49.
“When we would show any one that he is mistaken our best course is to observe on what side he considers the subject,—for his view of it is generally right on this side,—and admit to him that he is right so far. He will be satisfied with this acknowledgment, that he was not wrong in his judgment, but only inadvertent in not looking at the whole of the case.”—Pascal.
50.
“We should reflect,” says Jeremy Taylor, preaching against ambition, “that whatever tempts the pride and vanity of ambitious persons is not so big as the smallest star which we see scattered in disorder and unregarded on the pavement of heaven.”
Very beautiful and poetical, but certainly no good argument against the sin he denounces. The star is inaccessible, and what tempts our pride or our ambition is only that which we consider with hope as accessible. That we look up to the stars not desiring, not aspiring, but only loving—therein lies our hearts’ truest, holiest, safest devotion as contrasted with ambition.
It is the “desire of the moth for the star,” that leads to its burning itself in the candle.
