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.[158] 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 they have inferred it from his very
wretchedness. All that the one party has been able to say in proof of
his greatness has only served as an argument of his wretchedness to the
others, because the greater our fall, the more wretched we are, and
_vice versa._ The one party is brought back to the other in an endless
circle, it being certain that in proportion as men possess light they
discover both the greatness and the wretchedness of man. In a word, man
knows that he is wretched. He is therefore wretched, because he is so;
but he is really great because he knows it.

417

This twofold nature of man is so evident that some have thought that we
had two souls. A single subject seemed to them incapable of such sudden
variations from unmeasured presumption to a dreadful dejection of
heart.

418

It is dangerous to make man see too clearly his equality with the brutes
without showing him his greatness. It is also dangerous to make him see
his greatness too clearly, apart from his vileness. It is still more
dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both. But it is very advantageous
to show him both. Man must not think that he is on a level either with
the brutes or with the angels, nor must he