consequently about drilling

Aemilius reproached Perseus for not
killing himself.

411. Notwithstanding the sight of all our miseries, which press upon us and
take us by the throat, we have an instinct which we cannot repress and which
lifts us up.

412. There is internal war in man between reason and the passions.

If he had only reason without passions...

If he had only passions without reason...

But having both, he cannot be without strife, being unable to be at peace
with the one without being at war with the other. Thus he is always divided
against and opposed to himself.

413. This internal war of reason against the passions has made a division of
those who would have peace into two sects. The first would renounce their
passions and become gods; the others would renounce reason and become brute
beasts. (Des Barreaux.) But neither can do so, and reason 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."




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