Blaise Pascal

“ The spirit of this sovereign judge of the world is not so independent but that it is liable to be troubled by the first disturbance about him. The noise of a cannon is not needed to break his train of thought, it need only be the creaking of a weathercock or a pulley. Do not be astonished if at this moment he argues incoherently, a fly is buzzing about his ears, and that is enough to render him incapable of sound judgment. Would you have him arrive at truth, drive away that creature which holds his reason in check, and troubles that powerful intellect which gives laws to towns and kingdoms. ”

“ Actually, considering that Pascal died at the age of thirty-nine, one must be amazed at the balance and justice of his observations; much greater maturity is required for these qualities, than for any mathematical or scientific greatness. How easily his brooding on the misery of man without God might have encouraged in him the sin of spiritual pride, the concupiscence de l'esprit, and how fast a hold he has of humility! ”

“ Early in the modern period occurs the great name of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) . A staunch Roman Catholic, but belonging to a school of Augustinian enthusiasts (the Jansenists) , whom the Church put down as heretics, he stands pretty much apart from the general currents. His Pensées, published posthumously, seems to have been meant for a systematic treatise, but it has come to us in fragments. Once again, a lay apologist! A layman’s work may have the advantage of originality or the drawback of imperfect knowledge. Pascal’s work exhibits both characters. ”

“ It is then good to obey laws and customs because they are laws, but we ought to know that there is neither truth nor justice to introduce into them, that we know nothing about these, and can therefore only follow what is recognised, and thus we should never transgress them. But most men cannot receive this doctrine, and since they believe that truth can be found, and that it resides in law and custom, they believe these laws, and take their antiquity as a proof of their truth, and not merely of their authority apart from truth. ”

“ Would to God that we could, on the contrary, dispense with her aid altogether, and attain to a universal knowledge by instinct and feeling alone! But nature has denied us this boon, and, indeed, furnished us with very little information arising from this source; every other kind of science is to be acquired by reasoning alone."*
We have here, it strikes me, the final conclusions of Pascal on this important subject. He is not the exclusive champion of human reason; yet, on the other hand, he will have nothing to do with the extravagance of Pyrrhonism. ”

“ When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the small space which I fill, or even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing, and which know nothing of me, I am terrified, and wonder that I am here rather than there, for there is no reason why here rather than there, or now rather than then. Who has set me here? By whose order and design have this place and time been destined for me?—Memoria hospitis unius diei prætereuntis.
It is not well to be too much at liberty. It is not well to have all we want.
How many kingdoms know nothing of us! ”

“ It is in this manner that logic has borrowed, perhaps, the rules of geometry, without comprehending their force; and thus, in placing them by chance among those that belong to it, it does not thence follow that they [6] have entered into the spirit of geometry, and I should be greatly averse if they gave no other evidence of it than that of having mentioned it by chance, to placing them on a level with that science that teaches the true method of directing the reason. ”

“ It is sufficient to notice that the next occupation of Pascal, after his conversion, was to write these eighteen "Letters," which as prose are of capital importance in the foundation of French classical style, and which as polemic are surpassed by none, not by Demosthenes, or Cicero, or Swift. They have the limitation of all polemic and forensic: they persuade, they seduce, they are unfair. But it is also unfair to assert that, in these Letters to a Provincial, Pascal was attacking the Society of Jesus in itself. ”

“ Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher, was a child prodigy. At the age of 12, he proved Euclid's 32nd theorem that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles. Before age 16, he wrote a book on conic sections. He is famous for his theorem that a hexagon inscribed in a conic section has the property that the three meeting points of the opposed sides are always in a straight line. ”

“ Why should he be constantly and irremediably wretched? "At for me," he continues, "when I look at either London or Paris, I see no reason for that misery which M. Pascal talks of; I behold a city which in no wise resembles a desert island; it is peopled, opulent, governed by good laws, and its inhabitants are as happy as human nature can be. What wise man is there who will be full of discouragement, because he does not know the nature of his thoughts, and because he is acquainted with only a few of the attributes of matter?" ”

“ "Compare not thyself with others, but with Me. If thou dost not find Me in those with whom thou comparest thyself, thou comparest thyself to one who is abominable. If thou findest Me in them, compare thyself to Me. But whom wilt thou compare? Thyself, or Me in thee? If it is thyself, it is one who is abominable. If it is I, thou comparest Me to Myself. Now I am God in all. ”

“ There had long dwelt in the heart of Pascal a deep feeling of religiousness. The influence of Port Royal had extended to his father's household. When Etienne Pascal, some years before, once broke his leg, he was tended in his illness by two gentlemen of the neighbourhood, who brought with them into the family the maxims of that community. Blaise was the first to feel the inspiration of their example; and when a little later his own failing health inclined him to pious meditations, and gave the opportunity, this new sense of a higher and a holier existence strengthened within him. ”

“ The tangle of our condition takes its plies and folds in this abyss, so that man is more [108] inconceivable without the mystery than the mystery is inconceivable to man.
Whence it appears that God, willing to render the difficulty of our being unintelligible to us, has concealed the knot so high, or rather so low, that we cannot reach it; so that it is not by the arrogant exertion of our reason, but by the simple submission of reason, that we can truly know ourselves. ”

“ If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is. This being so, who will dare to undertake the decision of the question? Not we, who have no affinity to Him. ”

“ If we are well informed, we understand that nature having graven her own image and that of her author on all things, they are almost all partakers of her double infinity. Thus we see that all the sciences are infinite in the extent of their researches, for none can doubt that geometry, for instance, has an infinite infinity of problems to propose. They are also infinite in the number and in the nicety of their premisses, for it is evident that those which are finally proposed are not self-supporting, but are based on others, which again having others as their support have no finality. ”

“ As early as the year 1646, Pascal, as well as his sister Jacqueline, had felt deep religious impressions. He had become a christian man, and, to use M. Carlyle's forcible language, he " believed in God, not on Sundays only, but on all days, in all places, and in all cases." These impressions, nevertheless, had gradually worn off, when a memorable escape from death in 1654, entirely separated him from the world; and be sought at length for solitude at Port Royal, already endeared to him by the residence there of his sister Jacqueline. ”

“ As I was praying God with all my heart, and confessing my sin and the sin of all my people, and prostrating myself before God, even Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, came to me and touched me about the time of the evening oblation, and he informed me and said, O Daniel, I am now come forth to teach thee that thou mightest understand. At the beginning of thy prayer I came to show thee that which thou didst desire, for thou art greatly beloved: therefore understand the matter and consider the vision. ”

“ We know that there is an infinite, and are ignorant of its nature. As we know it to be false that numbers are finite, it is therefore true that there is an infinity in number. But we do not know what it is. It is false that it is even, it is false that it is odd; for the addition of a unit can make no change in its nature. Yet it is a number, and every number is odd or even (this is certainly true of every finite number) . So we may well know that there is a God without knowing what He is. ”

“ One has only to look, and no effort is necessary; it is only a question of good eyesight, but it must be good, for the principles are so subtle and so numerous, that it is almost impossible but that some escape notice. Now the omission of one principle leads to error; thus one must have very clear sight to see all the principles, and in the next place an accurate mind not to draw false deductions from known principles.
All mathematicians would then be intuitive if they had clear sight, for they do not reason incorrectly from principles known to them ”

“ "I cannot conceal from you, sir, that in reading this author and comparing him with Epictetus, I have found that they are assuredly the two greatest defenders of the two most celebrated sects of the world, and the only ones conformable to reason, since we can only follow one of these two roads, namely: either that there is a God, and then we place in him the sovereign good; or that he is uncertain, and that then the true good is also uncertain, since he is incapable of it. ”

“ We know instinctively that there are three dimensions in space, and that numbers are infinite, and reason then shows that there are no two square numbers one of which is double of the other. We feel principles, we infer propositions, both with certainty, though by different ways. It is as useless and absurd for reason to demand from the heart proofs of first principles before it will admit them, as it would be for the heart to ask from reason a feeling of all the propositions demonstrated before accepting them. ”

“ But as he wished to discover what morals reason would dictate without the light of faith, he based his principles upon this supposition; and thus, considering man as destitute of all revelation, he discourses in this wise. He puts all things in a universal doubt, so general that this doubt bears away itself, that is whether he doubts, and even doubting this latter proposition, his uncertainty revolves upon itself in a perpetual and restless circle, alike opposed to those who affirm that every thing is uncertain and to those who affirm that every thing is not so, because he will affirm nothing. ”

“ If our view be arrested there, let imagination pass beyond, and it will sooner exhaust the power of thinking than nature that of giving scope for thought. The whole visible world is but an imperceptible speck in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it. We may swell our conceptions beyond all imaginable space, yet bring forth only atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the centre of which is every where, the circumference no where. It is, in short, the greatest sensible mark of the almighty power of God, in that thought let imagination lose itself. ”

“ I am in terrible ignorance of everything. I know not what my body is, nor my senses, nor my soul, not even that part of me which thinks what I say, which reflects on all and on itself, and knows itself no more than the rest. I see those frightful spaces of the universe which surround me, and I find myself tied to one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am put in this place rather than in another, nor why the short time which is given me to live is assigned to me at this point rather than at another of the whole eternity which was before me or which shall come after me. ”

“ It is not among extraordinary and fantastic things that excellence is to be found, of whatever kind it may be. We rise to attain it and become removed from it: it is oftenest necessary to stoop for it. The best books are those, which those who read them believe they themselves could have written. Nature, which alone is good, is wholly familiar and common.
I make no doubt therefore that these rules, being the true ones, are simple, artless, and natural, as in fact they are. It is not Barbara and Baralipton that constitute reasoning. The mind must not be forced ”

“ The starting point, the argument of the whole chapter is thus given by Pascal:—
"Nothing is more strange in the nature of man than the contradictions he exhibits in all things. He is formed to discover truth; he ardently desires and diligently seeks it; yet, when he tries to grasp it, so dazzled is he and confounded, that you at once believe him to be in error. This has given rise to the two sects of Pyrrhonists and dogmatists,—the one of which would take from man all knowledge of truth, whilst the other aims to assure him of it ”