198. The sensibility of man to trifles, and his insensibility to
great things, indicates a strange inversion.

    199. Let us imagine a number of men in chains and all condemned to
death, where some are killed each day in the sight of the others,
and those who remain see their own fate in that of their fellows and
wait their turn, looking at each other sorrowfully and without hope.
It is an image of the condition of men.

    200. A man in a dungeon, ignorant whether his sentence be
pronounced and having only one hour to learn it, but this hour enough,
if he knew that it is pronounced, to obtain its repeal, would act
unnaturally in spending that hour, not in ascertaining his sentence,
but in playing piquet. So it is against nature that man, etc. It is
making heavy the hand of God.

    Thus not only the zeal of those who seek Him proves God, but
also the blindness of those who seek Him not.

    201. All the objections of this one and that one only go against
themselves, and not against religion. All that infidels say ...

    202. From those who are in despair at being without faith, we
see that God does not enlighten them; but as to the rest, we see there
is a God who makes them blind.

    203. Fascinatio nugacitatis.* - That passion may not harm us,
let us act as if we had only eight hours to live.

    * Wisd. of Sol. 4. 12. "Bewitching of naughtiness."

    204. If we ought to devote eight hours of life, we ought to devote
a hundred years.

    205. When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up
in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill and
even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which
I am ignorant and which know me not, I am frightened and am astonished
at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here
rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here? By
whose order and direction have this place and time been allotted to
me? Memoria hospitis unius diei praetereuntis.*

    * Wisd. of Sol. 5. 15. "The remembrance of a guest that tarrieth
but a day."

    206. The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

    207. How many kingdoms know us not!

    208. Why is my knowledge limited? Why my stature? Why my life to
one hundred years rather than to a thousand? What reason has nature
had for giving me such, and for choosing this number rather than
another in the infinity of those from which there is no more reason to
choose one than another, trying nothing else?

    209. Art thou less a slave by being loved and favoured by thy
master? Thou art indeed well off, slave. Thy master favours thee; he
will soon beat thee.

    210. The last act is tragic, however happy all the rest of the
play is; at the last a little earth is thrown upon our head, and
that is the end for ever.

    211. We are fools to depend upon the society of our fellow-men.
Wretched as we are, powerless as we are, they will not aid us; we
shall die alone. We should therefore act as if we were alone, and in
that case should we build fine houses, etc. We should seek the truth
without hesitation; and, if we refuse it, we show that we value the
esteem of men more than the search for truth.

    212. Instability.- It is a horrible thing to feel all that we
possess slipping away.

    213. Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is
the frailest thing in the world.

    214. Injustice.- That presumption should be joined to meanness
is extreme injustice.

    215. To fear death without danger, and not in danger, for one must
be a man.

    216. Sudden death alone is feared; hence confessors stay with
lords.

    217. An heir finds the title-deeds of his house. Will he say,
"Perhaps they are forged" and neglect to examine them?

    218. Dungeon.- I approve of not examining the opinion of
Copernicus; but this...! It concerns all our life to know whether
the soul be mortal or immortal.

    219. It is certain that the mortality or immortality of the soul
must make an entire difference to morality. And yet philosophers
have constructed their ethics independently of this: they discuss to
pass an hour.

    Plato, to incline to Christianity.