Human Happiness

by Blaise Pascal

  429 This is what I see and what troubles me. I look around in every direction and all I see is darkness. Nature has nothing to offer me that does not give rise to doubt and anxiety. If I saw no sign there of a Divinity I should decide on a negative solution: if I saw signs of a Creator everywhere I should peacefully settle down in the faith. But, seeing too much to deny and not enough to affirm, I am in a pitiful state, where I have wished a hundred times over that, if there is a God supporting nature, she should unequivocally proclaim him, and that, if the signs in nature are deceptive, they should be completely erased; that nature should say all or nothing so that I could see what course I ought to follow. Instead of that, in the state in which I am, not knowing what I am nor what I ought to do, I know neither my condition nor my duty. My whole heart strains to know what the true good is in order to pursue it: no price would be too high to pay for eternity.

  I envy those of the faithful whom I see living so unconcernedly, making so little use of a gift which, it seems to me, I should turn to such different account.

  430 No other has realized that man is the most excellent of creatures. Some, fully realizing how real his excellence is, have taken for cowardice and ingratitude men’s natural feelings of abasement; while others, fully realizing how real this abasement is, have treated with haughty ridicule the feelings of greatness which are just as natural to man.

  ‘Lift up your eyes to God,’ say some of them, ‘look at him whom you resemble and who created you to worship him. You can make yourself like him: wisdom will make you his equal, if you want to follow him.’ – ‘Hold your heads high, free men,’ said Epictetus. And others say, ‘Cast down your eyes towards the ground, puny worm that you are, and look at the beasts whose companion you are.’

  What then is to become of man? Will he be the equal of God or the beasts? What a terrifying distance! What then shall he be? Who cannot see from all this that man is lost, that he has fallen from his place, that he anxiously seeks it, and cannot find it again? And who then is to direct him there? The greatest men have failed.

  434 Imagine a number of men in chains, all under sentence of death, some of whom are each day butchered in the sight of the others; those remaining see their own condition in that of their fellows, and looking at each other with grief and despair await their turn. This is an image of the human condition.

  450 The true religion would have to teach greatness and wretchedness, inspire self-esteem and self-contempt, love and hate.

  470 The vilest feature of man is the quest for glory, but it is just this that most clearly shows his excellence. For whatever possession he may own on earth, whatever health or essential amenity he may enjoy, he is dissatisfied unless he enjoys the good opinion of his fellows. He so highly values human reason that, however privileged he may be on earth, if he does not also enjoy a privileged position in human reason he is not happy. This is the finest position on earth, nothing can deflect him from this desire, and this is the most indelible quality in the human heart.

  And those who most despise men, and put them on the same level as the beasts, still want to be admired and trusted by them, and contradict themselves by their own feelings, for their nature, which is stronger than anything, convinces them more strongly of man’s greatness than reason convinces them of their vileness.

  474 When the creation of the world began to recede into the past, God provided a single contemporary historian, and charged an entire people with the custody of this book, so that this should be the most authentic history in the world and all men could learn from it something which it was so necessary for them to know and which could only be known from it.

  477 Pride is a counterweight and antidote for all forms of wretchedness. Here is a strange monster, and a very palpable aberration. Here he is, fallen from his place, looking anxiously for it. That is what all men do. Let us see who has found it.

  480 In all religions sincerity is essential: true heathens, true Jews, true Christians.

  499 What man ever had greater glory?

  The entire Jewish people foretells him before his coming. The Gentiles worship him after his coming.

  Both the Gentile and Jewish peoples regard him as their centre.

  And yet what man ever enjoyed such glory less?

  For thirty of his thirty-three years he lives without showing himself. For three years he is treated as an impostor. The priests and rulers reject him. Those who are nearest and dearest to him despise him, finally he dies betrayed by one of his disciples, denied by another and forsaken by all.

  What benefit then did he derive from such glory? No man ever had such great glory, no man ever suffered greater ignominy. All this glory has only been of use to us, to enable us to recognize him, and he had none of it for himself.

  505 Authority. Hearsay is so far from being a criterion of belief that you should not believe anything until you have put yourself into the same state as if you had never heard it.

  It is your own inner assent and the consistent voice of your reason rather than that of others which should make you believe.

  Belief is so important.

  A hundred contradictions might be true.

  If antiquity was the criterion of belief, then the ancients had no criterion.

  If general consent, if men had died … ?

  Punishment of sinners: error.

  False humility, pride.

  Raise the curtain.

  You are wasting your time, one must either believe, deny or doubt.

  Are we then to have no criterion?

  When animals do something we can judge whether they are doing it well; is there to be no criterion for judging men?

  Denying, believing and doubting are to men what running is to horses.

  510 The more intelligent one is, the more men of originality one finds. Ordinary people find no difference between men.

  511 Different kinds of right thinking, some in a particular order of things but not in others where they go quite astray.

  Some draw correct conclusions from a small number of principles, and this is one kind of right thinking.

  Others draw correct conclusions from things involving numerous principles.

  For example, some have a good grasp of the properties of water, which involve few principles, but whose conclusions are so subtle that only an extremely accurate mind can reach them. These people might all the same not be great mathematicians, because mathematics comprises a large number of principles, and a mind may well be such that it can easily get right to the bottom of a few principles without being able to make the least advance in things involving many.

  Thus there are two kinds of mind: one goes rapidly and deeply into the conclusions from principles, and this is the accurate mind. The other can grasp a large number of principles and keep them distinct, and this is the mathematical mind. The first is a powerful and precise mind, the second shows breadth of mind. Now it is quite possible to have one without the other, for a mind can be powerful and narrow, as well as broad and weak.

  513 Mathematics. Intuition. True eloquence has no time for eloquence, true morality has no time for morality. In other words the morality of judgement has no time for the random morality of mind.

  For judgement is what goes with instinct, just as knowledge goes with mind. Intuition falls to the lot of judgement, mathematics to that of the mind.

  To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

  517 If St Augustine were to appear today and enjoy as little authority as his modern defenders he would not accomplish anything. God has ruled his Church well by sending him earlier, and endowed with authority.

  518 Scepticism. – Extreme intelligence is accused of being as foolish as extreme lack of it; only moderation is good. The majority have laid this down and attack anyone who deviates from it towards any extreme whatever. I am not going to be awkward, I readily consent to being put in the middle and refuse to be at the bottom end, not because it is bottom but because it is the end, for I s
hould refuse just as much to be put at the top. It is deserting humanity to desert the middle way.

  The greatness of the human soul lies in knowing how to keep this course; greatness does not mean going outside it, but rather keeping within it.

  526 Evil is easy; it has countless forms, while good is almost unique. But a certain sort of evil is as hard to find as what is called good, and this particular evil is often on that account passed off as good. Indeed it takes as much extraordinary greatness of soul to attain such evil, as to attain good.

  532 Scepticism. I will write down my thoughts here as they come and in a perhaps not aimless confusion. This is the true order and it will always show my aim by its very disorder.

  I should be honouring my subject too much if I treated it in order, since I am trying to show that it is incapable of it.

  533 We always picture Plato and Aristotle wearing long academic gowns, but they were ordinary decent people like anyone else, who enjoyed a laugh with their friends. And when they amused themselves by composing their Laws and Politics they did it for fun. It was the least philosophical and least serious part of their lives: the most philosophical part was living simply and without fuss.

  If they wrote about politics it was as if to lay down rules for a madhouse.

  And if they pretended to treat it as something really important it was because they knew that the madmen they were talking to believed themselves to be kings and emperors. They humoured these beliefs in order to calm down their madness with as little harm as possible.

  535 There are some vices which only keep hold on us through other ones, and if we take the trunk away they come off like the branches.

  540 All the good maxims already exist in the world: we just fail to apply them.

  For example, no one doubts that one should risk his life in defence of the common good, and many people do so, but not for religion.

  Inequality must necessarily exist among men, it is true: but that once granted the door is open not only to the most absolute rule but to the most absolute tyranny.

  It is necessary to relax the mind a little, but that opens the door to the greatest excesses.

  Let us define the limits. There are no boundaries in things. Laws try to impose some, and the mind cannot bear it.

  542 Thoughts come at random, and go at random. No device for holding on to them or for having them.

  A thought has escaped: I was trying to write it down: instead I write that it has escaped me.

  545 ‘All that is in the world is lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes or pride of life.’ Libido sentiendi, libido sciendi, libido dominandi. Wretched is the cursed land consumed rather than watered by these three rivers of fire! Happy are those who are beside those rivers, neither immersed, nor carried away, but immovably steady beside these rivers, not standing but sitting, in a low and safe position. They will not rise thence before the light, but, after resting in peace, stretch out their hands to him who shall raise them to stand upright and steady in the porches of Jerusalem the blessed, where pride shall no more be able to fight against them and lay them low; and yet they weep, not at the sight of all the perishable things swept away by these torrents, but at the memory of their beloved home, the heavenly Jerusalem, which they constantly remember through the long years of their exile.

  551 Imagination magnifies small objects with fantastic exaggeration until they fill our soul, and with bold insolence cuts down great things to its own size, as when speaking of God.

  561 They say that eclipses are portents of disaster, because disasters are so common, and misfortune occurs often enough for these forecasts to be right, whereas if they said that eclipses were portents of good fortune they would often be wrong. They ascribe good fortune only to rare conjunctions of heavenly bodies and thus seldom guess wrong in their forecasts.

  562 There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.

  577 If we must never take any chances we ought not to do anything for religion, for it is not certain. But how many chances we do take: sea voyages, battles. Therefore, I say, we should have to do nothing at all, for nothing is certain. And there is more certainty in religion than that we shall live to see tomorrow.

  For it is not certain that we shall see tomorrow but it is certainly possible that we shall not. We cannot say the same of religion. It is not certain that it is true, but who would dare to say that it is certainly possible that it is not?

  Now when we work for tomorrow and take chances we are behaving reasonably, for we ought to take chances, according to the rule of probability already demonstrated.

  St Augustine saw that we take chances at sea, in battle, etc. – but he did not see the rule of probability which proves that we ought to. Montaigne saw that we are offended by a lame mind and that habit can do anything, but he did not see the reason for this.

  All these people saw the effects but did not see the causes. In comparison with those who have discovered the causes they are like those who have only eyes compared to those who have minds. For the effects can, as it were, be felt by the senses but the causes can only be perceived by the mind. And, although these effects can be seen by the mind, this mind can be compared to that which sees the causes as the bodily senses may be compared to the mind.

  585 There is a certain model of attractiveness and beauty consisting in a certain relation between our nature, weak or strong as it may be, and the thing which pleases us.

  Everything that conforms to this model attracts us, be it a house, a song, a speech, verse, prose, a woman, birds, rivers, trees, rooms, clothes, etc.

  Everything which does not conform to this model is displeasing to people of good taste.

  And as there is an exact relation between a song and a house based on this good model, because both resemble a single model, though each in its own way, there is in the same way an exact relation between things based on bad models. It is not that there is only one bad model, because they are innumerable, but every bad sonnet, for example, whatever the false model it is based on, is exactly like a woman dressed according to that model.

  Nothing gives a better idea of the absurdity of a bad sonnet than to consider its nature and its model and then to imagine a woman or a house conforming to that model.

  595 Unless we know ourselves to be full of pride, ambition, concupiscence, weakness, wretchedness and unrighteousness, we are truly blind. And if someone knows all this and does not desire to be saved, what can be said of him?

  How then can we have anything but respect for a religion which knows man’s faults so well? What desire but that a religion which promises such desirable remedies should be true?

  607 Figures. Saviour, father, sacrificer, sacrifice, food, king, wise, lawgiver, afflicted, poor, destined to produce a people whom he should lead and feed, and bring into the land.

  620 Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. Now the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our author and our end.

  Now what does the world think about? Never about that, but about dancing, playing the lute, singing, writing verse, tilting at the ring, etc., and fighting, becoming king, without thinking what it means to be a king or to be a man.

  622 Boredom. Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occupation, without diversion, without effort.

  Then he faces his nullity, loneliness, inadequacy, dependence, helplessness, emptiness.

  And at once there wells up from the depths of his soul boredom, gloom, depression, chagrin, resentment, despair.

  623 If it is unnatural blindness to live without trying to find out what one is, it is a fearful blindness to lead an evil life while believing in God.

  627 Vanity is so firmly anchored in man’s heart that a soldier, a camp follower, a cook or a porter will boast and expect admirers, and even philosophers want them; those wh
o write against them want to enjoy the prestige of having written well, those who read them want the prestige of having read them, and perhaps I who write this want the same thing, perhaps my readers …

  631 It is good to be tired and weary from fruitlessly seeking the true good, so that one can stretch out one’s arms to the Redeemer.

  632 Man’s sensitivity to little things and insensitivity to the greatest things are marks of a strange disorder.

  633 Despite the sight of all the miseries which affect us and hold us by the throat we have an irrepressible instinct which bears us up.

  634 The most important thing in our lives is the choice of a trade, and chance decides it.

  Custom makes masons, soldiers, roofers. ‘He is an excellent roofer,’ they say, and, speaking of soldiers: ‘They are quite mad,’ while others on the contrary say: ‘There is nothing as great as war, everyone else is worthless.’ From hearing people praise these trades in our childhood and running down all the others we make our choice. For we naturally love virtue and hate folly; the very words will decide, we only go wrong in applying them.

  So great is the force of custom that where nature has merely created men, we create every kind and condition of men.

  For some regions are full of masons, some of soldiers etc. There is no doubt that nature is not so uniform: it is custom then which does all this, for it coerces nature, but sometimes nature overcomes it and keeps man to his instincts despite all customs, good or bad.

  638 When we are well we wonder how we should manage if we were ill. When we are ill we take our medicine cheerfully; our illness settles that problem for us. We no longer have the passions, and the desires for diversions and outings, which went with good health and are incompatible with the exigencies of our illness. Nature then inspires the passions and desires appropriate to our present state. It is only the fears that we owe to ourselves, and not to nature, which disturb us by linking the state in which we are with the passions of that in which we are not.