The greatness of man is great in that he knows he is miserable. A tree does not know that it is miserable.
It is therefore little to know ourselves little, and it is great to know ourselves little.
Thus his very infirmities proves man's greatness. They are the infirmities of a great lord, of a discrowned king.
The greatness of man is so evident that it is even proved by his littleness. For what in animals is nature we call in man littleness, whereby we recognise that his nature being now like that of animals he is fallen from a better nature which once was his.
For what man ever was unhappy at not being a king, save a discrowned king? Was Paulus Emilius unhappy at being no longer consul? On the contrary, all men thought him happy in having filled that office, because it was involved in it that it should be but temporary. But Perseus was thought so unhappy in being no longer king, because the condition of royalty involved his being always king, that it was thought strange he could bear to live. No man thinks himself unhappy in having but one mouth, but any man is unhappy if he have but one eye. No man was ever grieved at not having three eyes, but any man is inconsolable if he have none.
Perseus, King of Macedon.—Paulus Emilius reproached Perseus for not killing himself.
There is no misery apart from sensation. A ruined house is not miserable. Man only is miserable. Ego vir videns.
It is then thought which makes man's being, and without this we cannot conceive him. What is it in us which feels pleasure? The hand? The arm? The flesh? The blood? We see that it roust be something immaterial.
I can easily conceive a man without hands, feet, head, for it is only experience which teaches us that the head is more necessary than the feet. But I cannot conceive a man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.
Man is evidently made for thought, this is his whole dignity and his whole merit; his whole duty is to think as he ought. Now the order of thought is to begin with self, and with its author and its end.