Download Louis Pascal Far Away

Parents fear lest the natural love of their children may fadeaway. What kind of nature is that which is subject to decay?Custom is a second nature which destroys the former.[58] Butwhat is nature? For is custom not natural? I am much afraidthat nature is itself only a first custom, as custom is a secondnature.

The will is one of the chief factors in belief, not that it createsbelief, but because things are true or false according to theaspect in which we look at them. The will, which prefers oneaspect to another, turns away the mind from considering thequalities of all that it does not like to see; and thus the mind,moving in accord with the will, stops to consider the aspectwhich it likes, and so judges by what it sees.

DOWNLOAD 🔥 https://tinurll.com/2y4I1m 🔥

This is all that men have been able to discover to makethemselves happy. And those who philosophise on the matter,and who think men unreasonable for spending a whole day inchasing a hare which they would not have bought, scarce knowour nature. The hare in itself would not screen us from the sightof death and calamities; but the chase which turns away ourattention from these, does screen us.

Thus passes away all man's life. Men seek rest in a struggleagainst difficulties; and when they have conquered these, restbecomes insufferable. For we think either of the misfortuneswe have or of those which threaten us. And even if we shouldsee ourselves sufficiently sheltered on all sides, weariness of itsown accord would not fail to arise from the depths of the heartwherein it has its natural roots, and to fill the mind with itspoison.

[How does it happen that this man, so distressed at the deathof his wife and his only son, or who has some great lawsuitwhich annoys him, is not at this moment sad, and that he seemsso free from all painful and disquieting thoughts? We need notwonder; for a ball has been served him, and he must return itto his companion. He is occupied in catching it in its fall fromthe roof, to win a game. How can he think of his own affairs,pray, when he has this other matter in hand? Here is a careworthy of occupying this great soul, and taking away from himevery other thought of the mind. This man, born to know theuniverse, to judge all causes, to govern a whole state, is altogetheroccupied and taken up with the business of catching ahare. And if he does not lower himself to this, and wantsalways to be on the strain, he will be more foolish still, becausehe would raise himself above humanity; and after all he is onlya man, that is to say capable of little and of much, of all and ofnothing; he is neither angel nor brute, but man.]

He who does not see the vanity of the world is himself veryvain. Indeed who do not see it but youths who are absorbedin fame, diversion, and the thought of the future? But takeaway diversion, and you will see them dried up with weariness.They feel then their nothingness without knowing it; for it isindeed to be unhappy to be in insufferable sadness as soon aswe are reduced to thinking of self, and have no diversion.

We do not rest satisfied with the present. We anticipatethe future as too slow in coming, as if in order to hasten itscourse; or we recall the past, to stop its too rapid flight. Soimprudent are we that we wander in the times which are notours, and do not think of the only one which belongs to us; andso idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more,and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists. For thepresent is generally painful to us. We conceal it from our sight,because it troubles us; and if it be delightful to us, we regret tosee it pass away. We try to sustain it by the future, and thinkof arranging matters which are not in our power, for a timewhich we have no certainty of reaching.[Pg 50]

On this point, therefore, we condemn those who live withoutthought of the ultimate end of life, who let themselves be guidedby their own inclinations and their own pleasures withoutreflection and without concern, and, as if they could annihilateeternity by turning away their thought from it, think only ofmaking themselves happy for the moment.

Who then will blame Christians for not being able to give areason for their belief, since they profess a religion for whichthey cannot give a reason? They declare, in expounding it tothe world, that it is a foolishness, stultitiam;[90] and then youcomplain that they do not prove it! If they proved it, theywould not keep their word; it is in lacking proofs, that they arenot lacking in sense. "Yes, but although this excuses those whooffer it as such, and takes away from them the blame of puttingit forward without reason, it does not excuse those who receiveit." Let us then examine this point, and say, "God is, or Heis not." But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decidenothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us.A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distancewhere heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager?According to reason, you can do neither the one thing nor theother; according to reason, you can defend neither of thepropositions.

The mind of this sovereign judge of the world is not so independentthat it is not liable to be disturbed by the first dinabout it. The noise of a cannon is not necessary to hinder itsthoughts; it needs only the creaking of a weathercock or a pulley.Do not wonder if at present it does not reason well; a fly isbuzzing in its ears; that is enough to render it incapable of goodjudgment. If you wish it to be able to reach the truth, chaseaway that animal which holds its reason in check and disturbsthat powerful intellect which rules towns and kingdoms. Hereis a comical god! O ridicolosissimo eroe!

This is enough, at least, to obscure the matter; not that itcompletely extinguishes the natural light which assures us ofthese things. The academicians[153] would have won. But thisdulls it, and troubles the dogmatists to the glory of the scepticalcrowd, which consists in this doubtful ambiguity, and in acertain doubtful dimness from which our doubts cannot takeaway all the clearness, nor our own natural lights chase awayall the darkness.

Pride counterbalances and takes away all miseries. Here isa strange monster, and a very plain aberration. He is fallenfrom his place, and is anxiously seeking it. This is what allmen do. Let us see who will have found it.

In order to make man happy, it must prove to him that thereis a God; that we ought to love Him; that our true happiness isto be in Him, and our sole evil to be separated from Him; itmust recognise that we are full of darkness which hinders usfrom knowing and loving Him; and that thus, as our dutiescompel us to love God, and our lusts turn us away from Him,we are full of unrighteousness. It must give us an explanationof our opposition to God and to our own good. It must teachus the remedies for these infirmities, and the means of obtainingthese remedies. Let us therefore examine all the religions ofthe world, and see if there be any other than the Christian whichis sufficient for this purpose.

And on Psalm lxxviii, 39: "The spirit passeth away, andcometh not again"; whence some have erroneously arguedagainst the immortality of the soul. But the sense is that thisspirit is the evil leaven, which accompanies man till death, andwill not return at the resurrection.

In a word, the Self has two qualities: it is unjust in itselfsince it makes itself the centre of everything; it is inconvenientto others since it would enslave them; for each Self is the enemy,and would like to be the tyrant of all others. You take awayits inconvenience, but not its injustice, and so you do not renderit lovable to those who hate injustice; you render it lovable onlyto the unjust, who do not any longer find in it an enemy. Andthus you remain unjust, and can please only the unjust.

"All that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, or the lust ofthe eyes, or the pride of life; libido sentiendi, libido sciendi,libido dominandi."[172] Wretched is the cursed land which thesethree rivers of fire enflame rather than water![173] Happy they who,on these rivers, are not overwhelmed nor carried away, butare immovably fixed, not standing but seated on a low and securebase, whence they do not rise before the light, but, havingrested in peace, stretch out their hands to Him, who must liftthem up, and make them stand upright and firm in the porchesof the holy Jerusalem! There pride can no longer assail them norcast them down; and yet they weep, not to see all those perishablethings swept away by the torrents, but at the remembranceof their loved country, the heavenly Jerusalem, which theyremember without ceasing during their prolonged exile.

Saint Augustine has distinctly said that strength would betaken away from the righteous. But it is by chance that hesaid it; for it might have happened that the occasion of sayingit did not present itself. But his principles make us see thatwhen the occasion for it presented itself, it was impossible thathe should not say it, or that he should say anything to thecontrary. It is then rather that he was forced to say it, when theoccasion presented itself, than that he said it, when the occasionpresented itself, the one being of necessity, the other of chance.But the two are all that we can ask.

We know God only by Jesus Christ. Without this mediatorall communion with God is taken away; through Jesus Christwe know God. All those who have claimed to know God, andto prove Him without Jesus Christ, have had only weak proofs.But in proof of Jesus Christ we have the prophecies, which aresolid and palpable proofs. And these prophecies, being accomplishedand proved true by the event, mark the certainty ofthese truths, and therefore the divinity of Christ. In Him then,and through Him, we know God. Apart from Him, and withoutthe Scripture, without original sin, without a necessary Mediatorpromised and come, we cannot absolutely prove God, nor teachright doctrine and right morality. But through Jesus Christ,and in Jesus Christ, we prove God, and teach morality anddoctrine. Jesus Christ is then the true God of men. e24fc04721