Pascal on the sins of the great

In that, they are ordinary

The mathematical genius Blaise Pascal, who died in 1662 at the age of 39, was also a serious theologian and moralist. His posthumously published Pensees collected his notes for a defense of Christianity he never got to write, and includes a close and critical study of humanity.

Fewer men have been made continent by the example of Alexander’s chastity than intemperate by that of his drunkenness. There is no shame in not being as virtuous as he, and it seems excusable to be no more vicious.

We feel that our vices are somewhat out of the ordinary when we find ourselves practising the vices of such great men, yet we do not notice that in this respect they are just ordinary men. We take after them in the very particular in which they take after the people.

For however exalted they may be, they still have some point of contact with the humblest of men. They are not hanging in mid-air quite detached from our society. No, indeed, if they are greater than we, it is because their heads are higher up, but their feet are as low down as ours. They are all on the same level and rest on the same ground.

At that end they are just as lowly as we are, as the least of us, as children, as beasts.

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