We now present a brief fragment asserting, with vivid metaphor, at the same time the fragility of man's frame and the majesty of man's nature. This is a very famous Thought:—
Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. It is not necessary that the entire universe arm itself to crush him. An exhalation, a drop of water, suffices to kill him. But were the universe to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which kills him, because he knows that he is dying, and knows the advantage that the universe has over him. The universe knows nothing of it.
Our whole dignity consists, then, in thought.
One is reminded of the memorable saying of a celebrated philosopher: "In the universe there is nothing great but man; in man there is nothing great but mind."
What a sudden, almost ludicrous, reduction in scale, the greatness of Cæsar, as conqueror, is made to suffer when looked at in the way in which Pascal asks you to look at it in the following Thought! (Remember that Cæsar, when he began fighting for universal empire, was fifty-one years of age:)—
Cæsar was too old, it seems to me, to amuse himself with conquering the world. This amusement was well enough for Augustus or Alexander; they were young people, whom it is difficult to stop; but Cæsar ought to have been more mature.
That is as if you should reverse the tube of your telescope, with the result of seeing the object observed made smaller instead of larger.
The following sentence might be a Maxim of La Rochefoucauld. Pascal was, no doubt, a debtor to him as well as to Montaigne:—
I lay it down as a fact, that, if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.
Here is one of the most current of Pascal's sayings:—