ENDS AND MEANS
becomes only a part of his body—the pain-giving or
pleasure-giving organ. Self-transcendence thus becomes
doubly difficult—though of course by no means impossible
as is proved by many examples of equanimity and non-
attachment under suffering and under intense enjoyment.
In general, however, excess of pain as of pleasure makes
for separateness. All the oriental contemplatives are
emphatic in their insistence on bodily health as a condition
of spiritual union with ultimate reality. Among Christians
there are two schools of thought—that which recommends
mortification and that which stresses the importance of
health. Pascal may be cited as a representative of the
first school, and the anonymous author of The Cloud of
Unknowing as a representative of the second. For Pascal,
sickness is the truly Christian condition; for, by mechanic-
ally freeing men from some, at least, of the passions, it
delivers them from all manner of temptations and dis-
tractions, and prepares them for living the kind of life
which, according to Christian ethical theory, they ought
to live. Pascal ignores the fact that sickness may create
as many temptations and distractions as it removes—
distractions in the form of discomfort and pain, temptations
in the form of an almost irresistible impulse to think
exclusively of oneself. There is, however, an element of
truth in the Pascalian doctrine. "When not excessive,
sickness or physical defect may act as a reminder that
'the things of this world* are not quite so important as
the animal and the social climber in us imagine them to be.
A mind which has made this discovery and which then
succeeds, as a result of suitable training, in ignoring the
distractions of pain and overcoming the temptation to
think exclusively of its sick body, has gone far to
achieve that 'suprarational concentration of the will,*
at which the religious self-education aims. In proclaim-
ing the value of sickness, Pascal is advocating the
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