George Saintsbury and Hugh Chisholm

“ In other words, most men since his day who have not been contented with a mere concordat, have let religion go and contented themselves with reason. Pascal, equally discontented with the concordat, held fast to religion and continued to fight out the questions of difference with reason. ”

“ The unfailing freshness and charm of the contrast between the importance, the gravity, in some cases the dry and abstruse nature, of their subjects, and the lightness, sometimes almost approaching levity in its special sense, of the manner in which these subjects are attacked is a triumph of literary art of which no familiarity dims the splendour, and which no lapse of time can ever impair. ”

“ Whether we look at his pure mathematical or at his physical researches we receive the same impression of Pascal; we see the strongest marks of a great original genius creating new ideas, and seizing upon, mastering, and pursuing farther everything that was fresh and unfamiliar in his time. We can still point to much in exact science that is absolutely his ”

“ Excluding here his scientific attainments (see below) , Pascal presents himself for comment in two different lights, the second of which is, if the expression be permitted, a composite one. The first exhibits him as a man of letters, the second as a philosopher, a theologian, and simply a man, for in no one is the colour of the theology and the philosophy more distinctly personal. Yet his character as a man is not very distinct. The accounts of his sister and niece have the defect of all hagiology ”

“ The peculiarly disjointed and fragmentary condition of the sentiments expressed by Pascal aggravates the appearance of universal doubt which is present in the Pensées, just as the completely unfinished condition of the work, from the literary point of view, constantly causes slighter or graver doubts as to the actual meaning which the author wished to express. ”

“ Pascal as Natural Philosopher and Mathematician.—Great as is Pascal’s reputation as a philosopher and man of letters, it may be fairly questioned whether his claim to be remembered by posterity as a mathematician and physicist is not even greater. ”

“ Descartes, however, gave Pascal the very sensible advice to stay in bed as long as he could (it may be remembered that the philosopher himself never got up till eleven) and to take plenty of beef-tea. As early as May 1648 Jacqueline Pascal was strongly drawn to Port Royal, and her brother frequently accompanied her to its church. She desired indeed to join the convent, but her father, who returned to Paris with the dignity of counsellor of state, disapproved of the plan, and took both brother and sister to Clermont, where Pascal remained for the greater part, of two years. ”

“ An unbiased study of the scanty facts of his history, and of the tolerably abundant but scattered and chaotic facts of his literary production, ought to enable any one to steer clear of these exaggerations, while admitting at the same time that it is impossible to give a complete and final account of his attitude towards the riddles of this world and others. ”

“ This experiment was made by himself in a tower at Paris, and was carried out on a grand scale under his instructions by his brother-in-law Florin Périer on the Puy de Dôme in Auvergne. Its success greatly helped to break down the old prejudices, and to bring home to the minds of ordinary men the truth of the new ideas propounded by Galileo and Torricelli. ”