CHAPTER VI. THE ‘PENSÉES.’

“Epictetus,” said Pascal, “is one of the philosophers of the world who have best known the duties of man.  Above all things, he would have man regard God as his chief object—to be persuaded that He governs all things with righteousness—to submit to Him cordially, and to follow Him willingly, as having made all things with perfect wisdom.  Such a disposition would stay all complaints and murmurs, and prepare the human mind to bear quietly the most troublesome events.  ‘Never say,’ he observes (Enchirid. 11), ‘I have lost that; say rather, I have restored it.  My son is dead; I have surrendered him.  My wife is dead; I have given her up.’  And so of every other good. . . .  While its use is permitted, regard it as a good belonging to others, as a traveller does in an inn.  You should not wish,’ he adds, ‘that things be as you desire, but you should desire them to be as they are.’ . . .  It is your duty to play well the part assigned to you, but to choose the part is the act of Another.  Have always death before your eyes, and the evils which are least supportable, and you would never think meanly of anything, nor desire anything in excess.  He shows in a thousand ways what is the duty of man.  He wishes him to be humble, page 182to conceal his good resolutions, especially in their beginnings, that he may carry them out in secret.  Nothing is so ruinous to them as publicity.  He never ceases to repeat that the whole duty and desire of man ought to be to acknowledge the will of God, and to follow it. “Such were the lights of this great mind, who has so well understood the duties of man.  I venture to say, that he would have deserved to be adored if he had only known as well human weakness; but in order to do this, he must have been God Himself.  Mere man as he was, after having so well explained human duty, he loses himself in the presumption of human capacity.  He avers that God has given to every man the means of acquitting himself of all his obligations; that such means are always within his own power, that happiness is to be sought by things within our reach, since God has given us them for this very end.  He points out in what our freedom consists: goods, life, esteem are not in our power, and therefore do not lead to God; but none can force the mind to believe what is false, nor the will to love that which will make it miserable.  These two powers are therefore free; and by these we can render ourselves perfect—know God perfectly, love Him, obey Him, please Him—vanquish all vices, acquire all virtues, and so make ourselves holy, and the fellows of God.  These principles, truly diabolic in their pride, lead to other errors—such as that the soul is a portion of the Divine substance, that grief and death are not evils, that we may kill ourselves when we are in such trouble that we may believe God summons us, etc. “As for Montaigne—of whom you wish me also, my dear sir, to speak—being born in a Christian country, he makes profession of the Catholic religion, and so far there is nothing peculiar about him.  But in the search for a system of morals dictated by reason without the light of faith, he has to lay down his principles on this supposition, and to consider man apart from revelation.  He conceives things in such a universal uncertainty that doubt itself is seized with uncertainty, and doubts whether it doubts.  His scepticism returns upon itself in a perpetual circle without page 183repose, opposing equally those who maintain that all is uncertain, and those who maintain that nothing is, so utterly indisposed is he to any fixity.  In this doubt which doubts itself, and this ignorance which is ignorant of itself, is to be found the essence of his thought.  He cannot express it by any positive term; for if he was to say that he doubts, he betrays himself by making it certain that he doubts; and this being formally against his intention, he can only explain himself by an interrogation.  Not wishing to say, I do not know, he can only ask, What do I know?  He has made this his device, putting it under a pair of balances, which, weighted in each scale by a contradiction, hangs in perfect equilibrium.  In other words, he is pure Pyrrhonist.  This is the point round which turn all his discourses and all his essays.  This is the only thing which he leaves fixed, although he may not always keep it before him. . . . “It is in this humour, fluctuating and variable as it is, that he combats with an invincible firmness the heretics of his time, who assumed to know the exclusive sense of Scripture.  From the same point of view he thunders vigorously against the horrible impiety of those who dare to be certain that there is no God!  He attacks them especially in the ‘Apology for Raymond de Sebonde.’  Having voluntarily set aside revelation, and abandoned themselves to their natural light—all faith set aside—he asks them on what authority they, who know not the essential reality of anything, dare to judge of that Sovereign Being who is infinite by His very definition.  He demands upon what principles they rest, and presses them to point them out.  He examines all that they bring forward, and so searches them by his wonderful penetration as to show the hollowness of what passes for the most clear and established truths.  He inquires if the soul knows anything whatever—if it knows itself; whether it is substance or accident, body or spirit; what is each of these things, and if there is anything belonging to some order different from either; if the soul knows its own body; if it knows what matter is, or can distinguish the innumerable varieties of page 184body produced from matter; how it can reason if it is material, and how it can be united to a special body, and feel its passions if it be spiritual.  When did it begin to be, with the body or before, and if it ends with it or not? . . . .  The ideas of God and truth are inseparable, and if the one is or is not, if the one is certain or uncertain, the other is necessarily the same.  Who knows if the common sense (*le sens commun*) which we take as a judge of the truth is really this, designed for such a purpose?  Who knows what truth is, and how can we be sure of having it without knowing it?  Who knows even what Being is, since it is impossible to define it; and in trying to do so, it is necessary to presuppose the very idea itself, and say *it is*? . . . “I confess, sir, I might look with joy upon the manner in which the author invincibly crumples up proud reason with its own arms.  I could love with my whole heart the minister of so mighty a vengeance if, as a faithful disciple of the Church, he had followed its moral guidance.  But he acts, on the contrary, like a pagan, concluding that we ought to abandon care for others and dwell in peace, gliding lightly over such subjects lest we lose ourselves in them, and taking that to be true and good which at first appears to be so.  This is why he follows everywhere the evidence of the senses and the notions of the community. . . .  In this manner, he says, there is nothing extravagant in his conduct.  He does as others do.  Whatever they do in the foolish thought that they are following the true good, he does from another principle, that as the probabilities (*vraisemblances*) are equally on one side and the other, so example and convenience carry the day with him.  He mounts his horse like any one else—not as a philosopher—because the horse allows him to do so, but without thinking there is any right in the matter, and not knowing whether the horse, on the contrary, may not be entitled to make use of him.  He puts constraint to himself in order to shun certain vices; and even guards marriage faithfully, merely on account of the disorder which would otherwise follow. . . . “I cannot dissemble that in reading Montaigne, and page 185comparing him with Epictetus, I find in them the two greatest defenders of the most celebrated sects of the world, who profess to follow reason rather than revelation.  We must follow one or other.  Either there is a God and a Sovereign Good, or this is uncertain, and all is uncertain,—whether there is any true good or not. . . . “The error in both is, in not seeing that the present state of man differs from that in which he was created.  The one, observing only the traces of his primitive grandeur, and ignoring his corruption, has treated human nature as if it were whole, without any need of a Redeemer—this leads to the height of pride; the other, sensible of man’s present misery, and ignorant of his original dignity, treats human nature as necessarily weak and irreparable, and thus, in despair of attaining any true good, plunges it into a depth of baseness.” ⁹