I love this small section from the Pensees. It speaks so much to the point. And at the same time undermines the point by making it. One should not, if it can be avoided, speak ill of others or spread rumor, even in a good cause. Pascal breaks that primary rule for the purpose of a greater good. But by doing so does he forfeit the higher good or does he, as he intimates, stand on the same level as his subject?
63. Montaigne.--Montaigne's faults are great. Lewd words; this is bad, notwithstanding Mademoiselle de Gournay. Credulous; people without eyes. Ignorant; squaring the circle, a greater world. His opinions on suicide, on death. He suggests an indifference about salvation, without fear and without repentance. As his book was not written with a religious purpose, he was not bound to mention religion; but it is always our duty not to turn men from it. One can excuse his rather free and licentious opinions on some relations of life; but one cannot excuse his thoroughly pagan views on death, for a man must renounce piety altogether, if he does not at least wish to die like a Christian. Now, through the whole of his book his only conception of death is a cowardly and effeminate one.64. It is not in Montaigne, but in myself, that I find all that I see in him.
65. What good there is in Montaigne can only have been acquired with difficulty. The evil that is in him, I mean apart from his morality, could have been corrected in a moment, if he had been informed that he made too much of trifles and spoke too much of himself.
