Jansenius on the philosophers' self-pleasing; only the will to please God saves virtue from pride
That learned man discusses this at length in book 4 of On the state of fallen nature, chapter 11 and several chapters after it. 'This, then,' he says, 'was the evil proper to the philosophers' virtue, even when it was at its most refined: delighted by a kind of ruinous loftiness of virtue, they sought it so that they might excel in their own eyes, take delight in themselves and please themselves, when through it they ought to have pleased God, or, as Augustine puts it, the truth. This evil of self-pleasing clings so closely to those who desire to please neither God nor men that they cannot possibly avoid falling into it.'
For, as he adds a little later, 'Whoever does not lift his eyes to God, to please him by the beauty of virtue, but admires virtue alone as the end of good, most beautiful and most lofty, cannot seek it without pleasing himself by it, nor seek it without wishing to please himself by it. Since the human mind must take delight in something, in what else, I ask, can a mind estranged from God, which looks down on the other, lower creatures, as we are supposing, take delight than in what it believes most excellent among created things? That is the mind itself, now adorned with virtue, an adornment of its own that it judges the most beautiful of all. So whoever does not desire through virtue to please God or other men necessarily pleases himself by his virtue.'
From this he concludes that only by the will to please God through virtue can it be avoided that virtue, not only the philosophical virtue of the Gentiles but Christian virtue too, should please itself through pride and become a vice, which had been thought to be a virtue.
Latin
XLIII. Quae vir ille doctus prolixe edisserit libro quarto de statu naturae lapsae capite undecimo, & aliquot sequentibus. Hoc ergo, inquit, proprium Philosophicae virtutis, quando erat etiam defaecatissima, fuit malum, quod virtutis quadam celsitudine ruinosa delectati, illam ideo expeterent, ut in oculis suis excellerent, sese oblectarent, sibi placerent, qui per illam Deo, seu, ut Augustinus loquitur, veritati placere debuissent. Quod sibi placendi malum ita arcte adhaeret iis, qui neque Deo, neque hominibus placere desiderant, ut fieri omnino non possit, quin in illud incidant. Nam ut paulo post subjungit, Qui non levat oculos suos ad Deum, ut ei de pulchritudine virtutis placeat, sed ipsam unice, velut finem boni, pulcherrimam celsissimamque miratur, impossibile est, ut eam vel appetens non inde sibi placeat, vel non inde sibi placere volens appetat. Cum enim necessarium omnino sit, ut aliqua re mens humana delectetur, quo quaeso alio oblectari potest mens aliena a Deo, caeterasque viliores contemnens creaturas, ut supponimus, quam illo quod in rebus creatis praestantissimum credit? Hoc est autem mens ipsa virtute jam decorata, quem sui ipsius ornatum omnium pulcherrimum arbitratur. Sibi ipsi ergo necessario de virtute placet, qui per eam Deo, vel aliis hominibus placere non cupit. Unde concludit, sola voluntate placendi per virtutem Deo, evitari posse, ne virtus non modo Gentilium Philosophica, sed & Christiana sibi ipsi superbiendo placeat, & vitium, quae virtus esse putabatur, fiat.