reason still remains, to
condemn the vileness and injustice of the passions and to trouble the repose
of those who abandon themselves to them; and the passions keep always alive
in those who would renounce them.
414. Men are so necessarily mad that not to be mad would amount to another
form of madness.
415. The nature of man may be viewed in two ways: the one according to its
end, and then he is great and incomparable; the other according to the
multitude, just as we judge of the nature of the horse and the dog,
popularly, by seeing its fleetness, et animum arcendi; and then man is
abject and vile. These are the two ways which make us judge of him
differently and which occasion such disputes among philosophers. For one
denies the assumption of the other. One says, "He is not born for this end,
for all his actions are repugnant to it." The other says, "He forsakes his
end, when he does these base actions."
416. For Port-Royal. Greatness and wretchedness.--Wretchedness being deduced
from greatness, and greatness from wretchedness, some have inferred man's
wretchedness all the more because they have taken his greatness as a proof
of it, and others have inferred his greatness with all the more force,
because
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