TRUE GOOD

All men seek happiness. This is without exception.

Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this

end.

The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding

it, is the same desire in both, attended with different

views. The will never takes the least step but to this object.

This is the motive of every action of every man, even

of those who hang themselves.

And yet after such a great number of years, no one without

faith has reached the point to which all continually look.

All complain, princes and subjects, noblemen and commoners,old and young, strong and weak, learned and ignorant,healthy and sick, of all countries, all times, all ages, and all conditions.

A trial so long, so continuous, and so uniform, should

certainly convince us of our inability to reach the good by

our own efforts.

But example teaches us little. No resemblance

is ever so perfect that there is not some slight difference;

and hence we expect that our hope will not be deceived

on this occasion as before.

 And thus, while the present never satisfies us, experience dupes us, and from misfortune to misfortune leads us to death, their eternal crown.

What is it then that this desire and this inability proclaim

to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of

which there now remain to him only the mark and empty

trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings,

seeking from things absent to help he does not obtain in

things present? But these are all inadequate, because the

infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.

He only is our true good, and since we have forsaken

Him, it is a strange thing that there is nothing in nature

which has not been serviceable in taking His place; the

stars, the heavens, earth, the elements, plants, cabbages,

leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents, fever, pestilence, war,famine, vices, adultery, incest. And since man has lost the true good, everything can appear equally good to him, even his own destruction, though so opposed to God, to reason,and to the whole course of nature.

Blaise  Pascal