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"Thoughts" by Pascal, Blaise Pascal, English translation of fragment, Le Roseau pensant, Les Pensées de Pascal, Project Gutenberg #18269
Blaise Pascal: Le Roseau pensant
Blaise Pascal (19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662), a writer, philosopher, inventor, mathematician, etc. used the term “roseau pensant” to define the human condition. Literally “roseau pensant” means “thinking reed.” It describes humankind’s duality. We are fragile: mere reeds. However, we think, which gives us nobility. We are therefore misérables in that we are frail and die, which is how the reed is perceived by La Fontaine (“Le Chêne et le Roseau”), but thought, our ability to think, makes us “grands” (great). In La Fontaine, the reed bends, but it does not break.
Pascal died at the age of 39. The Pensées were left in fragments: bundles of papers called liasses. They were classified by Louis Lafuma, Léon Brunschvicg and Philippe Sellier, as well as other scholars. Project Gutenberg uses the Brunschvicg classification.
I am providing you with the translation used by Project Gutenberg.
Section VI, The Philosophers, p. 96
In Project Gutenberg’s edition [EBook #18269], thoughts numbers 347 and 348 are translated as follows:
347-348: L’homme n’est qu’un roseau, le plus faible de la nature ; mais c’est un roseau pensant. Il ne faut pas que l’univers entier s’arme pour l’écraser : une vapeur, une goutte d’eau, suffit pour le tuer. Mais, quand l’univers l’écraserait, l’homme serait encore plus noble que ce qui le tue, puisqu’il sait qu’il meurt, et l’avantage que l’univers a sur lui, l’univers n’en sait rien.
Toute notre dignité consiste donc en la pensée. C’est de là qu’il faut nous relever et non de l’espace et de la durée, que nous ne saurions remplir. Travaillons donc à bien penser : voilà le principe de la morale.
Roseau pensant. — Ce n’est point de l’espace que je dois chercher ma dignité, mais c’est du règlement de ma pensée. Je n’aurai pas davantage en possédant des terres : par l’espace, l’univers me comprend et m’engloutit comme un point ; par la pensée, je le comprends.
347: Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.
All our dignity consists, then, in thought. By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill. Let us endeavour, then, to think well; this is the principle of morality.
348: A thinking reed.—It is not from space that I must seek my dignity, but from the government of my thought. I shall have no more if I possess worlds. By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.
Section VI, The Philosophers, p. 107
397: La grandeur de l’homme est grande en ce qu’il se connaît misérable. Un arbre ne se connaît pas misérable. C’est donc être misérable que de se connaître misérable ; mais c’est être grand que de connaître qu’on est misérable.
397: The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be miserable. A tree does not know itself to be miserable. It is then being miserable to know oneself to be miserable; but it is also being great to know that one is miserable.
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Source:
Les Pensées, Gutenberg Project [EBook 18269]EN Introduction by T. S. Eliott (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1958) Project Gutenberg uses L. Brunschvicg’s classification of the fragments left by Pascal. Pergolesi‘s Stabat Mater, “Quando Corpus Morietur” ”
Pergolesi‘s Stabat Mater, “Quando Corpus Morietur” Claudio Abbado, conductor
© Micheline Walker
19 April 2014
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