No More Learning

The brothers, as we know, had been long ago estranged, and
had rarely met of late years. The parish register, still accessible,
attests that the funeral was attended, February 19th, by "François-
Marie Arouet de Voltaire, bourgeois of Paris"; not yet gentleman-
in-ordinary. The receiver-of-fees died, as he had lived, in what
was called the odor of sanctity; presenting to the view of young
and old that painful caricature of goodness which has for some
centuries, in more than one country, made virtue more difficult
than it naturally is. From his will, which also exists, we learn
that if he did not disinherit his brother, he came as near it as
a French brother could without doing violence to the sentiment
and custom of his country. After giving legacies to cousins,
friends, and servants, he leaves one half the bulk of his estate
to his nephew and nieces, and the other half to his brother; but
with a difference. Voltaire was to enjoy his half "in usufruct
only," the capital to fall finally "to his nephew and nieces afore-
said. " He took care also to prevent his brother from gaining
anything by the decease of any of the heirs. As the receiver-of-
fees, besides bequeathing his valuable office to a relative, died
worth, as French investigators compute, about two hundred
thousand francs, Voltaire received an increase to his income of
perhaps six thousand francs a year.
From his brother's grave, without waiting to learn these par-
ticulars, he was obliged to go post-haste to Versailles, towards
which all eyes were now directed. The marriage festival, a
tumult of all the splendors, began February 23d, 1745. The
'Princess of Navarre' succeeded to admiration. A vast and
beautiful edifice had risen, at the command of Richelieu, in the
horse-training ground near the palace of Versailles, so con-
structed that it could serve as a theatre on one evening and a
ball-room on the next, both equally magnificent and complete.
The stage was fifty-six feet in depth; and as the boxes were so
arranged as to exhibit the audience to itself in the most effective
and brilliant manner, the words spoken on the stage could not
be always perfectly heard. But this was not so important, since
the play was chiefly designed as a vehicle for music, dancing,
costume, and picture. At six in the evening the King entered


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11136
JAMES PARTON
and took the seat prepared for him in the middle of the theatre,
followed in due order by his family and court, arrayed in the
gorgeous fashion of the time. These placed themselves around
him, a splendid group, in the midst of a great theatre filled with
the nobility of the kingdom, all sumptuous and glittering. The
author of the play about to be performed was himself thrilled
by the picturesque magnificence of the spectacle which the audi-
ence presented; and he regretted that a greater number of the
people of France could not have been present to behold the
superb array of princes and princesses, noble lords and ladies,
adorned by masterpieces of decorative art, which the beauty of
the ladies "effaced. " He wished that more people could observe
the noble and becoming joy that filled every heart and beamed
in all those lovely eyes.
But since nothing can be perfect, not even in France, this
most superb audience was so much elated with itself that it
could not stop talking. There was a buzz and hum of conver-
sation, reminding the anxious author of a hive of bees humming
and buzzing around the queen. The curtain rose; but still they
talked. The play, however, being a mélange of poetry, song,
music, ballet, and dialogue, everything was enjoyed except the
good verses here and there, which could scarcely be caught by
distant ears. Every talent in such a piece meets its due of
approval except that of the poet, who imagines the whole before
any part of it exists. At half-past nine the curtain fell upon the
closing scene; when the audience, retiring to the grounds with-
out, found the entire façade of the palace and adjacent structures
illuminated. All were enchanted. The King himself, the hardest
man in Europe to amuse, was so well pleased that he ordered
the play to be repeated on another evening of the festival. "The
King is grateful to me," wrote Voltaire to his guardian angel,
D'Argental. "The Mirepoix cannot harm me. What more do I
need ? »
He was exhausted with the long strain upon his nervous sys-
tem. "So tired am I," he wrote to Thierot, "that I have neither
hands, feet, nor head, and write to you by the hand of another. "
But he soon had the consolation of receiving the King's promise
of the next vacancy among the gentlemen-in-ordinary, and his
immediate appointment as writer of history at an annual salary
of two thousand francs. Thus the year consumed in these courtly
toils, he thought, was not without its compensations. Nor did he


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JAMES PARTON
11137
relax his vigilance, nor give ministers peace, until these offices
were securely his by letters patent and the King's signature.
When he accepted the office of historiographer, he was far
from anticipating an increase of labor through it. But in truth,
no poet laureate ever won his annual pipe of sack by labors
so arduous as those by which Voltaire earned this salary of
two thousand francs. Several volumes of history attest his dili-
gence. During the first two or three years of his holding the
place he was historiographer, laureate, writer of royal letters and
ministerial dispatches, complimenter of the royal mistress, and
occasionally court dramatist and master of the revels.
The marriage festivities at Versailles drew to a close, and all
that brilliant crowd dispersed. From the splendors of the court
he was suddenly called away to attend the son of Madame du
Châtelet through the small-pox. He assisted to save the future
Duke du Châtelet for the guillotine, applying to his case his own.
experience of the two hundred pints of lemonade. That duty
done and his forty days of quarantine fulfilled, he returned to
court, where the minister for foreign affairs had a piece of work
for his pen. Elizabeth, Empress of Russia, had offered her me-
diation to the King of France, and the task of writing the King's
reply, accepting the offer, was assigned to Voltaire, who per-
formed it in the loftiest style of sentimental politics. If Louis
XV. took the trouble to glance over this composition, he must
have been pleased to find himself saying that "kings can aspire
to no other glory than that of promoting the happiness of their
subjects," and swearing that he "had never taken up arms except
with a view to promote the interests of peace. It was an ami-
able, effusive letter, in the taste of the period,- being written
by the man who made the taste of the period. Later in the sum-
mer he drafted a longer dispatch to the government of Holland,
remonstrating against its purpose of sending aid to the King
of England against the Pretender. It was he also who wrote
the manifesto to be published in Great Britain on the landing
of the French expedition under the Duke de Richelieu, in aid
of the Pretender. Whenever, indeed, during 1745, 1746, and
1747, the ministry had occasion for a skillful pen, Voltaire was
employed. We perceive in this part of his correspondence the
mingled horror and contempt that war excited in his mind.
"Give us peace, monseigneur," is the burden of his cry to the
XIX-697


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11138
JAMES PARTON
Marquis d'Argenson in confidential notes; and we see him, with
his usual easy assurance, suggesting such marriages for the royal
children as would "render France happy by a beautiful peace,
and your name immortal despite the fools. "
Whatever philosophers may think of war, few citizens can
resist the contagious delirium of victory after national defeat
and humiliation. The King of France again, in 1745, was posed
by his advisers in the part of conqueror. From a hill, he and
the Dauphin looked on while Marshal Saxe won the decisive and
fruitful victory of Fontenoy, over the English Duke of Cumber-
land and the forces of the allies, with a loss of eight thousand
men on each side. Voltaire received the news at Paris, late in
the evening, direct from D'Argenson, who was with the King in
the field. He dashed upon paper a congratulatory note to the
minister: "Ah! the lovely task for your historian! In three hun-
dred years the kings of France have done nothing so glorious. I
am mad with joy! Good-night, monseigneur! "
His poem 'Fontenoy,' of three hundred lines or more, was
scattered over the delirious city damp from the press, and in a
few days was declaimed in every town of the kingdom. Edition.
after edition was sold. "Five editions in ten days! " The author,
as his custom was, added, erased, altered, corrected; offending
some by omitting their names, offending others by inserting
names odious to them; working all one night to make the poem
a less imperfect expression of the national joy; not forgetting to
dedicate it to the King, and to get a copy placed in his hands.
"The King deigns to be content with it," he wrote. Thousands
of copies were sold in the first month, and there were two bur-
lesques of the poem in the second.
In the very ecstasy of the general enthusiasm, he still repeats,
in a private note to D'Argenson, "Peace, monseigneur, peace,
and you are a great man, even among the fools! "
He was
now in high favor, even with the King, who had
said to Marshal Saxe that the Princesse de Navarre' was above
criticism. The marshal himself gave Madame du Châtelet this
agreeable information. "After that," said the author, "I must
regard the King as the greatest connoisseur in his kingdom. "
He renewed his intimacy with his early patron, the Duchesse du
Maine, who still held court at the château of Sceaux near by.
By great good luck, too, as doubtless he regarded it at the time,
he was acquainted with the new mistress, Pompadour, before she


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JAMES PARTON
11139
was Pompadour. He knew her when she was only the most
bewitching young wife in France, cold to her rich and amorous.
young husband, and striving by every art that such women know
to catch the King's eye as he hunted in the royal forest near her
abode. Already, even while the King was sleeping on histrionic
straw on the field near Fontenoy, it was settled that the dream
of her life was to be realized. She was to be Petticoat III.
This summer, during the King's absence at the seat of war,
Voltaire was frequently at her house, and had become established
in her favor. She was a gifted, brilliant, ambitious woman, of
cold temperament, who courted this infamy as men seek honor-
able posts which make them conspicuous, powerful, and envied.
In well-ordered nations, accomplished men win such places by
thirty years' well-directed toil in the public service. She won her
place, and kept it nineteen years, by amusing the least amusable
of men.
She paid a high price. In return, she governed France,
enriched her family, promoted her friends, exiled her enemies,
owned half a dozen châteaux, and left an estate of thirty-six
millions of francs.
With such and so many auxiliaries supporting his new posi-
tion, the historiographer of France, if he had been a younger
man, might have felt safe. But he knew his ground. Under
personal government nations usually have two masters, the king
and the priest, between whom there is an alliance offensive and
defensive. He had gained some favor with the King, the King's
ministers, and the King's mistress. But the priest remained hos-
tile. The King being a coward, a fit of the colic might frighten
him into turning out the mistress and letting in the confessor;
and suppose the colic successful, instantly a pious and bigoted
Dauphin became king, with a Mirepoix as chief priest! Moreover,
to depend upon the favor of either king or mistress is worse than
basing the prosperity of an industrial community upon a change-
able fraction in a tariff bill.
Revolving such thoughts in an anxious mind, Voltaire con-
ceived a notable scheme for going behind the Mirepoix, and
silencing him forever by capturing the favor of the Pope. Bene-
dict XIV. was a scholar, a gentleman of excellent temper, and
no bigot. He owed his election to his agreeable qualities. When
the cardinals were exhausted by days and nights of fruitless
balloting, he said, with his usual gayety and good-humor, "Why
waste so much time in vain debates and researches ?
Do you


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11140
JAMES PARTON
want a saint? elect Gotti. A politician? Aldovrandi. A good
fellow? take me. " And they took him.
It was soon after the close of the fête at Versailles that
Voltaire consulted the Marquis d'Argenson, minister for foreign
affairs, upon his project of getting, as he expressed it, "some
mark of papal benevolence that could do him honor both in this.
- world and the next. " The minister shook his head. He said
it was scarcely possible to mingle in that way things celestial
and political. Like a true courtier of the period, the poet betook
himself to a lady, Mademoiselle du Thil, a connection of Madame
du Châtelet, and extremely well disposed toward himself. She
had a friend in the Pope's household, the Abbé de Tolignan
whom she easily engaged in the cause. D'Argenson also bore
the scheme in mind when he wrote to the French envoy at
Rome. Voltaire meanwhile read the works of his Holiness, of
which there are still accessible fifteen volumes, and in various
ways "coquetted" with him, causing him to know that the cele-
brated Voltaire was one of his readers. The good-natured Pope
was prompt to respond. The Abbé de Tolignan having asked for
some mark of papal favor for Voltaire, the Pope gave two of his
large medals to be forwarded to the French poet, the medals
bearing the Pope's own portrait. His Holiness also caused a
polite letter to be written to him by his secretary, asking his
acceptance of the medals. Then the French envoy, ignorant of
these proceedings, also applied to the Pope on behalf of Voltaire,
requesting for him one of his large medals. The Pope, ignorant
of the envoy's ignorance, replied, "To St. Peter's itself I should
not give any larger ones! " The envoy was mystified, and Vol-
taire, on receiving a report of the affair, begged the minister for
foreign affairs to write to the envoy in explanation.
The two large medals reached the poet in due time. He
thought Benedict XIV. the most plump-cheeked holy father the
church had enjoyed for a long time, and one who "had the air
of knowing very well what all that was worth. " He wrote two
Latin verses as a legend for the Pope's portrait, to the effect
that Lambertinus, officially styled Benedict XIV. , was the orna-
ment of Rome and the father of the world, who by his works
instructed the earth, and adorned it by his virtues. Emboldened
by success, he ventured upon an audacity still more exquisite,
and one which would not be concealed in the archives of the
foreign office. All Europe should know the favor in which this


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JAMES PARTON
II 141
son of the Church was held at the papal court. He resolved to
dedicate to the Pope that tragedy of "Mahomet" which the late
Cardinal de Fleury had admired and suppressed.
The coming of Marmontel to Paris added one more to the
ever increasing number of young writers whom Voltaire had
assisted to form. The new men of talent were his own, and
they were preparing to aid him in future contests with hostile
powers. The Marquis de Vauvenargues, the young soldier who
was compelled by ill health to abandon the career of arms, in
which he was already distinguished, and now aspired to serve his
country in the intellectual life, had been for some time one of
Voltaire's most beloved friends. His first, his only work, 'Intro-
duction to the Knowledge of the Human Mind,' was just appear-
ing from the press, heralded by Voltaire's zealous commendation.
"My dear Master," the young disciple loved to begin his letters;
and Voltaire, in writing to him, used all those endearing expres-
sions which often make a French letter one long and fond
caress. He sank into the grave in 1747, but his name and his
work survive. It is evident from his correspondence that he was
of a lofty and generous nature, capable of the true public spirit,
the religion of the new period.
Marmontel reached Paris in time to witness a day of triumph
for Voltaire, which had been long deferred. There was a va-
cancy at the French Academy early in 1746. Mirepoix's voice was
not heard on this occasion; and Voltaire, without serious trouble,
succeeded in obtaining a unanimous election to the chair. This
event could not have been at that time any increase of honor
to an author of his rank. He valued an academic chair for him-
self and for his colleagues, such as Marmontel, D'Alembert, and
others, as an additional protection against the Mirepoix. Mem-
bers of the Academy had certain privileges in common with the
officers of the king's household. They could not be compelled
to defend a suit out of Paris; they were accountable to the king
directly, and could not be molested except by the king's com-
mand. Above all, they stood in the sunshine of the king's efful-
gent majesty; they shared in the mystic spell of rank, which no
American citizen can ever quite understand, and of which even
Europeans of to-day begin to lose the sense. He was a little
safer now against all the abuses of the royal power, usually
covered by lettres de cachet.


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11142
JAMES PARTON
May 9th, 1746, was the day of his public reception at the
Academy, when, according to usage, it devolved upon him to
deliver a set eulogium upon his departed predecessor. The new
member signalized the occasion by making his address much more.
than that. His eulogy was brief, but sufficient; and when he had
performed that pious duty, he struck into an agreeable and very
ingenious discourse upon the charms, the limits, the defects, and
the wide-spread triumphs of the French language. With that
matchless art of his, he contrived in kingly style to compliment
all his "great friends and allies," while adhering to his subject
with perfect fidelity. Was it not one of the glories of the French
language that a Frederic should adopt it as the language of his
court and of his friendships, and that Italian cardinals and pon-
tiffs should speak it like natives? His dear Princess Ulrique,
too, then Queen of Sweden, was not French her native tongue?
There were some wise remarks in this address; as, for example,
where he says that eminent talents become of necessity rarer as
the whole nation advances: "In a well-grown forest, no single
tree lifts its head very high above the rest. " He concluded with
the "necessary burst of eloquence" respecting the late warlike
exploits of the king; in which, however, he gave such promi-
nence to the services in the field of the Duke of Richelieu, a
member of the Academy, that the First Gentleman almost eclipsed
the monarch.
He was now at the highest point of his court favor. An epi-
gram of his, written at this period, conveys to us his sense of
the situation, and renders other comment superfluous:-
"Mon Henri Quatre' et ma 'Zaïre,'
Et mon Americaine 'Alzire,'
Ne m'ont valu jamais un seul regard du roi;
J'eus beaucoup d'ennemis avec très-peu de gloire
Les honneurs et les biens pleuvent enfin sur moi
Pour une farce de la foire. "
(My Henry Fourth' and my 'Zaïre,'
With my American ‘Alzire,’
No smile have ever won me from the king;
Too many foes were mine, too little fame:
Now all men gifts and honors on me fling,
Since with a farce I to the market came. )


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BLAISE PASCAL.


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B. 2.


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BLAISE PASCAL.


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11143
PASCAL
(1623-1662)
BY ARTHUR G. CANFIELD
B
LAISE PASCAL was born at Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne, France,
June 19th, 1623. His father, Étienne Pascal, was a man of
wealth, education, and high judicial position, who, when
Blaise was eight years old, removed to Paris especially to care for
his education. Blaise showed a very precocious talent, especially for
mathematics. At the age of sixteen he wrote a remarkable treatise
on conic sections; at nineteen he invented a calculating machine. By
this time his health, never robust, was undermined by his study, and
thereafter he had to contend with disease. But in spite of it he went
on with his researches in mathematics and physics. He developed
the calculus of probabilities, and solved the problem of the cycloid.
In 1648 he made the series of experiments which confirmed the con-
clusions of Torricelli, and established our knowledge of the weight
of the atmosphere. Then for some years he gave himself to social
pleasures and dissipations; but after his sister Jacqueline's entrance.
into a convent, and a startling accident through which he nearly lost
his life, he renounced the world and entered the community of Port-
Royal in 1654. In its defense he wrote, under the name of Louis de
Montalte, the famous 'Lettres Provinciales,' in 1656. The even more
famous 'Pensées' are the fruit of the profound and poignant medita-
tion that, with increasing bodily pains, filled out the few years until
his death, August 19th, 1662.
But this little outline gives no adequate suggestion of the power
and versatility of his mind:
"There was a man who at the age of twelve, with straight lines and cir-
cles, had created mathematics; who at sixteen had composed the most learned
treatise on conic sections produced since ancient times; who at nineteen re-
duced to machinery the processes of a science that resides wholly in the mind;
who at twenty-three demonstrated the weight of the atmosphere and destroyed
one of the greatest errors of the older physics; who at an age when other
men are just beginning to awake to life, having traversed the whole round of
human knowledge, perceived its emptiness, and turned all his thoughts toward
religion; who from that moment till his death at the age of thirty-eight,
constantly beset by infirmity and disease, fixed the tongue that Bossuet and


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II 144
PASCAL
Racine spoke, gave the model at once of the most perfect pleasantry and of
the closest logic, and finally, in the short respite that his bodily pains allowed
him, solved unaided one of the deepest problems of geometry, and set down
in random order thoughts that seem as much divine as human. »
In such words does Châteaubriand sum up Pascal's career, and
they hardly overstate his qualities and achievements. His contribu-
tions to the progress of mathematics and physics would be enough of
themselves to make his name remembered; but they are wholly over-
shadowed by the fame of his two great contributions to literature,—
the 'Provincial Letters' and the Thoughts. ' Both these works have
a very direct relation to his life and experience. The 'Provincial
Letters' bear witness both to his sincere devotion to Port-Royal,
and to his familiarity with the mind and spirit of worldly society.
Before becoming a member of that famous little band of scholars
and teachers, he had been an accomplished man of the world. He
had early been attracted by the logic of the doctrines of Jansenius,
and had become a zealous champion of Jansenism. But he did not
therefore renounce the gay companions and pleasures of his hours
of recreation. It was only as his ideas developed, and he advanced
from the curious pursuit of knowledge to the imperious need of cer-
tainty, that he was driven from reason, self-convicted of insufficiency,
to revelation, and the complete surrender of himself to God and to
the austere religious life of Port-Royal. The influence of his sister
Jacqueline's example, and the impression made upon him by his
almost miraculous escape from death, are only incidents of his ap-
proach to the experience of the night of the twenty-third of Novem-
ber, 1654; when, in an ecstasy of religious feeling, he felt himself
possessed by Divine grace. So he brought to Port-Royal a wholly
lay mind, capable of appreciating from the simple human standpoint
of the common man the theological controversy over grace and free-
will in which it was soon involved. He was therefore equipped as
no other for bringing this quarrel before the bar of public opinion.
So the Provincial Letters' are not merely, nor mainly, a skillful
argument on the theological doctrines in contest. They are that at
first; but from the fifth letter their field broadens, and they become
a vehement and indignant impeachment of the moral teachings and
practices of the Jesuits, who were the head and front of the attack
against Port-Royal. In them Pascal makes an appeal to the common
reason and conscience, with such an accent of intense sincerity and
conviction, with such resources of irony, ridicule, illustration, and elo-
quent indignation, and with such command of clear, nimble, and
strong speech, that the letters have long outlived the interest of the
quarrel that was the occasion of them, and have become its imperish-
able monument.


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PASCAL
11145
The Thoughts' are especially the expression of the life of reli-
gious devotion and meditation to which he gave himself at Port-
Royal. Having given himself unreservedly to it, he could not do
and suffer enough. He welcomed the pains that his feeble health
imposed upon him, and doubled them by self-inflicted rigors. All
the strength his infirmities left him was given to an 'Apology for
the Christian Religion,' but he was not permitted to finish it.
The Thoughts' are the fragments of this work. In them he
unites the eager intellectual curiosity of the man of science with the
fervent devotion of the religious ascetic and the imagination of the
poet. He is possessed, almost tormented, by the imperious need of
knowing, of satisfying his reason. But his reason halts appalled be-
fore the infinitely little and the infinitely great, and declares itself
powerless to get beyond the partial and relative knowledge of the
world and to attain absolute truth. The source of absolute certainty
must then be above reason, and reason herself is summoned to testify
to the superior authority of revelation and Christian faith. In the
very opposition of revelation and reason he makes reason find a seal
of the Divine source of revelation. But the Thoughts,' left incom-
plete and in disorder, do not persuade us, as Pascal intended, by close
and consecutive argument and logical unity, so much as profoundly
impress us by his wealth of powerful and illuminating ideas, the
depth of his searching of the human heart, and the intense and pas-
sionate eloquence of his style. Few if any have given such poignant
expression to the sense of disproportion between human powers and
human aspirations, and of the combined grandeur and pettiness of
human destiny. From all other such collections of Thoughts,' Pas-
cal's stand pre-eminent for the intensity of the human emotion that
vibrates through them.
Arthur 9 Canfield.
FROM THE THOUGHTS'
HE whole visible world is but an imperceptible speck in the
THE
ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it. We may
swell our conceptions beyond all imaginable space, yet bring
forth only atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is
an infinite sphere, the centre of which is everywhere, the circum-
ference nowhere. It is, in short, the greatest sensible mark of
the almighty power of God; in that thought let imagination lose
itself.


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II146
PASCAL
Then, returning to himself, let man consider his own being
compared with all that is; let him regard himself as wandering
in this remote province of nature; and from the little dungeon
in which he finds himself lodged — I mean the universe let him
learn to set a true value on the earth, on its kingdoms, its cities,
and on himself.
-
-
What is a man in the infinite? But to show him another
prodigy no less astonishing, let him examine the most delicate
things he knows. Let him take a mite, which in its minute body
presents him with parts incomparably more minute; limbs with
their joints, veins in the limbs, blood in the veins, humors in
the blood, drops in the humors, vapors in the drops; let him,
again dividing these last, exhaust his power of thought; let the
last point at which he arrives be that of which we speak, and he
will perhaps think that here is the extremest diminutive in nature.
Then I will open before him therein a new abyss.
I will paint
for him not only the visible universe, but all that he can con-
ccive of nature's immensity in the inclosure of this diminished
atom. Let him therein see an infinity of universes, of which each
has its firmament, its planets, its earth, in the same proportion as
in the visible world; in each earth animals, and at the last the
mites, in which he will come upon all that was in the first, and
still find in these others the same without end and without ces-
sation; let him lose himself in wonders as astonishing in their
minuteness as the others in their immensity; for who will not be
amazed at seeing that our body, which before was imperceptible
in the universe, itself imperceptible in the bosom of the whole,
is now a colossus, a world, a whole, in regard to the nothingness
to which we cannot attain.
Whoso takes this survey of himself will be terrified at the
thought that he is upheld in the material being given him by
nature, between these two abysses of the infinite and nothing,-
he will tremble at the sight of these marvels; and I think that
as his curiosity changes into wonder, he will be more disposed to
contemplate them in silence than to search into them with pre-
sumption.
For after all, what is man in nature? A nothing in regard to
the infinite, a whole in regard to nothing, a mean between noth-
ing and the whole; infinitely removed from understanding either
extreme. The end of things and their beginnings are invincibly
hidden from him in impenetrable secrecy; he is equally incapable


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PASCAL
11147
of seeing the nothing whence he was taken, and the infinite in
which he is engulfed.
What shall he do then, but discern somewhat of the middle
of things, in an eternal despair of knowing either their beginning
or their end? All things arise from nothing, and tend towards
the infinite. Who can follow their marvelous course? The author
of these wonders can understand them, and none but he.
WE THINK We are playing on ordinary organs when we play
upon man. Men are organs indeed, but fantastic, changeable,
and various, with pipes not arranged in due succession. Those
who understand only how to play upon ordinary organs make no
harmonies on these.
THE weather and my moods have little in common. I have
my foggy and my fine days within me; whether my affairs go
well or ill has little to do with the matter. I sometimes strive
against my luck; the glory of subduing it makes me subdue it
gayly, whereas I am sometimes wearied in the midst of my good
luck.
THE spirit of this sovereign judge of the world-man-is not
so independent but that it is liable to be troubled by the first
disturbance about him. The noise of a cannon is not needed to
break his train of thought, it need only be the creaking of a
weathercock or a pulley. Do not be astonished if at this mo-
ment he argues incoherently: a fly is buzzing about his ears, and
that is enough to render him incapable of sound judgment.
Would you have him arrive at truth, drive away that creature
which holds his reason in check, and troubles that powerful intel-
lect which gives laws to towns and kingdoms. Here is a droll
kind of god!
WHEN We are too young our judgment is at fault; so also
when we are too old.
If we take not thought enough, or too much, on any matter,
we are obstinate and infatuated.
He that considers his work so soon as it leaves his hands, is
prejudiced in its favor; he that delays his survey too long, can-
not regain the spirit of it.
So with pictures seen from too near or too far: there is but
one precise point from which to look at them; all others are too


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near or too far, too high or too low.
precise point in the art of painting.
in truth or morals?
Perspective determines that
But who shall determine it
IT is not well to be too much at liberty. It is not well to
have all we want.
NOTHING more astonishes me than to see that men are not
astonished at their own weakness. They act seriously, and every
one follows his own mode of life, not because it is as a fact
good to follow, being the custom, but as if each man knew cer-
tainly where are reason and justice. They find themselves con-
stantly deceived; and by an amusing humility always imagine
that the fault is in themselves, and not in the art which all pro-
fess to understand. But it is well there are
so many of this
kind of people in the world, who are not skeptics for the glory of
skepticism; to show that man is thoroughly capable of the most
extravagant opinions, because he is capable of believing that his
weakness is not natural and inevitable, but that on the contrary
his wisdom comes by nature.
Nothing fortifies skepticism more than that there are some
who are not skeptics. If all were so, they would be wrong.
CHANCE gives thoughts, and chance takes them away; there is
no art for keeping or gaining them.
A thought has escaped me. I would write it down. I write
instead, that it has escaped me.
THE nature of man is not always to go forward,-it has its
advances and retreats. Fever has its hot and cold fits, and the
cold proves as well as the hot how great is the force of the fever.
THE strength of a man's virtue must not be measured by his
occasional efforts, but by his ordinary life.
WE DO not remain virtuous by our own power: but by the
counterpoise of two opposite vices, we remain standing as between
two contrary winds; take away one of these vices, we fall into
the other.
IT is not shameful to man to yield to pain, and it is shameful
to yield to pleasure. This is not because pain comes from with-
out us, while we seek pleasure; for we may seek pain, and yield


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to it willingly, without this kind of baseness. How comes it then
that reason finds it glorious in us to yield under the assaults of
pain, and shameful to yield under the assaults of pleasure? It is
because pain does not tempt and attract us. We ourselves choose
it voluntarily, and will that it have dominion over us. We are
thus masters of the situation, and so far man yields to himself;
but in pleasure man yields to pleasure. Now only mastery and
empire bring glory, and only slavery causes shame.
WHEN I have set myself now and then to consider the vari-
ous distractions of men, the toils and dangers to which they
expose themselves in the court or the camp, whence arise so
many quarrels and passions, such daring and often such evil.
exploits, etc. , I have discovered that all the misfortunes of men
arise from one thing only, that they are unable to stay quietly
in their own chamber. A man who has enough to live on, if he
knew how to dwell with pleasure in his own home, would not
leave it for seafaring or to besiege a city. An office in the
army would not be bought so dearly, but that it seems insup-
portable not to stir from the town; and people only seek con-
versation and amusing games because they cannot remain with
pleasure in their own homes.
But upon stricter examination, when, having found the cause
of all our ills, I have sought to discover the reason of it, I have
found one which is paramount: the natural evil of our weak and
mortal condition, so miserable that nothing can console us when
we think of it attentively.
Whatever condition we represent to ourselves, if we bring to
our minds all the advantages it is possible to possess, royalty is
the finest position in the world. Yet when we imagine a king
surrounded with all the conditions which he can desire, if he be
without diversion, and be allowed to consider and examine what
he is, this feeble happiness will never sustain him; he will neces-
sarily fall into a foreboding of maladies which threaten him, of
revolutions which may arise, and lastly, of death and inevitable
diseases: so that if he be without what is called diversion he is
unhappy, and more unhappy than the humblest of his subjects
who plays and diverts himself.
Hence it comes that play, and the society of women, war, and
offices of State, are so sought after. Not that there is in these
any real happiness, or that any imagine true bliss to consist in


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we
the money won at play, or in the hare which is hunted:
would not have these as gifts. We do not seek an easy and
peaceful lot, which leaves us free to think of our unhappy con-
dition, nor the dangers of war, nor the troubles of statecraft, but
seek rather the distraction which amuses us, and diverts our mind
from these thoughts.
Hence it comes that men so love noise and movement; hence
it comes that a prison is so horrible a punishment; hence it comes
that the pleasure of solitude is a thing incomprehensible. And
it is the great subject of happiness in the condition of kings, that
all about them try incessantly to divert them, and to procure for
them all manner of pleasures.
The king is surrounded by persons who think only how to
divert the king, and to prevent his thinking of self. For he is
unhappy, king though he be, if he think of self.
That is all that human ingenuity can do for human happiness.
And those who philosophize on the matter, and think men unrea-
sonable that they pass a whole day in hunting a hare which they
would not have bought, scarce know our nature. The hare itself
would not free us from the view of death and our miseries, but
the chase of the hare does free us. Thus, when we make it a
reproach that what they seek with such eagerness cannot satisfy
them, if they answered-as on mature judgment they should do-
that they sought in it only violent and impetuous occupation to
turn their thoughts from self, and that therefore they made choice
of an attractive object which charms and ardently attracts them,
they would leave their adversaries without a reply. But they do
not so answer, because they do not know themselves; they do not
know they seek the chase and not the quarry.
They fancy that were they to gain such-and-such an office
they would then rest with pleasure, and are unaware of the
insatiable nature of their desire. They believe they are honestly
seeking repose, but they are only seeking agitation.
They have a secret instinct prompting them to look for diver-
sion and occupation from without, which arises from the sense of
their continual pain. They have another secret instinct, a relic
of the greatness of our primitive nature, teaching them that hap-
piness indeed consists in rest, and not in turmoil. And of these
two contrary instincts a confused project is formed within them,
concealing itself from their sight in the depths of their soul,
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imagine that they will gain the satisfaction which as yet they
have not, if by surmounting certain difficulties which now con-
front them, they may thereby open the door to rest.
Thus rolls all our life away. We seek repose by resistance to
obstacles; and so soon as these are surmounted, repose becomes
intolerable. For we think either on the miseries we feel or on
those we fear. And even when we seem sheltered on all sides,
weariness, of its own accord, will spring from the depths of the
heart wherein are its natural roots, and fill the soul with its
poison.
THE Counsel given to Pyrrhus, to take the rest of which he
was going in search through so many labors, was full of diffi-
culties.
STRIFE alone pleases us, and not the victory. We like to
see beasts fighting, not the victor furious over the vanquished.
We wish only to see the victorious end, and as soon as it comes
we are surfeited. It is the same in play, and in the search for
truth. In all disputes we like to see the clash of opinions, but
care not at all to contemplate truth when found. If we are to
see truth with pleasure, we must see it arise out of conflict.
So in the passions: there is pleasure in seeing the shock of
two contraries, but as soon as one gains the mastery it becomes
mere brutality. We never seek things in themselves, but only
the search for things. So on the stage: quiet scenes which raise
no emotion are worthless; so is extreme and hopeless misery, so
are brutal lust and excessive cruelty.
CÆSAR, as it seems to me, was too old to set about amusing
himself with the conquest of the world. Such a pastime was
good for Augustus or Alexander, who were still young men, and
these are difficult to restrain; but Cæsar should have been more
mature.
NoT from space must I seek my dignity, but from the ruling
of my thought. I should have no more if I possessed whole
worlds. By space the universe encompasses and swallows me as
an atom; by thought I encompass it.
MAN is but a reed, weakest in nature, but a reed which
thinks. It needs not that the whole universe should arm to


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crush him. A vapor, a drop of water, is enough to kill him.
But were the universe to crush him, man would still be more
noble than that which has slain him, because he knows that he
dies, and that the universe has the better of him. The universe
knows nothing of this.
All our dignity, therefore, consists in thought. By this must
we raise ourselves, not by space or duration which we cannot
fill. Then let us make it our study to think well; for this is the
starting-point of morals.
JUSTICE and truth are two such subtle points, that our instru-
ments are too blunt to touch them accurately. If they attain the
point, they cover it so completely that they rest more often on
the wrong than the right.
OUR imagination so enlarges the present by dint of continu-
ally reflecting on it and so contracts eternity by never reflecting
on it, that we make a nothing of eternity and an eternity of
nothing; and all this has such living roots in us, that all our
reason cannot suppress them.
WE ARE not content with the life we have in ourselves and
in our own being: we wish to live an imaginary life in the idea
of others, and to this end we strive to make a show. We labor
incessantly to embellish and preserve this imaginary being, and
we neglect the true. And if we have either calmness, gener-
osity, or fidelity, we hasten to let it be known, that we may
attach these virtues to that imaginary being; we would even
part with them for this end, and gladly become cowards for the
reputation of valor. It is a great mark of the nothingness of
our own being that we are not satisfied with the one without the
other, and that we often renounce one for the other. For he
would be infamous who would not die to preserve his honor.
VANITY is so anchored in the heart of man that a soldier, a
camp-follower, a cook, a porter, makes his boasts, and is for
having his admirers; even philosophers wish for them. Those
who write against it, yet desire the glory of having written well;
those who read, desire the glory of having read; I who write
this have maybe this desire, and perhaps those who will read it.
man has but to
The cause is an
Whoever will know fully the vanity of
consider the causes and the effects of love.


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unknown quantity, and the effects are terrible. This unknown.
quantity, so small a matter that we cannot recognize it, moves
a whole country, princes, armies, and all the world.
Cleopatra's nose-had it been shorter, the face of the world
had been changed.
ON WHAT shall man found the economy of the world which
he would fain govern? If on the caprice of each man, all is con-
fusion. If on justice, man is ignorant of it.
Certainly, had he known it, he would not have established the
maxim, most general of all current among men, that every one
must conform to the manners of his own country; the splendor
of true equity would have brought all nations into subjection,
and legislators would not have taken as their model the fancies,
and caprice of Persians and Germans instead of stable justice.
We should have seen it established in all the States of the world,
in all times; whereas now we see neither justice nor injustice
which does not change its quality upon changing its climate.
Three degrees of latitude reverse all jurisprudence, a meridian
decides what is truth, fundamental laws change after a few years.
of possession, right has its epochs, the entrance of Saturn into
the Lion marks for us the origin of such-and-such a crime.
That is droll justice which is bounded by a stream! Truth on
this side of the Pyrenees, error on that.
Car there be anything more absurd han that a man should
have the right to kill me because he lives across the water, and
because his prince has a quarrel with mine, although I have
none with him?
THE most unreasonable things in the world become most
reasonable because of the unruly lives of men. What is less
reasonable than to choose the eldest son of a queen to guide a
State? for we do not choose as steersman of a ship that one of
the passengers who is of the best family. Such a law would be
ridiculous and unjust; but since men are so themselves, and ever
will be, it becomes reasonable and just. For would we choose
the most virtuous and able, we at once fall to blows, since each
asserts that he is the most virtuous and able. Let us then affix
this quality to something which cannot be disputed. This man
is the king's eldest son. That is clear, and there is no dispute.
Reason can do no better, for civil war is the worst of evils.
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MEN of unruly lives assert that they alone follow nature, while
those who are orderly stray from her paths; as passengers in
a ship think that those move who stand upon the shore. Both
sides say the same thing. There must be a fixed point to enable
us to judge. The harbor decides the question for those who are
in the vessel; but where can we find the harbor in morals?
Do we follow the majority because they have more reason?
No; but because they have more power.
THE way of the majority is the best way, because it is plain,
and has power to make itself obeyed; yet it is the opinion of the
least able.
It is necessary that men should be unequal. True; but that
being granted, the door is open, not only to the greatest domina-
tion, but to the greatest tyranny.
It is necessary to relax the mind a little, but that opens the
door to extreme dissipation.
We must mark the limits. There are no fixed boundaries in
these matters; law wishes to impose them, but the mind will not
bear them.
MINE, THINE. -"This is my dog," say poor children; "that is
my place in the sunshine. " Here is the beginning and the image
of the usurpation of the whole earth.
Good birth is a great advantage; for it gives a man a chance
at the age of eighteen, making him known and respected as an
ordinary man is on his merits at fifty. Here are thirty years
gained at a stroke.
How rightly do men distinguish by exterior rather than by
interior qualities! Which of us twain shall take the lead? Who
will give place to the other? The least able? But I am as able
as he is. We should have to fight about that. He has four
footmen, and I have but one; that is something which can be
seen; there is nothing to do but to count; it is my place to yield,
and I am a fool if I contest it. So by this means we remain at
peace, the greatest of all blessings.
-
WE CARE nothing for the present. We anticipate the future.
as too slow in coming, as if we could make it move faster; or


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we call back the past, to stop its rapid flight. So imprudent are
we that we wander through the times in which we have no part,
unthinking of that which alone is ours; so frivolous are we that
we dream of the days which are not, and pass by without reflec-
tion those which alone exist. For the present generally gives us
pain; we conceal it from our sight because it afflicts us, and if it
be pleasant we regret to see it vanish away.