“As I know not whence I came, so I know not whither I go; and I know only, that in leaving this world I fall forever either into nothingness or into the hands of an angry God, without knowing which of these two conditions is to be eternally my lot. Such is my state—full of misery, of weakness, and of uncertainty.
“And from all this I conclude that I ought to pass all the days of my life without a thought of trying to learn what is to befall me hereafter. Perhaps in my doubts I might find some enlightenment; but I am unwilling to take the trouble, or go a single step in search of it; and, treating with contempt those who perplex themselves with such solicitude, my purpose is to go forward without forethought and without fear to try the great event, and passively to approach death in uncertainty of the eternity of my future condition.”
Who would desire to have for a friend a man who discourses in this manner? Who would select such a one for the confidant of his affairs? Who would have recourse to such a one in his afflictions? And, in fine, for what use of life could such a man be destined?
The central thought on which the projected apologetic of Pascal was to revolve as on a pivot is, the contrasted greatness and wretchedness of man—with Divine Revelation, in its doctrine of a fall on man’s part from original nobleness, supplying the needed link, and the only link conceivable, of explanation, to unite the one with the other, the human greatness with the human wretchedness. This contrast of dignity and disgrace should constantly be in the mind of the reader of the “Thoughts” of Pascal. It will often be found to throw a very necessary light upon the meaning of the separate fragments that make up the series.
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:)