Discourses Author:Pierre Nicole Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 2. DISCOURSE. OF THE WEAKNESS OF MAN. " Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak." Pride is a swelling of the heart, whereby man stretches himself and ... more »grows great in his own imagination. And the idea it gives us of ourselves, is the idea of strength, power, and greatness. This is the reason why riches puff us up, seeing from them we take occasion to fancy ourselves greater and stronger. We look on them, according to the expression of the wise man, as a strong tower, which secures us from the injuries of fortune, and enables us to lord it over others. This causes that haughtiness, which, according to the Scripture, rises from riches, c The pride of Grandees is of the same kind with that of the wealthy; and consists, as that, in the idea they have of their power. But since, in the contemplation of themselves alone, they find not wherewithal to stuff out this mighty idea, they are wont to take in all those that are about them, or belong to them. A great man, in the idea he hath framed of himself, is not one single man; but a man stuck round with all those that depend on him, with as many arms as are all theirs, because he moves and disposes of them. The idea a General hath of himself, includes all his soldiers and artillery. Thus, every one labours as much as he can to take up a great deal of room in his own imagination. And men bustle and advance themselves in the world, for nothing else but to enlarge this idea which every one makes of himself in his own mind. Behold there the goodly end of all the ambitious designs of mankind! Alexander and Caesar, in all their battles, had no other aim but this. And if one ask, Why the Grand Seignior hath lately caused the slaughter of an hundred thou- sand men in Candia? it was only to swell the idea he hath of himself, by the ad...« less