TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
One superscript was converted to lowercase '23rd'.
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.
More detail can be found at the end of the book.
_THE THOUGHTS OF
BLAISE PASCAL._
[Illustration: (Colophon.)]
_THE THOUGHTS
OF
BLAISE PASCAL_
[Illustration: (Frontispiece--Blaise Pascal.)]
_THE THOUGHTS OF
BLAISE PASCAL_
_TRANSLATED FROM THE TEXT OF
M. AUGUSTE MOLINIER_
_BY
C. KEGAN PAUL_
_Pendent opera interrupta_
[Illustration: (Colophon.)]
_LONDON_
_KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO._
_MDCCCLXXXV_
_CONTENTS._
PAGE
_PREFACE_ vii
_GENERAL INTRODUCTION_ 1
Pascal's Profession of Faith 2
General Introduction 3
Notes for the General Introduction 11
_THE MISERY OF MAN WITHOUT GOD_ 15
Preface to the First Part 17
Man's Disproportion 19
Diversion 33
The Greatness and Littleness of Man 43
Of the Deceptive Powers of the Imagination 51
Of Justice, Customs, and Prejudices 61
The Weakness, Unrest, and Defects of Man 73
_THE HAPPINESS OF MAN WITH GOD_ 89
Preface to the Second Part 91
Of the Need of Seeking Truth 95
The Philosophers 105
Thoughts on Mahomet and on China 115
Of the Jewish People 119
The Authenticity of the Sacred Books 125
The Prophecies 131
Of Types in General and of their Lawfulness 157
That the Jewish Law was Figurative 167
Of the True Religion and its Characteristics 179
The Excellence of the Christian Religion 183
Of Original Sin 191
The Perpetuity of the Christian Religion 197
Proofs of the Christian Religion 203
Proofs of the Divinity of Jesus Christ 213
The Mission and Greatness of Jesus Christ 225
The Mystery of Jesus 231
Of the True Righteous Man and of the True Christian 237
The Arrangement 253
Of Miracles in General 257
Jesuits and Jansenists 273
Thoughts on Style 301
Various Thoughts 307
_NOTES_ 317
_INDEX_ 339
PREFACE.
Those to whom the Life of Pascal and the Story of Port Royal are
unknown, must be referred to works treating fully of the subject,
since it were impossible to deal with them adequately within the
limits of a preface. Sainte-Beuve's great work on Port Royal,
especially the second and third volumes, and "Port Royal," by Charles
Beard, B.A., London, 1863, may best be consulted by any who require
full, lucid, and singularly impartial information.
But for such as, already acquainted with the time and the man, need a
recapitulation of the more important facts, or for those who may find
an outline map useful of the country they are to study in detail, a
few words are here given.
Blaise Pascal was born at Clermont-Ferrand in Auvergne, on June 19,
1623. He sprung from a well-known legal family, many members of which
had held lucrative and responsible positions. His father, Etienne
Pascal, held the post of intendant, or provincial administrator,
in Normandy, where, and at Paris previously, Pascal lived from the
age of sixteen to that of twenty-five; almost wholly educated by
his father on account of his precarious health. His mother died
when he was eight years old. Etienne Pascal was a pious but stern
person, and by no means disposed to entertain or allow any undue
exaltation in religion, refusing as long as he lived to allow his
daughter Jaqueline to take the veil. But he had the usual faiths and
superstitions of his time, and believing that his son's ill-health
arose from witchcraft, employed the old woman who was supposed to
have caused the malady to remove it, by herbs culled before sunrise,
and the expiatory death of a cat. This made a great impression on his
son, who in the "Thoughts" employs an ingenious argument to prove
that wonders wrought by the invocation of the devil are not, in the
proper sense of the term, miracles. At any rate the counter-charm was
incomplete, as the child's feeble health remained feeble to the end.
Intellectually, Blaise Pascal grew rapidly to the stature and
strength of a giant; his genius showing itself mainly in the
direction of mathematics; at the age of fifteen his studies on conic
sections were thought worthy to be read before the most scientific
men of Paris, and in after years of agonizing pain mathematical
research alone was able to calm him, and distract his mind from
himself. His actual reading was at all times narrow, and his
scholarship was not profound. In 1646, his father, having broken
his thigh at Rouen, came under the influence of two members of the
Jansenist school of thought at that place, who attended him in his
illness, and from that time dated the more serious religious views
of the family. Jaqueline was from the first deeply affected by the
more rigorous opinions with which she came in contact. Forbidden to
enter the cloister, she lived at home as austere a life as though she
had been professed, but after her father's death won her brother's
reluctant consent to take the veil at Port Royal, and became one of
the strictest nuns of that rigid rule.
Blaise Pascal went through a double process of conversion. When the
family first fell under Jansenist influence he threw himself so
earnestly into the study of theology that he seriously injured his
frail health, and being advised to refrain from all intellectual
labour, he returned to the world of Paris, where his friends the
Duc de Roannez, the Chevalier de Méré and M. Miton were among the
best known and most fashionable persons. His father's death put him
in possession of a fair fortune, which he used freely, not at all
viciously, but with no renunciation of the pleasures of society.
There is some evidence of a proposal that he should marry the Duc
de Roannez' sister, and no doubt with such a scheme before him he
wrote his celebrated "Discours sur les Passions de l'Amour." This,
however, resulted only in the conversion of the duke and his sister,
the latter of whom for a time, the former for the whole of his life,
remained subject to the religious feelings then excited.
In the autumn of 1654, whether after deliverance in a dangerous
accident, or from some hidden cause of which nothing can now be even
surmised, there came a second sudden conversion from which there was
no return. That hour wrought a complete change in Pascal's life;
austerity, self-denial, absolute obedience to his spiritual director,
boundless alms-giving succeeded to what at most had been a moderate
and restrained use of worldly pleasure, and he threw himself into the
life, controversy and interests of Port Royal, with all the passion
of one who was not only a new convert, but the champion of a society
into which those dearest to him had entered even more fully than he.
He became, for a time, one of the solitaries of Port Royal before the
close of that same year.
The Cistercian Abbey of Port Royal des Champs was situated about
eighteen miles from Paris. It had been founded early in the
thirteenth century, and would have faded away unremembered but for
the grandeur of its closing years. The rule of the community had been
greatly relaxed, but it was reformed with extreme rigour by Jaqueline
Arnauld, its young abbess, known in religion as La Mère Angélique.
The priest chosen as Director of the community was Jean du Vergier
de Hauranne, Abbé de St. Cyran, a close friend of Cornelius Jansen,
Bishop of Ypres. They had together devoted themselves to the study of
Saint Augustine; and the "Augustinus," the work to which Jansen gave
his whole life, was planned with the assistance of St. Cyran. Certain
propositions drawn from this work were afterwards condemned, and the
controversy which raged between the two schools of the Jesuits and
the Jansenists divided itself into two parts, first, whether the
propositions were heretical, and secondly, whether as a fact they
were contained in, or could fairly be deduced from, Jansen's book.
The strife, which raged with varying fortunes for many years, need
not here detain us.
After the reform of Port Royal, and when the Society, however
assailed and in danger, was at the height of its renown, the whole
establishment consisted of two convents, the mother house of Port
Royal des Champs, and one in Paris to which was attached a school for
girls. To Port Royal des Champs, as to a spiritual centre, and to be
under the guidance of the three great directors, who in succession
ruled the abbey, M. de St. Cyran, M. Singlin, and M. de Saci, there
came men and women, not under monastic vows, but living for a time
the monastic or even the eremitical life. The women, for the most
part, had rooms in the convent, the men built rooms for themselves
hard by, or shared between them La Grange, a farm belonging to the
abbey. It need scarcely be said that in so strict a community the
sexes were wholly separate; a common worship, and the confidence of
the same confessor, together with similarity of views in religion,
were the ties which bound together the whole society.
When Pascal formally joined Port Royal, the Abbey and all that
was attached to it greatly needed aid from without. A Bull in
condemnation of Jansen had been gained from the Pope, and a
Formulary, minimising its effect as far as possible, was drawn up
by the General Assembly in France, which was ultimately accepted by
Port Royal itself. But if the Port Royalists minimized the defeat,
and, with great intellectual dexterity, showed that the condemned
propositions were not in precise terms what they had held, and were
not in Jansen's book, their adversaries exaggerated the victory. A
confessor in Paris refused absolution to a parishioner because he
had a Jansenist living in his house, and had sent his grand-daughter
to school at Port Royal. Antoine Arnauld, known as Le Grand Arnauld,
brother of La Mère Angélique, himself in danger of condemnation by
the Sorbonne, drew up a statement of the case intended to instruct
the public on the points in dispute. On reading this to the Port
Royal solitaries before printing it, he saw that it would not do,
and turning to Pascal, who had then been a year under M. Singlin's
direction, he suggested to him as a younger man with a lighter pen
to see what he could do. The next day Pascal produced the first of
the "Provincial Letters," or to give it the correct title, "A Letter
written to a Provincial by one of his friends." In these Letters
Pascal formed his true style, and took rank at once among the great
French writers. They contributed largely to turn the scale of feeling
against his adversaries; they, and an occurrence in which he saw the
visible finger of God, saved Port Royal for a time. But the history
of the "Provincial Letters" must be read elsewhere, as must also in
its fulness the miracle of the Holy Thorn, on which a few words are
needed.
The "Provincial Letters" were in course of publication, but M.
Arnauld had been condemned by the Sorbonne just as the first was
issued, and his enemies said he was excommunicated, which was not
technically true; he was in danger of arrest, and was in hiding; the
solitaries of Port Royal were almost all dispersed; the schools were
thinned of their pupils and on the point of closing, the confessors
were about to be withdrawn and the nuns sent to various other
convents, when the miracle took place. Marguerite Perier, a child
of ten years old, daughter of Pascal's elder sister, was one of the
pupils at Port Royal in Paris, not as yet dismissed to her home. She
was tenderly nursed by the nuns for an ulcer in the lachrymal gland,
which had destroyed the bones of the nose, and produced other horrors
of which there is no need to speak. A relic of the Saviour, one of
the thorns of his crown of mockery, which had been intrusted to the
nuns, was specially venerated during a service in its honour, and as
it would seem was passed from hand to hand in its reliquary. When the
turn of the scholars came, Sister Flavia, their mistress, moved by a
sudden impulse said, "My child, pray for your eye," and touched the
ulcer with the reliquary. The child was cured, and the effect on the
community was immediate. The remaining solitaries were not dispersed,
some of those who had gone returned, the confessors were not removed,
the school was not closed, and Port Royal was respited.
The miracle was to Pascal at once a solemn matter of religion and
a family occurrence; he took henceforward as his cognizance an eye
encircled with a crown of thorns and the motto _Scio cui credidi_, he
jotted down various thoughts on the miracle, and the manner in which
as it seemed to him God had by it given as by "a voice of thunder"
his judgment in favour of Port Royal, and he sketched a plan of a
work against atheists and unbelievers. In the year between the spring
of 1657, and that of 1658, the last year of his good health, if that
can be called good which was at best but feeble, he indicated the
plan, and wrote the most finished paragraphs of his intended work.
The detached thoughts which make up the bulk of it were scribbled,
as they occurred to him during the last four years of his life, on
scraps of paper, or on the margin of what he had already written,
often when he was quite incapable of sustained employment. Many were
dictated, some to friends, and some to a servant who constantly
attended him in his illness.
Towards the end of his life he was obliged to move into Paris again,
where he was carefully nursed by his sister Madame Perrier, to whose
house he was moved at the last, where he died on August 9th, 1662, at
the age of thirty-nine, having spent his last years in an ecstasy of
self-denial, of charity, and of aspiration after God.
Not for six years after his death were his family and friends able
to consider in what form his unfinished work should be given to the
world. Then Port Royal had a breathing space, what was known as
the Peace of the Church was established by Clement IX., and it was
considered that the time had come to set in order these precious
fragments. The duty of giving an author's works to the world as he
left them was little understood in those days, and the Duc de Roannez
even suggested that Pascal's whole work should be re-written on the
lines he had laid down. Some editing was, on all hands, allowed to
be needful; thus the arrangement of chapters, and the fragments to
be included in chapters, were matter for fair discussion. But the
committee of editors went further, and even when the text had been
settled by them, it had to undergo a further censorship by various
theologians. Finally, in January, 1670, the "Pensées" appeared as a
small duodecimo, with a preface by the Perrier family, and no mention
of Port Royal in the volume.
For a full account of this and other editions, the reader must be
referred to the preface to M. Molinier's edition, Paris, 1877-1879,
and to that of M. Faugère, Paris, 1844.
M. Victor Cousin was the first to draw attention to the need of a
new edition of Pascal in 1842. He showed that great liberties had
been taken with and suppressions made in the text, and the labour
to which he invited was first undertaken by M. Prosper Faugère. M.
Havet adopting his text departed from his arrangement, reverted in
great measure to that of the old editors, and accompanied the whole
by an excellent commentary and notes, 2nd edition, Paris, 1866. M.
Molinier has again consulted the MSS. word for word, and while in a
degree following M. Faugère's arrangement has yet been guided by his
own skill and judgment. It must always be remembered that each editor
must necessarily follow his own judgment in regard to the position
he should give to fragments not placed by the writer. But provided
that an editor makes no changes merely for the sake of change and
that he loyally enters into the spirit of his predecessors, each new
comer, till the arrangement is finally fixed, has a great advantage.
Such an editor is M. Molinier, and in his arrangement the text of
Pascal would seem to be mainly if not wholly fixed; so that for the
first time we have not only Pascal's "Thoughts," but we have them
approximately arranged as he designed to present them to his readers.
The course of an English translator is clear; his responsibility is
confined to deciding which text to follow, he has no right to make
one for himself. In the present edition, therefore, M. Molinier's
text and arrangement are scrupulously followed except in two places.
In regard to one, M. Molinier has himself adopted a different
reading in his notes made after the text was printed, the second is
an obvious misprint. Pascal's "Profession of Faith," or "Amulet,"
is transferred from the place it occupies in M. Molinier's edition
to serve as an introduction to the work, striking as it does the
key-note to the "Thoughts."
Pascal's quotations from the Bible were made of course from the
Vulgate, but very often indeed from memory, and incorrectly, while he
often gave the substance alone of the passage he used. No one version
of the Bible therefore has been used exclusively, but the Authorised
Version and the Douai or Rheims versions have been used as each in
turn most nearly afforded the equivalent of the quotations made by
Pascal.
The notes are mainly based on those of MM. Faugère, Havet, and
Molinier.
_GENERAL INTRODUCTION._
PASCAL'S PROFESSION OF FAITH.
[Illustration:(Small crucifix.)]
This year of Grace 1654,
Monday, November 23rd, day of Saint Clement, pope
and martyr, and others in the martyrology,
Eve of Saint Chrysogonus, martyr, and others;
From about half past ten at night, to
about half after midnight,
Fire.
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,
Not of the philosophers and the wise.
Security, security. Feeling, joy, peace.
God of Jesus Christ
_Deum meum et Deum vestrum._
Thy God shall be my God.
Forgetfulness of the world and of all save God.
He can be found only in the ways taught
in the Gospel.
Greatness of the human soul.
O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee,
but I have known thee.
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I have separated myself from him.
_Dereliquerunt me fontem aqua vivæ._
My God, why hast thou forsaken me?...
That I be not separated from thee eternally.
This is life eternal: That they might know thee
the only true God, and him whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ,
Jesus Christ,
Jesus Christ.
I have separated myself from him; I have fled, renounced, crucified him.
May I never be separated from him.
He maintains himself in me only in the ways taught
in the Gospel.
Renunciation total and sweet.
etc.
_GENERAL INTRODUCTION._
Let them at least learn what is the Religion they assail, before they
assail it. If this religion claimed to have a clear view of God, and
to possess it openly and unveiled, then to say that we see nothing in
the world which manifests him with this clearness would be to assail
it. But since on the contrary it affirms that men are in darkness and
estranged from God, that he has hidden himself from their knowledge,
that the very name he has given himself in the Scriptures is _Deus
absconditus_; and if indeed it aims equally at establishing these
two points, that God has set in the Church evident notes to enable
those who seek him in sincerity to recognise him, and that he has
nevertheless so concealed them that he can only be perceived by those
who seek him with their whole hearts; what advantages it them, when,
in their professed neglect of the search after truth, they declare
that nothing reveals it to them? For the very obscurity in which they
are, and for which they blame the Church, does but establish one of
the points which she maintains, without affecting the other, and far
from destroying, establishes her doctrine.
In order to assail it they ought to urge that they have sought
everywhere with all their strength, and even in that which the Church
proposes for their instruction, but without avail. Did they thus
speak, they would indeed assail one of her claims. But I hope here to
show that no rational person can thus speak, and I am even bold to
say that no one has ever done so. We know well enough how men of this
temper behave. They believe they have made great efforts for their
instruction, when they have spent a few hours in reading some book
of Scripture, and have talked with some Ecclesiastic on the truths
of the faith. Whereupon they boast that they have in vain consulted
books and men. But indeed I will tell them what I have often said,
that such carelessness is intolerable. We are not here dealing with
the light interest of a stranger, that we should thus treat it; but
with that which concerns ourselves and our all.
The immortality of the soul is a matter of so great moment to us,
it touches us so deeply, that we must have lost all feeling if we
are careless of the truth about it. Our every action and our every
thought must take such different courses, according as there are or
are not eternal blessings for which to hope, that it is impossible to
take a single step with sense or judgment, save in view of that point
which ought to be our end and aim.
Thus our first interest and our first duty is to gain light on
this subject, whereon our whole conduct depends. Therefore among
unbelievers, I make a vast difference between those who labour with
all their power to gain instruction, and those who live without
taking trouble or thought for it.
I can have nothing but compassion for all who sincerely lament their
doubt, who look upon it as the worst of evils, and who, sparing no
pains to escape it, find in that endeavour their principal and most
serious occupation.
But as for those who pass their life without thought of the ultimate
goal of life, who, solely because they do not find within themselves
the light of conviction, neglect to seek it elsewhere and to examine
thoroughly whether the opinion in question be among those which are
popularly received with credulous simplicity, or among those which,
although in themselves obscure, have yet a solid and indestructible
basis,--of those, I say, my thoughts are very different.
This neglect of a matter in which themselves are concerned, their
eternity, and their all, makes me angry rather than compassionate; it
astonishes and terrifies me, it is to me something monstrous. I do
not say this out of the pious zeal of a spiritual devotion. I mean
on the contrary that such a feeling should spring from principles of
human interest and self-love; and for this we need see no more than
what is seen by the least enlightened persons.
We need no great elevation of soul to understand that here is no
true and solid satisfaction, that all our pleasures are but vanity,
our evils infinite, and lastly that death, which threatens us every
moment, must infallibly and within a few years place us in the dread
alternative of being for ever either annihilated or wretched.
Nothing is more real than this, nothing more terrible. Brave it out
as we may, that is yet the end which awaits the fairest life in the
world. Let us reflect on this, and then say if it be not certain that
there is no good in this life save in the hope of another, that we
are happy only in proportion as we approach it, and that as there is
no more sorrow for those who have an entire assurance of eternity, so
there is no happiness for those who have not a ray of its light.
Assuredly then it is a great evil thus to be in doubt, but it is
at least an indispensable duty to seek when we are in such doubt;
he therefore who doubts and yet seeks not is at once thoroughly
unhappy and thoroughly unfair. And if at the same time he be easy and
content, profess to be so, and in fact pride himself thereon; if even
it be this very condition of doubt which forms the subject of his
joy and boasting, I have no terms in which to describe a creature so
extravagant.
Whence come such feelings? What delight can we find in the
expectation of nothing but unavailing misery? What cause of boasting
that we are in impenetrable darkness? How can such an argument as the
following occur to a reasoning man?
"I know not who has sent me into the world, nor what the world is,
nor what I myself am; I am terribly ignorant of every thing; I know
not what my body is, nor my senses, nor my soul, nor even that part
of me which thinks what I say, which reflects on all and on itself,
yet is as ignorant of itself as of all beside. I see those dreadful
spaces of the universe which close me in, and I find myself fixed
in one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am set in
this place rather than elsewhere, nor why this moment of time given
me for life is assigned to this point rather than another of the
whole Eternity which was before me or which shall be after me. I see
nothing but infinities on every side, which close me round as an
atom, and as a shadow which endures but for an instant and returns
no more. I know only that I must shortly die, but what I know the
least is this very death which I cannot avoid.
"As I know not whence I come, so I know not whither I go; only this I
know, that on departing this world, I shall either fall for ever into
nothingness, or into the hands of an offended God, without knowing
which of these two conditions shall eternally be my lot. Such is my
state, full of weakness and uncertainty; from all which I conclude
that I ought to pass all the days of my life without thought of
searching for what must happen to me. Perhaps I might find some ray
of light in my doubts, but I will not take the trouble, nor stir a
foot to seek it; and after treating with scorn those who are troubled
with this care, I will go without foresight and without fear to make
trial of the grand event, and allow myself to be led softly on to
death, uncertain of the eternity of my future condition."
Who would wish to have for his friend a man who should thus speak;
who would choose him rather than another for advice in business; who
would turn to him in sorrow? And indeed to what use in life could we
put him?
In truth, it is the glory of Religion to have for enemies men so
unreasoning, whose opposition is so little dangerous to her, that it
the rather serves to establish her truths. For the Christian faith
goes mainly to the establishment of these two points, the corruption
of nature, and the Redemption by Jesus Christ. Now I maintain that
if these men serve not to demonstrate the truth of Redemption by the
holiness of their morals, they at least serve admirably to show the
corruption of nature by sentiments so unnatural.
Nothing is so important to man as his condition, nothing so
formidable to him as eternity; and thus it is not natural there
should be men indifferent to the loss of their being, and to the
peril of an endless woe. They are quite other men in regard to all
else; they fear the veriest trifles, they foresee them, they feel
them; and the very man who spends so many days and nights in rage
and despair for the loss of office or for some imaginary insult to
his honour, is the same who, without disquiet and without emotion,
knows that he must lose all by death. It is a monstrous thing to see
in one and the same heart and at the same time this sensibility to
the meanest, and this strange insensibility to the greatest matters.
It is an incomprehensible spell, a supernatural drowsiness, which
denotes as its cause an all powerful force.
There must be a strange revolution in the nature of man, before he
can glory at being in a state to which it seems incredible that any
should attain. Experience however has shown me a large number of
such men, a surprising fact did we not know that the greater part of
those who meddle with the matter are not as a fact what they declare
themselves. They are people who have been told that the manners of
good society consist in such daring. This they call shaking off
the yoke, this they try to imitate. Yet it would not be difficult
to convince them how much they deceive themselves in thus seeking
esteem. Not so is it acquired, even among those men of the world
who judge wisely, and who know that the only way of worldly success
is to show ourselves honourable, faithful, of sound judgment, and
capable of useful service to a friend; because by nature men love
only what may prove useful to them. Now in what way does it advantage
us to hear a man say he has at last shaken off the yoke, that he
does not believe there is a God who watches his actions, that he
considers himself the sole master of his conduct and accountable for
it only to himself. Does he think that thus he has brought us to
have henceforward confidence in him, and to look to him for comfort,
counsel and succour in every need of life? Do they think to delight
us when they declare that they hold our soul to be but a little wind
or smoke, nay, when they tell us so in a tone of proud content? Is
this a thing to assert gaily, and not rather to say sadly as the
saddest thing in all the world?
Did they think on it seriously, they would see that this is so great
a mistake, so contrary to good sense, so opposed to honourable
conduct, so remote in every respect from that good breeding at which
they aim, that they would choose rather to restore than to corrupt
those who might have any inclination to follow them. And indeed if
they are obliged to give an account of their opinions, and of the
reasons they have for doubts about Religion, they will say things
so weak and base, as rather to persuade the contrary. It was once
happily said to such an one, "If you continue to talk thus you will
really make me a Christian." And the speaker was right, for who would
not be horrified at entertaining opinions in which he would have such
despicable persons as his associates!
Thus those who only feign these opinions would be very unhappy were
they to put force on their natural disposition in order to make
themselves the most inconsequent of men. If, in their inmost hearts,
they are troubled at their lack of light, let them not dissemble:
the avowal will bring no shame; the only shame is to be shameless.
Nothing betrays so much weakness of mind as not to apprehend the
misfortune of a man without God, nothing is so sure a token of an
evil disposition of heart as not to desire the truth of eternal
promises, nothing is more cowardly than to fight against God. Let
them therefore leave these impieties to persons who are so ill-bred
as to be really capable of them, let them at least be men of honour
if they cannot be Christians, and lastly, let them recognise that
there are but two classes of men who can be called reasonable; those
who serve God with their whole heart because they know him, or those
who seek him with their whole heart because they know him not.
But as for those who live without knowing him and without seeking
him, they judge themselves to deserve their own care so little, that
they are not worthy the care of others, and it needs all the charity
of the Religion they despise, not to despise them so utterly as to
abandon them to their madness. But since this Religion obliges us
to look on them, while they are in this life, as always capable of
illuminating grace, and to believe that in a short while they may
be more full of faith than ourselves, while we on the other hand
may fall into the blindness which now is theirs, we ought to do for
them what we would they should do for us were we in their place, and
to entreat them to take pity on themselves and advance at least a
few steps, if perchance they may find the light. Let them give to
reading these words a few of the hours which otherwise they spend
so unprofitably: with whatever aversion they set about it they may
perhaps gain something; at least they cannot be great losers. But if
any bring to the task perfect sincerity and a true desire to meet
with truth, I despair not of their satisfaction, nor of their being
convinced of so divine a Religion by the proofs which I have here
gathered up, and have set forth in somewhat the following order....
Before entering upon the proofs of the Christian Religion, I find it
necessary to set forth the unfairness of men who live indifferent to
the search for truth in a matter which is so important to them, and
which touches them so nearly.
Among all their errors this doubtless is the one which most proves
them to be fools and blind, and in which it is most easy to confound
them by the first gleam of common sense, and by our natural feelings.
For it is not to be doubted that this life endures but for an
instant, that the state of death is eternal, whatever may be its
nature, and that thus all our actions and all our thoughts must take
such different courses according to the state of that eternity, as to
render it impossible to take a single step with sense and judgment,
save in view of that point which ought to be our end and aim.
Nothing is more clear than this, and therefore by all principles of
reason the conduct of men is most unreasonable if they do not alter
their course. Hence we may judge concerning those who live without
thinking of the ultimate goal of life, who allow themselves to be
guided by their inclinations and their pleasures without thought or
disquiet, and, as if they could annihilate eternity by turning their
minds from it, consider only how they may make themselves happy for
the moment.
Yet this eternity exists; and death the gate of eternity, which
threatens them every hour, must in a short while infallibly reduce
them to the dread necessity of being through eternity either nothing
or miserable, without knowing which of these eternities is for ever
prepared for them.
This is a doubt which has terrible consequences. They are in danger
of an eternity of misery, and thereupon, as if the matter were not
worth the trouble, they care not to examine whether this is one of
those opinions which men in general receive with a too credulous
facility, or among those which, themselves obscure, have yet a solid
though concealed foundation. Thus they know not whether the matter be
true or false, nor if the proofs be strong or weak. They have them
before their eyes, they refuse to look at them, and in that ignorance
they choose to do all that will bring them into this misfortune if
it exist, to wait for death to verify it, and to be in the meantime
thoroughly satisfied with their state, openly avowing and even making
boast of it. Can we think seriously on the importance of this matter
without being revolted at conduct so extravagant?
Such rest in ignorance is a monstrous thing, and they who live in it
ought to be made aware of its extravagance and stupidity, by having
it revealed to them, that they may be confounded by the sight of
their own folly. For this is how men reason when they choose to live
ignorant of what they are and do not seek to be enlightened. "I know
not," say they....
_NOTES_
_FOR THE GENERAL INTRODUCTION._
To doubt is then a misfortune, but to seek when in doubt is
an indispensable duty. So he who doubts and seeks not is at
once unfortunate and unfair. If at the same time he is gay and
presumptuous, I have no terms in which to describe a creature so
extravagant.
A fine subject of rejoicing and boasting, with the head uplifted
in such a fashion.... Therefore let us rejoice; I see not the
conclusion, since it is uncertain, and we shall then see what will
become of us.
Is it courage in a dying man that he dare, in his weakness and agony,
face an almighty and eternal God?
Were I in that state I should be glad if any one would pity my folly,
and would have the goodness to deliver me in despite of myself!
Yet it is certain that man has so fallen from nature that there is in
his heart a seed of joy in that very fact.
A man in a dungeon, who knows not whether his doom is fixed, who has
but one hour to learn it, and this hour enough, should he know that
it is fixed, to obtain its repeal, would act against nature did he
employ that hour, not in learning his sentence, but in playing piquet.
So it is against nature that man, etc. It is to weight the hand of
God.
Thus not the zeal alone of those who seek him proves God, but the
blindness of those who seek him not.
We run carelessly to the precipice after having veiled our eyes to
hinder us from seeing it.
Between us and hell or heaven, there is nought but life, the frailest
thing in all the world.
If it be a supernatural blindness to live without seeking to know
what we are, it is a terrible blindness to live ill while believing
in God.
The sensibility of man to trifles, and his insensibility to great
things, is the mark of a strange inversion.
This shows that there is nothing to say to them, not that we despise
them, but because they have no common sense: God must touch them.
We must pity both parties, but for the one we must feel the pity born
of tenderness, and for the other the pity born of contempt.
We must indeed be of that religion which man despises that we may not
despise men.
People of that kind are academicians and scholars, and that is the
worst kind of men that I know.
I do not gather that by system, but by the way in which the heart of
man is made.
To reproach Miton, that he is not troubled when God will reproach him.
Is this a thing to say with joy? It is a thing we ought then to say
with sadness.
Nothing is so important as this, yet we neglect this only.
This is all that a man could do were he assured of the falsehood of
that news, and even then he ought not to be joyful, but downcast.
... Suppose an heir finds the title-deeds of his house. Will he say,
"Perhaps they are forgeries?" and neglect to examine them?
We must not say that this is a mark of reason.
To be so insensible as to despise interesting things, and to become
insensible to the point which most interests us.
What then shall we conclude of all these obscurities, if not our own
unworthiness?
_THE MISERY OF MAN WITHOUT GOD_;
_OR_
_THAT NATURE IS NATURALLY CORRUPT_.
_PREFACE TO THE FIRST PART._
To speak of those who have treated of the knowledge of self, of the
divisions of Charron which sadden and weary us, of the confusion of
Montaigne; that he was aware he had no definite system, and tried
to evade the difficulty by leaping from subject to subject; that he
sought to be fashionable.
His foolish project of self-description, and this not casually and
against his maxims, since everybody may make mistakes, but by his
maxims themselves, and by his main and principal design. For to say
foolish things by chance and weakness is an ordinary evil, but to say
them designedly is unbearable, and to say of such that....
_Montaigne._--Montaigne's defects are great. Lewd expressions. This
is bad, whatever Mademoiselle de Gournay may say. He is credulous,
_people without eyes_; ignorant, _squaring the circle, a greater
world_. His opinions on suicide and on death. He suggests a
carelessness about salvation, _without fear and without repentance_.
Since his book was not written with a religious intent, it was not
his duty to speak of religion; but it is always a duty not to turn
men from it. We may excuse his somewhat lax and licentious opinions
on some relations of life, but not his thoroughly pagan opinions on
death, for a man must give over piety altogether, if he does not at
least wish to die like a Christian. Now through the whole of his book
he looks forward to nothing but a soft and indolent death.
What good there is in Montaigne can only have been acquired with
difficulty. What is evil in him, I mean apart from his morality,
could have been corrected in a moment, if any one had told him he was
too prolix and too egoistical.
Not in Montaigne, but in myself, I find all that I see in him.
Let no one say I have said nothing new, the disposition of my matter
is new. In playing tennis, two men play with the same ball, but one
places it better.
It might as truly be said that my words have been used before. And if
the same thoughts in a different arrangement do not form a different
discourse, so neither do the same words in a different arrangement
form different thoughts.
_MAN'S DISPROPORTION._
This is where our intuitive knowledge leads us. If it be not true,
there is no truth in man; and if it be, he finds therein a great
reason for humiliation, because he must abase himself in one way
or another. And since he cannot exist without such knowledge, I
wish that before entering on deeper researches into nature he
would consider her seriously and at leisure, that he would examine
himself also, and knowing what proportion there is.... Let man
then contemplate the whole realm of nature in its full and exalted
majesty, and turn his eyes from the low objects which hem him
round; let him observe that brilliant light set like an eternal
lamp to illumine the universe, let the earth appear to him a point
in comparison with the vast circle described by that sun, and let
him see with amazement that even this vast circle is itself but a
fine point in regard to that described by the stars revolving in
the firmament. If our view be arrested there, let imagination pass
beyond, and it will sooner exhaust the power of thinking than nature
that of giving scope for thought. The whole visible world is but an
imperceptible speck in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches
it. We may swell our conceptions beyond all imaginable space, yet
bring forth only atoms in comparison with the reality of things.
It is an infinite sphere, the centre of which is every where, the
circumference no where. It is, in short, the greatest sensible mark
of the almighty power of God, in that thought let imagination lose
itself.
Then, returning to himself, let man consider his own being compared
with all that is; let him regard himself as wandering in this remote
province of nature; and from the little dungeon in which he finds
himself lodged, I mean the universe, let him learn to set a true
value on the earth, on its kingdoms, its cities, and on himself.
What is a man in the infinite? But to show him another prodigy no
less astonishing, let him examine the most delicate things he knows.
Let him take a mite which in its minute body presents him with
parts incomparably more minute; limbs with their joints, veins in
the limbs, blood in the veins, humours in the blood, drops in the
humours, vapours in the drops; let him, again dividing these last,
exhaust his power of thought; let the last point at which he arrives
be that of which we speak, and he will perhaps think that here is the
extremest diminutive in nature. Then I will open before him therein
a new abyss. I will paint for him not only the visible universe, but
all that he can conceive of nature's immensity in the enclosure of
this diminished atom. Let him therein see an infinity of universes
of which each has its firmament, its planets, its earth, in the
same proportion as in the visible world; in each earth animals, and
at the last the mites, in which he will come upon all that was in
the first, and still find in these others the same without end and
without cessation; let him lose himself in wonders as astonishing in
their minuteness as the others in their immensity; for who will not
be amazed at seeing that our body, which before was imperceptible in
the universe, itself imperceptible in the bosom of the whole, is now
a colossus, a world, a whole, in regard to the nothingness to which
we cannot attain.
Whoso takes this survey of himself will be terrified at the thought
that he is upheld in the material being, given him by nature, between
these two abysses of the infinite and nothing, he will tremble at the
sight of these marvels; and I think that as his curiosity changes
into wonder, he will be more disposed to contemplate them in silence
than to search into them with presumption.
For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in regard to the
infinite, a whole in regard to nothing, a mean between nothing and
the whole; infinitely removed from understanding either extreme. The
end of things and their beginnings are invincibly hidden from him in
impenetrable secrecy, he is equally incapable of seeing the nothing
whence he was taken, and the infinite in which he is engulfed.
What shall he do then, but discern somewhat of the middle of things
in an eternal despair of knowing either their beginning or their end?
All things arise from nothing, and tend towards the infinite. Who
can follow their marvellous course? The author of these wonders can
understand them, and none but he.
Of these two infinites in nature, the infinitely great and the
infinitely little, man can more easily conceive the great.
Because they have not considered these infinities, men have rashly
plunged into the research of nature, as though they bore some
proportion to her.
It is strange that they have wished to understand the origin of all
that is, and thence to attain to the knowledge of the whole, with
a presumption as infinite as their object. For there is no doubt
that such a design cannot be formed without presumption or without a
capacity as infinite as nature.
If we are well informed, we understand that nature having graven her
own image and that of her author on all things, they are almost all
partakers of her double infinity. Thus we see that all the sciences
are infinite in the extent of their researches, for none can doubt
that geometry, for instance, has an infinite infinity of problems
to propose. They are also infinite in the number and in the nicety
of their premisses, for it is evident that those which are finally
proposed are not self-supporting, but are based on others, which
again having others as their support have no finality.
But we make some apparently final to the reason, just as in regard to
material things we call that an indivisible point beyond which our
senses can no longer perceive any thing, though by its nature this
also is infinitely divisible.
Of these two scientific infinities, that of greatness is the
most obvious to the senses, and therefore few persons have made
pretensions to universal knowledge. "I will discourse of the all,"
said Democritus.
But beyond the fact that it is a small thing to speak of it simply,
without proving and knowing, it is nevertheless impossible to do so,
the infinite multitude of things being so hidden, that all we can
express by word or thought is but an invisible trace of them. Hence
it is plain how foolish, vain, and ignorant is that title of some
books: _De omni scibili_.
But the infinitely little is far less evident. Philosophers have much
more frequently asserted they have attained it, yet in that very
point they have all stumbled. This has given occasion to such common
titles as _The Origin of Creation_, _The Principles of Philosophy_,
and the like, as presumptuous in fact though not in appearance as
that dazzling one, _De omni scibili_.
We naturally think that we can more easily reach the centre of
things than embrace their circumference. The visible bulk of the
world visibly exceeds us, but as we exceed little things, we think
ourselves more capable of possessing them. Yet we need no less
capacity to attain the nothing than the whole. Infinite capacity
is needed for both, and it seems to me that whoever shall have
understood the ultimate principles of existence might also attain
to the knowledge of the infinite. The one depends on the other, and
one leads to the other. Extremes meet and reunite by virtue of their
distance, to find each other in God, and in God alone.
Let us then know our limits; we are something, but we are not all.
What existence we have conceals from us the knowledge of first
principles which spring from the nothing, while the pettiness of that
existence hides from us the sight of the infinite.
In the order of intelligible things our intelligence holds the same
position as our body holds in the vast extent of nature.
Restricted in every way, this middle state between two extremes is
common to all our weaknesses.
Our senses can perceive no extreme. Too much noise deafens us, excess
of light blinds us, too great distance or nearness equally interfere
with our vision, prolixity or brevity equally obscure a discourse,
too much truth overwhelms us. I know even those who cannot understand
that if four be taken from nothing nothing remains. First principles
are too plain for us, superfluous pleasure troubles us. Too many
concords are unpleasing in music, and too many benefits annoy, we
wish to have wherewithal to overpay our debt. _Beneficia eo usque
læta sunt dum videntur exsolvi posse; ubi multum antevenere, pro
gratia odium redditur._
We feel neither extreme heat nor extreme cold. Qualities in excess
are inimical to us and not apparent to the senses, we do not feel but
are passive under them. The weakness of youth and age equally hinder
the mind, as also too much and too little teaching....
In a word, all extremes are for us as though they were not; and we
are not, in regard to them: they escape us, or we them.