Part 18

BLAISE PASCAL

Born in France in 1623, died in 1662; educated in Paris; became celebrated at seventeen for a work on conic sections; became connected with the monastery at Port Royal, whose doctrines he defended against the Jesuits; published "Entretien sur Epictéte et Montaigne" in 1655; wrote his "Provincial Letters" in 1656-57; in his last days engaged on an "Apologie de la Religion Catholique" which, uncompleted, was published in 1670 as his "Pensées."

OF THE PREVALENCE OF SELF-LOVE

Self is hateful. You, Milton, conceal self, but do not thereby destroy it; therefore you are still hateful. Not so, for in acting as we do, to oblige everybody, we give no reason for hating us. True, if we only hated in self the vexation which it causes us. But if I hate it because it is unjust, and because it makes itself the center of all, I shall always hate it.

In one word, Self has two qualities: it is unjust in its essence, because it makes itself the center of all; it is inconvenient to others, in that it would bring them into subjection, for each "I" is the enemy, and would fain be the tyrant of all others. You take away the inconvenience, but not the injustice, and thus you do not render it lovable to those who hate injustice; you render it lovable only to the unjust, who find in it an enemy no longer. Thus you remain unjust and can please none but the unjust.

OF SELF-LOVE.--The nature of self-love and of this human "I" is to love self only, and consider self only. But what can it do? It can not prevent the object it loves from being full of faults and miseries; man would fain be great and sees that he is little; would fain be happy, and sees that he is miserable; would fain be perfect, and sees that he is full of imperfections; would fain be the object of the love and esteem of men, and sees that his faults merit only their aversion and contempt. The embarrassment wherein he finds himself produces in him the most unjust and criminal passion imaginable. For he conceives a mortal hatred against that truth which blames him and convinces him of his faults. Desiring to annihilate it, yet unable to destroy it in its essence, he destroys it as much as he can in his own knowledge, and in that of others; that is to say, he devotes all his care to the concealment of his faults, both from others and from himself, and he can neither bear that others should show them to him, nor that they should see them.

It is no doubt an evil to be full of faults, but it is a greater evil to be full of them, yet unwilling to recognize them, because that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion. We do not like others to deceive us, we do not think it just in them to require more esteem from us than they deserve; it is therefore unjust that we should deceive them, desiring more esteem from them than we deserve.

Thus if they discover no more imperfections and vices in us than we really have, it is plain they do us no wrong, since it is not they who cause them; but rather they who do us a service, since they help us to deliver ourselves from an evil, the ignorance of these imperfections. We ought not to be troubled that they know our faults and despise us, since it is but just they should know us as we are, and despise us if we are despicable.

Such are the sentiments which would arise in a heart full of equity and justice. What should we say then of our own heart, finding in it a wholly contrary disposition? For is it not true that we hate truth, and those who tell it us, and that we would wish them to have an erroneously favorable opinion of us, and to esteem us other than indeed we are?

One proof of this fills me with dismay. The Catholic religion does not oblige us to tell out our sins indiscriminately to all; it allows us to remain hidden from men in general; but she excepts one alone, to whom she commands us to open the very depths of our hearts, and to show ourselves to him as we are. There is but this one man in the world whom she orders us to undeceive; she binds him to an inviolable secrecy, so that this knowledge is to him as tho it were not. We can imagine nothing more charitable and more tender. Yet such is the corruption of man, that he finds even this law harsh, and it is one of the main reasons which has set a large portion of Europe in revolt against the Church.

How unjust and unreasonable is the human heart which finds it hard to be obliged to do in regard to one man what in some degree it were just to do to all men. For is it just that we should deceive them?

There are different degrees in this dislike to the truth, but it may be said that all have it in some degree, for it is inseparable from self-love. This false delicacy causes those who must needs reprove others to choose so many windings and modifications in order to avoid shocking them. They must needs lessen our faults, seem to excuse them, mix praises with their blame, give evidences of affection and esteem. Yet this medicine is bitter to self-love, which takes as little as it can, always with disgust, often with a secret anger.

Hence it happens that if any desire our love, they avoid doing us a service which they know to be disagreeable; they treat us as we would wish to be treated: we hate the truth, and they hide it from us; we wish to be flattered, they flatter us; we love to be deceived, they deceive us.

Thus each degree of good fortune which raises us in the world removes us further from truth, because we fear most to wound those whose affection is most useful, and whose dislike is most dangerous. A prince may be the byword of all Europe, yet he alone know nothing of it. I am not surprized; to speak the truth is useful to whom it is spoken, but disadvantageous to those who speak it, since it makes them hated. Now those who live with princes love their own interests more than that of the prince they serve, and thus they take care not to benefit him so as to do themselves a disservice.

This misfortune is, no doubt, greater and more common in the higher classes, but lesser men are not exempt from it, since there is always an interest in making men love us. Thus human life is but a perpetual illusion, an interchange of deceit and flattery. No one speaks of us in our presence as in our absence. The society of men is founded on this universal deceit; few friendships would last if every man knew what his friend said of him behind his back, tho he then spoke in sincerity and without passion.

Man is, then, only disguise, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in himself and with regard to others. He will not be told the truth; he avoids telling it to others; and all these tendencies, so far removed from justice and reason, have their natural roots in his heart.

MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ

Born in Paris in 1626, died in 1696; married in 1644 to the Marquis de Sévigné, who was killed in a duel in 1651; lived late in life in Brittany; wrote to her married daughter, Madame de Grigman, the famous letters from which has proceeded her fame.

GREAT NEWS FROM PARIS

I am going to tell you a thing, the most astonishing, the most surprizing, the most marvelous, the most miraculous, the most magnificent, the most confounding, the most unheard-of, the most singular, the most extraordinary, the most incredible, the most unforeseen, the greatest, the least, the rarest, the most common, the most public, the most private till to-day, the most brilliant, the most inevitable; in short, a thing of which there is but one example in past ages, and that not an exact one either; a thing that we can not believe at Paris; how, then, will it gain credence at Lyons? a thing which makes everybody cry, "Lord, have mercy upon us!" a thing which causes the greatest joy to Madame de Rohan and Madame de Hauterive; a thing, in fine, which is to happen on Sunday next, when those who are present will doubt the evidence of their senses; a thing which, tho it is to be done on Sunday, yet perhaps will not be finished on Monday.

I can not bring myself to tell you; guess what it is. I give you three times to do it in. What, not a word to throw at a dog? Well, then, I find I must tell you. Monsieur de Lauzun is to be married next Sunday at the Louvre, to--pray guess to whom! I give you four times to do it in,--I give you six,--I give you a hundred. Says Madame de Coulanges: "It is really very hard to guess; perhaps it is Madame de la Vallière."

Indeed madame, it is not. "It is Mademoiselle de Retz, then." No, nor she either; you are extremely provincial. "Lord bless me," say you, "what stupid wretches we are! it is Mademoiselle de Colbert all the while." Nay, now you are still further from the mark. "Why, then, it must certainly be Mademoiselle de Crequy." You have it not yet. Well, I find I must tell you at last. He is to be married next Sunday at the Louvre, with the King's leave, to Mademoiselle--Mademoiselle de--Mademoiselle--guess, pray guess her name; he is to be married to Mademoiselle, the great Mademoiselle; Mademoiselle, daughter of the late Monsieur; Mademoiselle, granddaughter of Henry IV; Mademoiselle d'Eu, Mademoiselle de Dombes, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, Mademoiselle d'Orleans, Mademoiselle, the King's cousin-german--Mademoiselle, destined to the throne--Mademoiselle, the only match in France that was worthy of Monsieur.

What glorious matter for talk! If you should burst forth like a bedlamite, say we have told you a lie, that it is false, that we are making a jest of you, and that a pretty jest it is, without wit or invention; in short, if you abuse us, we shall think you are quite in the right; for we have done just the same things ourselves. Farewell, you will find by the letters you receive this post whether we tell you truth or not.

AN IMPOSING FUNERAL DESCRIBED

I must return to narration, it is a folly I can never resist. Prepare, therefore, for a description. I was yesterday at a service performed in honor of the Chancellor Segnier at the Oratory. Painting, sculpture, music, rhetoric--in a word, the four liberal arts--were at the expense of it. Nothing could exceed the beauty of the decorations; they were finely imagined, and designed by Le Brun. The mausoleum reached to the top of the dome, adorned with a thousand lamps, and a variety of figures characteristic of him in whose honor it was erected. Beneath were four figures of Death, bearing the marks of his several dignities, as having taken away his honors with his life. One of them held his helmet, another his ducal coronet, another the ensigns of his order, another his chancellor's mace. The four sister arts, painting, music, eloquence and sculpture, were represented in deep distress, bewailing the loss of their protector. The first representation was supported by the four virtues, fortitude, temperance, justice, and religion. Above these, four angels, or genii, received the soul of the deceased, and seemed preening their purple wings to bear their precious charge to heaven. The mausoleum was adorned with a variety of little seraphs who supported an illuminated shrine, which was fixt to the top of the cupola. Nothing so magnificent or so well imagined was ever seen; it is Le Brun's masterpiece. The whole church was adorned with pictures, devices, and emblems, which all bore some relation to the life, or office of the chancellor; and some of his noblest actions were represented in painting. Madame de Verneuil offered to purchase all the decoration at a great price; but it was unanimously resolved by those who had contributed to it to adorn a gallery with it, and to consecrate it as an everlasting monument of their gratitude and magnificence. The assembly was grand and numerous, but without confusion. I sat next to Monsieur de Tulle, Madame Colbert and the Duke of Monmouth, who is as handsome as when we saw him at the palais royal. (Let me tell you in a parenthesis that he is going to the army to join the King.) A young father of the Oratory came to speak the funeral oration. I desired Monsieur de Tulle to bid him come down, and to mount the pulpit in his place; since nothing could sustain the beauty of the spectacle, and the excellence of the music but the force of his eloquence.

My child, this young man trembled when he began, and we all trembled for him. Our ears were at first struck with a provincial accent; he is of Marseilles, and called Lené. But as he recovered from his confusion, he became so brilliant; established himself so well, gave so just a measure of praise to the deceased; touched with so much address and delicacy all the passages in his life where delicacy was required! placed in so true a light all that was most worthy of admiration; employed all the charms of expression, all the masterly strokes of eloquence with so much propriety and so much grace that every one present, without exception, burst into applause, charmed with so perfect, so finished a performance. He is twenty-eight years of age, the intimate friend of M. de Tulle, who accompanied him when he left the assembly. We were for naming him the Chevalier Mascaron, and I think he will even surpass his friend. As for the music, it was fine beyond all description. Baptiste exerted himself to the utmost, and was assisted by all the King's musicians. There was an addition made to that fine "Miserere," and there was a "Libera" which filled the eyes of the whole assembly with tears; I do not think the music in heaven could exceed it. There were several prelates present. I desired Guitaut to look for the good Bishop of Marseilles, but we could not see him. I whispered him that if it had been the funeral oration of any person living to whom he might have made his court by it he would not have failed to have been there. This little pleasantry made us laugh, in spite of the solemnity of the ceremony. My dear child, what a strange letter is this! I fancy I have almost lost my senses! What is this long account to you? To tell the truth, I have satisfied my love of description.

ALAIN RENÉ LE SAGE

Born in France in 1668, died in 1747; studied philosophy and law in Paris; wrote many novels and plays, some of them borrowed from Spanish originals; published his chief work, "Gil Blas," in 1715-35.