A later Augustinian, Blaise Pascal, named this with the same sort of self-knowledge: “Vanity is so anchored in the human heart,” he observed, “that a soldier, a cadet, a cook, a kitchen porter boasts, and wants to have admirers, and even philosophers want them, and those who write against them want the prestige of having written well, and those who read them want the prestige of having read them, and I, writing this, perhaps have this desire, and those who will read this . . .”
