions like the flight of time and the vain fancies of our
dreams?]
These are the chief arguments on one side and the other.
I omit minor ones, such as the sceptical talk against the impressions of
custom, education, manners, country, and the like. Though these
influence the majority of common folk, who dogmatise only on shallow
foundations, they are upset by the least breath of the sceptics. We have
only to see their books if we are not sufficiently convinced of this,
and we shall very quickly become so, perhaps too much.
I notice the only strong point of the dogmatists, namely, that, speaking
in good faith and sincerely, we cannot doubt natural principles. Against
this the sceptics set up in one word the uncertainty of our origin,
which includes that of our nature. The dogmatists have been trying to
answer this objection ever since the world began.
So there is open war among men, in which each must take a part, and side
either with dogmatism or scepticism. For he who thinks to remain neutral
is above all a sceptic. This neutrality is the essence of the sect; he
who is not against them is essentially for them. [In this appears their
advantage.] They are not for themselves; they are neutral, indifferent,
in suspense as to all things, even themselves being no exception.
What then shall man do in this state? Shall he doubt everything? Shall
he doubt whether he is awake, whether he is being pinched, or whether he
is being burned? Shall he doubt whether he doubts? Shall he doubt
whether he exists? We cannot go so far as that; and I lay it down as a
fact that there never has been a real complete sceptic. Nature sustains
our feeble reason, and prevents it raving to this extent.
Shall he then say, on the contrary, that he certainly possesses
truth--he who, when pressed ever so little, can show no title to it, and
is forced to let go his hold?
What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a
chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things,
imbecile worm of the earth; depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty
and error; the pride and refuse of the universe!
Who will unravel this tangle? Nature confutes the sceptics, and reason
confutes the dogmatists. What then will you become, O men! who try to
find out by your natural reason what is your true condition? You cannot
avoid one of these sects, nor adhere to one of them.
Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Humble
yourself, weak reason; be silent, foolish nature; learn that man
infinitely transcends man, and learn from your Master your true
condition, of which you are ignorant. Hear God.
For in fact, if man had never been corrupt, he would enjoy in his
innocence both truth and happiness with assurance; and if man had always
been corrupt, he would have no idea of truth or bliss. But, wretched as
we are, and more so than if there were no greatness in our condition, we
have an idea of happiness, and cannot reach it. We perceive an image of
truth, and possess only a lie. Incapable of absolute ignorance and of
certain knowledge, we have thus been manifestly in a degree of
perfection from which we have unhappily fallen.
It is, however, an astonishing thing that the mystery furthest removed
from our knowledge, namely, that of the transmission of sin, should be a
fact without which we can have no knowledge of ourselves. For it is
beyond doubt that there is nothing which more shocks our reason than to
say that the sin of the first man has rendered guilty those, who, being
so removed from this source, seem incapable of participation in it. This
transmission does not only seem to us impossible, it seems also very
unjust. For what is more contrary to the rules of our miserable justice
than to damn eternally an infant incapable of will, for a sin wherein he
seems to have so little a share, that it was committed six thousand
years before he was in existence? Certainly nothing offends us more
rudely than this doctrine; and yet, without this mystery, the most
incomprehensible of all, we are incomprehensible to ourselves. The knot
of our condition takes its twists and turns in this abyss, so that man
is more inconceivable without this mystery than this mystery is
inconceivable to man.
[Whence it seems that God, willing to render the difficulty of our
existence unintelligible to ourselves, has concealed the knot so high,
or, better speaking, so low, that we are quite incapable of reaching it;
so that it is not by the proud exertions of our reason, but by the
simple submissions of reason, that we can truly know ourselves.
These foundations, solidly established on the inviolable authority of
religion, make us know that there are two truths of faith equally
certain: the one, that man, in the state of creation, or in that of
grace, is raised above all nature, made like unto God and sharing in His
divinity; the other, that in the state of corruption and sin, he is
fallen from this state and made like unto the beasts.