the point to which all eyes are turned. All complain, princes and
subjects, nobles and commons, old and young, strong and weak, learned
and ignorant, sound and sick, of all countries, all times, all ages,
and all conditions.
A trial so long, so constant and so uniform, should surely convince
us of our inability to arrive at good by our own strength, but
example teaches us but little. No resemblance is so exact but
that there is some slight difference, and hence we expect that
our endeavour will not be foiled on this occasion as before. Thus
while the present never satisfies, experience deceives us, and from
misfortune to misfortune leads us on to death, eternal crown of
sorrows.
This desire, and this weakness cry aloud to us that there was once
in man a true happiness, of which there now remains to him but the
mark and the empty trace, which he vainly tries to fill from all that
surrounds him, seeking from things absent the succour he finds not in
things present; and these are all inadequate, because this infinite
void can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is
to say, only by God himself.
He only is our true good, and since we have left him, it is strange
that there is nothing in nature which has not served to take his
place; neither the stars, nor heaven, earth, the elements, plants,
cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents, fever,
pestilence, war, famine, vices, adultery, incest. And since he has
lost the true good, all things can equally appear good to him, even
his own destruction, though so contrary to God, to reason, and to the
whole course of nature.
Some seek good in authority, others in research and knowledge, others
in pleasure. Others, who indeed are nearer the truth, have considered
it necessary that the universal good which all men desire should
not consist in any of those particular matters which can only be
possessed by one, and which if once shared, afflict their possessor
more by the want of what he has not, than they gladden him by the
joy of what he has. They have apprehended that the true good should
be such as all may possess at once, without diminution, and without
envy, and that which none can lose against his will. And their reason
is that this desire being natural to man, since it exists necessarily
in all, and that all must have it, they conclude from it....
_Infinite, nothing._--The soul of man is cast into the body, in which
it finds number, time, dimension; it reasons thereon, and calls this
nature or necessity, and cannot believe aught else.
Unity joined to infinity increases it not, any more than a foot
measure added to infinite space. The finite is annihilated in
presence of the infinite and becomes simply nought. Thus our
intellect before God, thus our justice before the divine justice.
There is not so great a disproportion between our justice and that of
God, as between unity and infinity.
The justice of God must be as vast as his mercy, but justice towards
the reprobate is less vast, and should be less amazing than mercy
towards the elect.
We know that there is an infinite, but are ignorant of its nature.
As we know it to be false that numbers are finite, it must therefore
be true that there is an infinity in number, but what this is we know
not. It can neither be odd nor even, for the addition of an unit can
make no change in the nature of number; yet it is a number, and every
number is either odd or even, at least this is understood of every
finite number.
Thus we may well know that there is a God, without knowing what he is.
We know then the existence and the nature of the finite, because we
also are finite and have dimension.
We know the existence of the infinite, and are ignorant of its
nature, because it has dimension like us, but not limits like us. But
we know neither the existence nor the nature of God, because he has
neither dimension nor limits.
But by faith we know his existence, by glory we shall know his
nature. Now I have already shown that we can know well the existence
of a thing without knowing its nature.
Let us now speak according to the light of nature.
If there be a God, he is infinitely incomprehensible, since having
neither parts nor limits he has no relation to us. We are then
incapable of knowing either what he is or if he is. This being so,
who will dare to undertake the solution of the question? Not we, who
have no relation to him.
Who then will blame Christians for not being able to give a reason
for their faith; those who profess a religion for which they cannot
give a reason? They declare in putting it forth to the world that it
is a foolishness, _stultitiam_, and then you complain that they do
not prove it. Were they to prove it they would not keep their word,
it is in lacking proof that they are not lacking in sense.--Yes, but
although this excuses those who offer it as such, and takes away from
them the blame of putting it forth without reason, it does not excuse
those who receive it.--Let us then examine this point, and say "God
is, or he is not." But to which side shall we incline? Reason can
determine nothing about it. There is an infinite gulf fixed between
us. A game is playing at the extremity of this infinite distance in
which heads or tails may turn up. What will you wager? There is no
reason for backing either one or the other, you cannot reasonably
argue in favour of either.
Do not then accuse of error those who have already chosen, for you
know nothing about it.--No, but I blame them for having made, not
this choice, but a choice, for again both the man who calls 'heads'
and his adversary are equally to blame, they are both in the wrong;
the true course is not to wager at all.--
Yes, but you must wager; this depends not on your will, you are
embarked in the affair. Which will you choose? Let us see. Since
you must choose, let us see which least interests you. You have two
things to lose, truth and good, and two things to stake, your reason
and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has
two things to avoid, error and misery. Since you must needs choose,
your reason is no more wounded in choosing one than the other. Here
is one point cleared up, but what of your happiness? Let us weigh the
gain and the loss in choosing heads that God is. Let us weigh the
two cases: if you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.
Wager then unhesitatingly that he is.--You are right. Yes, I must
wager, but I may stake too much.--Let us see. Since there is an equal
chance of gain and loss, if you had only to gain two lives for one,
you might still wager. But were there three of them to gain, you
would have to play, since needs must that you play, and you would be
imprudent, since you must play, not to chance your life to gain three
at a game where the chances of loss or gain are even. But there is
an eternity of life and happiness. And that being so, were there an
infinity of chances of which one only would be for you, you would
still be right to stake one to win two, and you would act foolishly,
being obliged to play, did you refuse to stake one life against three
at a game in which out of an infinity of chances there be one for
you, if there were an infinity of an infinitely happy life to win.
But there is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to win, a
chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what
you stake is finite; that is decided. Wherever the infinite exists
and there is not an infinity of chances of loss against that of gain,
there is no room for hesitation, you must risk the whole. Thus when a
man is forced to play he must renounce reason to keep life, rather
than hazard it for infinite gain, which is as likely to happen as the
loss of nothingness.
For it is of no avail to say it is uncertain that we gain, and
certain that we risk, and that the infinite distance between the
certainty of that which is staked and the uncertainty of what
we shall gain, equals the finite good which is certainly staked
against an uncertain infinite. This is not so. Every gambler stakes
a certainty to gain an uncertainty, and yet he stakes a finite
certainty against a finite uncertainty without acting unreasonably.
It is false to say there is infinite distance between the certain
stake and the uncertain gain. There is in truth an infinity between
the certainty of gain and the certainty of loss. But the uncertainty
of gain is proportioned to the certainty of the stake, according to
the proportion of chances of gain and loss, and if therefore there
are as many chances on one side as on the other, the game is even.
And thus the certainty of the venture is equal to the uncertainty
of the winnings, so far is it from the truth that there is infinite
distance between them. So that our argument is of infinite force, if
we stake the finite in a game where there are equal chances of gain
and loss, and the infinite is the winnings. This is demonstrable, and
if men are capable of any truths, this is one.
I confess and admit it. Yet is there no means of seeing the hands at
the game?--Yes, the Scripture and the rest, etc.
--Well, but my hands are tied and my mouth is gagged: I am forced to
wager and am not free, none can release me, but I am so made that I
cannot believe. What then would you have me do?
True. But understand at least your incapacity to believe, since your
reason leads you to belief and yet you cannot believe. Labour then
to convince yourself, not by increase of the proofs of God, but by
the diminution of your passions. You would fain arrive at faith, but
know not the way; you would heal yourself of unbelief, and you ask
remedies for it. Learn of those who have been bound as you are, but
who now stake all that they possess; these are they who know the way
you would follow, who are cured of a disease of which you would be
cured. Follow the way by which they began, by making believe that
they believed, taking the holy water, having masses said, etc.
Thus you will naturally be brought to believe, and will lose your
acuteness.--But that is just what I fear.--Why? what have you to lose?
But to show you that this is the right way, this it is that will
lessen the passions, which are your great obstacles, etc.--
What you say comforts and delights me, etc.--If my words please you,
and seem to you cogent, know that they are those of one who has
thrown himself on his knees before and after to pray that Being,
infinite, and without parts, to whom he submits all his own being,
that you also would submit to him all yours, for your own good and
for his glory, and that this strength may be in accord with this
weakness.
_The end of this argument._--Now what evil will happen to you in
taking this side? You will be trustworthy, honourable, humble,
grateful, generous, friendly, sincere, and true. In truth you will no
longer have those poisoned pleasures, glory and luxury, but you will
have other pleasures. I tell you that you will gain in this life, at
each step you make in this path you will see so much certainty of
gain, so much nothingness in what you stake, that you will know at
last that you have wagered on a certainty, an infinity, for which you
have risked nothing.
_Objection._--Those who hope for salvation are so far happy, but they
have as a counterpoise the fear of hell.
_Answer._--Who has most reason to fear hell, the man who is in
ignorance if there be a hell, and who is certain of damnation if
there be; or he who is certainly convinced that there is a hell, and
has a hope of being saved if there be?
"I would soon have given up pleasure," say they, "had I but faith."
But I say to you, "you would soon have faith did you leave off your
pleasures. Now it is for you to begin. If I could, I would give you
faith. I cannot do this, nor discover therefore if what you say is
true. But you can easily give up pleasure, and discover if what I say
is true."
_Probabilities._--We must live differently in the world, according to
these different suppositions:
1. That we could always remain in it. 2. That it is certain we cannot
remain here long, and uncertain if we shall remain here an hour. This
last supposition is the case with us.
_Instability._--It is horrible to feel all that we possess slipping
away from us.
By the law of probabilities you are bound to take pains to seek the
truth; for if you die without adoring the true source of all things
you are lost. "But," say you, "had he willed that I should adore him,
he would have left me tokens of his will." He has done so, but you
neglect them. Seek them then, it is well worth your while.
_Dungeon._--I admit that it is not necessary to fathom the opinion of
Copernicus, but this:
It is all our life is worth to know if the soul be mortal or immortal.
_Fascinatio nugacitatis._--In order that passion may do no hurt, we
should act as though we had but a week to live.
If we ought to give a week we ought to give our whole life.
In short, what is it you promise me if not ten years of self-love
spent in trying hard to please without success, besides the troubles
which are certain? For ten years is the probability.
Let us imagine a number of men in chains, all condemned to death, of
whom some are strangled every day in the sight of the others, while
those who remain see their own condition in that of their fellows,
and wait their turn looking at each other sorrowfully and without
hope. This is an image of the lot of man.
We must know ourselves, and if that does not serve to discover truth,
it at least serves to regulate our lives, and there is nothing more
just.
There are but three classes of persons: those who having found God,
serve him; those who not having found him, diligently seek him; those
who not having found him, live without seeking him. The first are
happy and wise, the last are unhappy and fools, those between are
unhappy, but they are wise.
It is certain that there is no good without the knowledge of God,
that only as we approach him are we happy, and that the ultimate good
is to know him certainly; that we are unhappy in proportion as we are
removed from him, and that the greatest evil would be certainty of
the opposite.
The ordinary world has the power of not thinking about what it does
not choose to think about. "Do not reflect on those passages about
the Messiah," said the Jew to his son. So our people often act. Thus
false religions are preserved, and the true also, as regards many
people.
But there are those who have not thus the power of preventing
thought, and who think the more the more we forbid them. These get
rid of false religions, and of the true also, if they do not find
solid reasons.
If we ought to do nothing save on a certainty, we ought to do nothing
for Religion, for this is not certain. But how much we do on an
uncertainty, as sea voyages, battles! I say then if this be the case
we ought to do nothing at all, for nothing is certain, and that
there is more certainty in Religion than that we shall see another
day, for it is not certain that we shall see to-morrow, but it is
certainly possible that we shall not see it. We cannot say so much
about Religion. It is not certain that it is, but who will dare to
say that it is certainly possible that it is not? But when we work
for to-morrow, therefore for the uncertain, we act reasonably.
For we should work for the uncertain by the doctrine of chances
already laid down.
We know truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart, and
it is from this last that we know first principles; and reason,
which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to combat them. The
sceptics who desire truth alone labour in vain. We know that we do
not dream, although it is impossible to prove it by reason, and this
inability shows only the weakness of our reason, and not, as they
declare, the general uncertainty of our knowledge. For our knowledge
of first principles, as _space_, _time_, _motion_, _number_, is as
distinct as any principle derived from reason. And reason must lean
necessarily on this instinctive knowledge of the heart, and must
found on it every process. We know instinctively that there are three
dimensions in space, and that numbers are infinite, and reason then
shows that there are no two square numbers one of which is double
of the other. We feel principles, we infer propositions, both with
certainty, though by different ways. It is as useless and absurd for
reason to demand from the heart proofs of first principles before it
will admit them, as it would be for the heart to ask from reason a
feeling of all the propositions demonstrated before accepting them.
This inability should serve then only to humiliate reason, which
would fain judge of all things, but not to shake our certainty, as if
only reason were able to instruct us. Would to God, on the contrary,
that we never needed reason, and that we knew every thing by instinct
and feeling! But nature has denied us this advantage, and has on the
contrary given us but little knowledge of this kind, all the rest can
be acquired by reason only.
Therefore those to whom God has given Religion by an instinctive
feeling, are very blessed, and justly convinced. But to those who
have it not we can give it only by reasoning, waiting for the time
when God shall impress it on their hearts, without which faith is
human only, and useless for salvation.
Those to whom God has given Religion by an instinctive feeling are
very blessed, and quite convinced. But as for those who have it not,
we can give it them only by reasoning, waiting for the time when
God himself shall impress it on their heart, without which faith is
useless for salvation.
Is then the soul too noble a subject for the feeble light of man? Let
us then abase the soul to matter, and see if she knows whereof is
made the very body which she animates, and those others which she
contemplates and moves at her will. On this subject what have those
great dogmatists known who are ignorant of nothing?
_Harum sententiarum._
This would no doubt suffice if reason were reasonable. She is
reasonable enough to admit that she has never found anything stable,
but she does not yet despair of reaching it; on the contrary, she is
as ardent as ever in the search, and is sure that she has in herself
all the necessary powers for this conquest.
We must therefore make an end, and after having examined these powers
in their effects, recognise what they are in themselves, and see if
reason has power and grasp capable of seizing the truth.
The Preacher shows that man without God is wholly ignorant, and
subject to inevitable misery. For to will and to be powerless is to
be miserable. Now he wills to be happy, and to be assured of some
truth, yet he can neither know, nor not desire to know. He cannot
even doubt.
This is what I see and what troubles me. I look on all sides, and
see nothing but obscurity, nature offers me nothing but matter for
doubt and disquiet. Did I see nothing there which marked a Divinity I
should decide not to believe in him. Did I see every where the marks
of a Creator, I should rest peacefully in faith. But seeing too much
to deny, and too little to affirm, my state is pitiful, and I have
a hundred times wished that if God upheld nature, he would mark the
fact unequivocally, but that if the signs which she gives of a God
are fallacious, she would wholly suppress them, that she would either
say all or say nothing, that I might see what part I should take.
Instead of this, in my present state, ignorant of what I am, and of
what I ought to do, I know neither my condition nor my duty. My heart
is wholly bent to know where is the true good in order to follow it,
nothing would seem to me too costly for eternity.
_THE PHILOSOPHERS._
The principal arguments of the sceptics--to omit those of less
importance--are that we have no certainty of the truth of these
principles apart from faith and revelation, save so far as we
naturally perceive them in ourselves. Now this natural perception is
no convincing evidence of their truth, since, having no certainty
apart from faith, whether man was created by a good God, by an evil
demon, or by chance, it may be doubted whether these principles
within us are true or false or uncertain according to our origin.
And more than this: That no one has any certainty, apart from faith,
whether he wake or sleep, seeing that in sleep we firmly believe we
are awake, we believe that we see space, figure, and motion, we are
aware of the lapse and measure of time; in a word we act as though we
were awake. So that half of our life being passed in sleep, we have
by our own avowal, no idea of truth, whatever we may suppose. Since
then all our sentiments are illusions, who can tell but that the
other half of life wherein we fancy ourselves awake be not another
sleep somewhat different from the former, from which we wake when we
fancy ourselves asleep?
And who doubts that if we dreamt in company, and if by chance men's
dreams agreed, which is common enough, and if we were always alone
when awake, we should believe that the conditions were reversed?
In a word, as we often dream that we dream, and heap vision upon
vision, it may well be that this life itself is but a dream, on
which the others are grafted, from which we wake at death; having
in our lifetime as few principles of what is good and true, as
during natural sleep, the different thoughts which agitate us being
perhaps only illusions like those of the flight of time and the vain
fantasies of our dreams....
These are the principal arguments on one side and the other, setting
aside those of less importance, such as the talk of the sceptics
against the impressions of custom, education, manners, climate, and
the like; and these though they influence the majority of ordinary
men, who dogmatise only on vain foundations, are upset by the least
breath of the sceptics. We have only to see their books if we are
not convinced on this point, and we shall soon become assured of it,
perhaps only too much.
I pause at the only strong point of the dogmatists, namely, that
speaking sincerely and in good faith we cannot doubt of natural
principles.
Against this the sceptics set in one word the uncertainty of our
origin, which includes that of our nature. Which the dogmatists have
been trying to answer ever since the world began.
So then war is opened among men, in which each must take a side,
ranging himself either for dogmatism or for scepticism, since
neutrality, which is the part of the wise, is the oldest dogma of the
sceptical sect. Whoever thinks to remain neutral is before all things
a sceptic. This neutrality is the essence of the sect; who is not
against them is pre-eminently for them. They are not for themselves,
they are neutral, indifferent, in suspense as to all things,
themselves included.
What then shall man do in such a state? Shall he doubt of all, doubt
whether he wake, whether you pinch him, or burn him, doubt whether
he doubts, doubt whether he is? We cannot go so far as that, and
I therefore state as a fact that there never has been a perfect
finished sceptic; nature upholds the weakness of reason, and prevents
its wandering to such a point.
Shall he say on the contrary that he is in sure possession of truth,
when if we press him never so little, he can produce no title, and is
obliged to quit his hold?
What a chimæra then is man! how strange and monstrous! a chaos, a
contradiction, a prodigy. Judge of all things, yet a weak earth-worm;
depositary of truth, yet a cesspool of uncertainty and error; the
glory and offscouring of the Universe.
Who will unravel such a tangle? This is certainly beyond the power
of dogmatism and scepticism, and all human philosophy. Man is
incomprehensible by man. We grant to the sceptics what they have so
loudly asserted, that truth is not within our reach nor to our taste,
that her home is not on earth but in heaven, that she dwells within
the breast of God, and that we can only know her so far as it pleases
him to reveal her. Let us then learn our true nature from truth
uncreate and incarnate.
Nature confounds the sceptics, and reason the dogmatists. What then
will become of you, O men! who by your natural reason search out your
true condition? You can neither avoid both these sects nor live in
either.
Know then, proud man, how great a paradox thou art to thyself. Bow
down thyself, weak reason; be silent, thou foolish nature; learn that
man is altogether incomprehensible by man, and learn from your master
your true condition which you ignore. Hear God.