No more important name is associated with the literature of aphorism than that of Pascal; but the Thoughts of Pascal concern the deeper things of speculative philosophy and religion, rather than the wisdom of daily life, and, besides, though aphoristic in form, they are in substance systematic.  “I blame equally,” he said, “those who take sides for praising man, those who are for blaming him, and those who amuse themselves with him:  the only wise part is search for truth—­search with many sighs.”  On man, as he exists in society, he said little; and what he said does not make us hopeful.  He saw the darker side.  “If everybody knew what one says of the other, there would not be four friends left in the world.”  “Would you have men think well of you, then do not speak well of yourself.”  And so forth.  If you wish to know Pascal’s theory you may find it set out in brilliant verse in the opening lines of the second book of Pope’s Essay on Man.  “What a chimera is Man!” said Pascal.  “What a confused chaos!  What a subject of contradiction!  A professed judge of all things, and yet a feeble worm of the earth; the great depository and guardian of truth, and yet a mere huddle of uncertainty; the glory and the scandal of the universe.”  Shakespeare was wiser and deeper when, under this quintessence of dust, he discerned what a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable.  That serene and radiant faith is the secret, added to matchless gifts of imagination and music, why Shakespeare is the greatest of men.

There is a smart, spurious wisdom of the world which has the bitterness not of the salutary tonic but of mortal poison; and of this kind the master is Chamfort, who died during the French Revolution (and for that matter died of it), and whose little volume of thoughts is often extremely witty, always pointed, but not seldom cynical and false.  “If you live among men,” he said, “the heart must either break or turn to brass.”  “The public, the public,” he cried; “how many fools does it take to make a public!” “What is celebrity?  The advantage of being known to people who don’t know you.”

All literatures might be ransacked in vain for a more repulsive saying than this, that “A man must swallow a toad every morning if he wishes to be quite sure of finding nothing still more disgusting before the day is over.”  We cannot be surprised to hear of the lady who said that a conversation with Chamfort in the morning made her melancholy until bedtime.  Yet Chamfort is the author of the not unwholesome saying that “The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed.”  One of his maxims lets us into the secret of his misanthropy.  “Whoever,” he said, “is not a misanthropist at forty can never have loved mankind.”  It is easy to know what this means.  Of course if a man is so superfine that he will not love mankind any longer than he can believe them to be demigods and angels, it is true that at forty he may have discovered that they are neither.  Beginning by looking for men to be more perfect than they can be, he ends by thinking them worse than they are, and then he secretly plumes himself on his superior cleverness in having found humanity out.  For the deadliest of all wet blankets give me a middle-aged man who has been most of a visionary in his youth.