Alexander Pope and Blaise Pascal: A Comparison

"Know then thyself, presume not God to scan:
The proper study of mankind is man.
Plac’d upon this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise and rudely great.
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic’s side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest,
In doubt to deem himself a God or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer.
Born but to die and reasoning but to err’
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little or too much,
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused or disabused.
Created half to rise and half to fall,
Great lord of all things yet prey to all.
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled,
The glory jest and riddle of the world." --  Alexander Pope                             

     The following is from the writings of Blasé Pascal who died in 1662. It is hard to imagine that Pope did not know what had been written by a Frenchman up to possibly 100 years before. And it is even more exciting to think that they came to these conclusions separately and yet voiced them in a manner suggesting conspiracy. These were taken from a book by Maurice Friedman titled The Worlds Of Existentialism: A Critical Reader. Italics is mine.

Blaise Pascal:
"Whoso takes this survey of himself will be terrified at the thought that he is upheld in the material being, given him by nature, between these two abysses of the infinite and nothing, he will tremble at the sight of these marvels…
For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in regard to the infinite, a whole in regard to nothing, a mean between nothing and the whole; infinitely removed from understanding either extreme. The end of things and their beginnings are invincibly hidden from him in impenetrable secrecy, he is equally incapable of seeing the nothing whence he was taken, and the infinite in which he is engulfed.
What shall he do then, but discern somewhat of the middle of things in an eternal despair of knowing either their beginning or their end…?
Let us know our limits: we are something, but we are not all. What existence we have conceals from us the knowledge of first principles which spring from the nothing, while the pettiness of that existence hides us from the sight of the infinite….
Restricted in every way, this middle state between two extremes is common to all our weaknesses.
Our senses can perceive no extreme. Too much noise deafens us, excess of light blinds us, to great distance or nearness equally interfere with our vision, prolixity or brevity equally obscure a discourse, too much truth overwhelms us…..
In a word, all extremes are for us as though they were not; and we are not, in regard to them: they escape us, or we them.
This is our true state; this is what renders us incapable both of certain knowledge and of absolute ignorance. We sail on a vast expanse, ever uncertain, ever drifting, hurried from one to the other goal. If we think to attach ourselves firmly to any point, it totters and fails us; if we follow, it eludes our grasp, and flees us, vanishing forever. Nothing stays for us. This is our natural condition, yet always the most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find a steadfast place and an ultimate fixed basis whereon we may build a tower to reach the infinite. 
We may not then look for certainty or stability. Our reason is always deceived by changing shows, nothing can fix the finite between the two infinites, which at once enclose and fly from it…..
Were man to begin with the study of himself, he would see how incapable he is of proceeding further……
Man is to himself the most marvelous object in Nature, for he cannot conceive what matter is, still less what is mind, and less than all how a material body should be united to a mind. This is the crown of all his difficulties, yet it is his very being." 

The Misery of Man
"We care nothing for the present. We anticipate the future as too slow in coming, as if we could make it move faster: or we call back the past, to stop its rapid flight. So imprudent are we that we wander through the times in which we have no part, unthinking of that which alone is ours: so frivolous are we that we dream of the days which are not, and pass by without reflection those which alone exist. For the present generally gives us pain; we conceal it from our sight because it afflict us, and if it be pleasant we regret to see it vanish away. We endeavor to sustain the present by the future, and think of arranging things not in our power, for a time at which we have no certainty of arriving.
If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past or the future. We scarcely think of the present, and if we do so, it is only that we may borrow light from it to direct the future. The present is never our end; the past and the present are our means, the future alone is our end. Thus we never live, but hope to live, and while we always lay ourselves out to be happy, it is inevitable that we can never be so."
Now this last part (Misery of Man) really sounds so much like the Zen I know that it is amazing. It seems to me to support the notion that there is a “truth” within man’s consciousness that ties us all together existentially and clearly speaks to the One-ness we have so much trouble getting our mind around.
I also find this next paragraph a particularly well put description of one aspect of the human condition. And we think we are so evolved…..like Pope said, we are, “the glory, jest, and riddle of the world.”

Of Self-love:

The nature of self-love and of this human “I” is to love self only, and consider self only. But what can it do? It cannot prevent the object it loves from being full of faults and miseries; man would fain be great and sees that he is little, would fain be happy, and sees that he is miserable, would fain be perfect, and sees that he is full of imperfections, would fain to be the object of love and esteem of men, and sees that his faults merit only their aversion and contempt. The embarrassment wherein he finds himself produces in him the most unjust and criminal passion imaginable, for he conceives a mortal hatred against that truth which blames him and convinces him of his faults. Desiring to annihilate it, yet unable to destroy it in its essence, he destroys it as much as he can in his own knowledge, and in that of others; that is to say, he devotes all his care to the concealment of his faults, both from others and from himself, and he can neither bear that others should show them to him, nor that they should see them.