Page:Blaise Pascal works.djvu/169

 they are members. We ought therefore to look to the whole. We are therefore born unjust and depraved.

When we want to think of God, is there nothing which turns us away, and tempts us to think of something else? All this is bad, and is born in us.

If there is a God, we must love Him only, and not the creatures of a day. The reasoning of the ungodly in the Book of Wisdom is only based upon the non-existence of God. "On that supposition," say they, "let us take delight in the creatures." That is the worst that can happen. But if there were a God to love, they would not have come to this conclusion, but to quite the contrary. And this is the conclusion of the wise: "There is a God, let us therefore not take delight in the creatures."

Therefore all that incites us to attach ourselves to the creatures is bad; since it prevents us from serving God if we know Him, or from seeking Him if we know Him not. Now we are full of lust. Therefore we are full of evil; therefore we ought to hate ourselves and all that excited us to attach ourselves to any other object than God only.

To make the members happy, they must have one will, and submit it to the body.

The examples of the noble deaths of the Lacedæmonians and others scarce touch us. For what good is it to us? But the example of the death of the martyrs touches us; for they are "our members." We have a common tie with them. Their resolution can form ours, not only by example, but because it has perhaps deserved ours. There is nothing of this in the examples of the heathen. We have no tie with them; as we do not become rich by seeing a