Part 24

When we do not know the truth of a thing, it is not amiss that there should be a common error to fix the mind of men, as for instance the moon, to which is attributed the change of seasons, the progress of diseases, etc. For the principal malady of man is that restless curiosity about matters which he can not understand, and it is not so bad for him to be mistaken, as to be so idly curious.

The way in which Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie wrote, is the most usual, the most insinuating, the most easily remembered, and the most often quoted; because it is wholly composed of thoughts which arise out of the ordinary conversations of life. As when a man speaks of the vulgar error that the moon is the cause of all, we never fail to say that Salomon de Tultie says, that when we know not the truth of a matter, it is well there should be a common error, etc; which is the thought above.

To write against those who plunged too deep into science. Descartes.

Descartes.

We must say in general: "This is made by figure and motion for it is true." But to say what these are, and to compose the machine, is ridiculous, for it is useless, uncertain, and painful. And if it were true we do not think that all philosophy is worth one hour of pain.

I cannot forgive Descartes.

If an animal did by mind what it does by instinct, and if it spoke by mind what it speaks by instinct, in hunting, and warning its companions that the quarry is found or lost, it would certainly also speak in regard to those things which affect it more strongly, as for instance, "Gnaw me this cord which hurts me, and which I cannot reach."

The story of the pike and frog of Liancourt. They do it always and never otherwise, nor any other thing of mind.

The calculating machine works results which approach nearer to thought than any thing done by animals, but it does nothing which enables us to say it has any will, as animals have.

When it is said that heat is only the motion of certain molecules, and light the _conatus recedendi_ which we feel, we are surprised. And shall we think that pleasure is but the buoyancy of our spirits? We have conceived so different an idea of it, and these sensations seem so removed from those others which we say are the same as those with which we compare them. The feeling of fire, the warmth which affects us in a manner wholly different from touch, the reception of sound and light, all this seems to us mysterious, and yet it is as material as the blow of a stone. It is true that the minuteness of the spirits which enter into the pores touch different nerves, yet nerves are always touched.

What is more absurd than to say that inanimate bodies have passion, fear, horror, that insensible bodies, without life, and even incapable of life, have passions, which presuppose at least a sensitive soul to feel them, nay more, that the object of their terror is a vacuum? What is there in a vacuum which should make them afraid? What can be more base and more ridiculous? Nor is this all; it is said they have in themselves a principle of motion to avoid a vacuum. Have they arms, legs, muscles, nerves?

How foolish is painting, which draws admiration by the resemblance of things of which we do not admire the originals.

In the same way that we injure the understanding we injure the feelings also.

The feelings and the understanding are formed by society, and are perverted by society. Thus good or bad society forms or perverts them. It is then of the first importance to know how to choose in order to form and not to pervert them, and we cannot make this choice if they be not already formed and not perverted. Thus a circle is formed, and happy are those who escape it.

Have you never seen persons, who, in order to complain of the little you make of them, bring before you the example of people in high position who esteem them? To such I answer, "Show me the merit by which you have charmed these persons, and I will esteem you too."

The world is full of good maxims. All that is needed is their right application. For instance, no one doubts that we ought to risk our lives for the common weal, and many do so. But for Religion, none.

Nature diversifies and imitates, art imitates and diversifies.

The more intellect we have ourselves, the more originality do we discover in others. Ordinary people find no difference between men.

Since we cannot be universal, and know all that is to be known of everything, we should know a little of everything. For it is far better to know something of all than to know the whole of one thing, this universality is the best. If we can have both, still better, but if we must choose, let us choose the first. The world feels and acts on this, and the world is often a good judge.

Certain authors speaking of their works, say: "My book, my commentary, my history, etc." They are like the middle-class people who have a small house of their own, and have "my house" always on the tongue. They would do better to say: "Our book, our commentary, our history, etc."; because there is in them generally more of other people's than their own.

A true friend is so great an advantage, even for the greatest lords, in order that he may speak well of them, and uphold them in their absence, that they ought to do all that is possible to have one. But they should choose well, for spite of all they may do for fools, whatever good these say of them would be useless, and they would not even speak well of them if they found themselves in the minority, for they are without authority. And thus they would abuse them in company.

"You are ungraceful, excuse me, I beg." Without that excuse I had not known there was aught amiss. "With reverence be it spoke...." The only evil is the excuse.

I always dislike such compliments as these: _I have given you a great deal of trouble._ _I fear I am tiring you._ _I fear this is too long._ For we either have our audience with us, or we provoke them.

Rivers are roads which move and carry us whither we wish to go.

In every action we must look beyond the action at our past, present and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all these things. And then we shall be very careful.

In every dialogue and discourse we ought to be able to say to those who are offended, "Of what do you complain?"

There are many people who listen to the sermon as they listen to vespers.

When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace.

_NOTES._

_NOTES._

P. 2. _Pascal's Profession of Faith._ A few days after Pascal's death, a servant discovered this profession sewed into a fold of his master's waistcoat, _pourpoint_. It was written on parchment, with a copy on paper. His family believed that he had carefully placed this in each new garment, desiring to have always about him the memorial of the great spiritual crisis.

P. 3, l. 32. _Dereliquerunt me._ Jer. li. 13.

P. 3. _General Introduction._ In this are apparently two drafts of the same preface, the second beginning with the paragraph "Before entering," p. 9, l. 6. M. Faugère was the first to recognize the true character of this sketch, which has borne various titles. The Port Royal edition called it: "Against the Indifference of Atheists;" Condorcet headed it: "On the Need of Concern for the Proofs of a Future Life;" Bossut: "On the Need of a Study of Religion." See note on p. 61.

P. 3, l. 8. _Deus absconditus._ Is. xlv. 15. _Vere tu es Deus absconditus, Deus Israel salvator._

P. 11. _Notes for the General Introduction._ The fragments following are thus arranged by Molinier as having been in his judgment intended for and many of them expanded in the preceding Preface.

P. 12, l. 23. _Miton_ was a man of fashion at Paris, a friend of Pascal's friend, the Chevalier de Méré.

P. 17. _Preface to the First Part._ This is Pascal's own title to the section.

P. 17, l. 2. _Charron_, Pierre, was born at Paris in 1541. He was a friend of Montaigne, whose philosophy he adopted. His _Traité de la Sagesse_, Bordeaux, 1601, is the work of whose elaborate divisions Pascal complains.

P. 17, l. 12. _Montaigne's defects._ Mademoiselle de Gournay, Montaigne's adopted daughter, defends the Essayist in regard to this matter, in the preface to her edition of the Essays, Paris, 1595.

P. 17, l. 14. _people without eyes._ Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. xii.

P. 17, l. 15. _squaring the circle_. _Ib._, l. ii. ch. xiv.

P. 17, l. 15. _a greater world._ Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. xii.

P. 17, l. 16. _on suicide and on death._ _Ib._, l. i. ch. iii.

P. 17, l. 17. _without fear and without repentance._ _Ib._, l. iii. ch. ii.

P. 19. _Man's Disproportion._ Pascal's own title.

P. 19, l. 34. _the centre of which is every where, the circumference no where._ Voltaire attributed this famous saying to the pseudo-Timæus of Locris, an abridgement of Plato's _Timæus_, but in neither work is the whole sentence to be found. The saying, however, is not originally Pascal's. It is probably borrowed from Mlle. de Gournay's preface to her edition of Montaigne, Paris, 1635, and was taken by her from Rabelais, bk. iii. ch. 13, where it is attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. M. Havet, who gives these, and many more details, finally traces it, on the authority of Vincent de Beauvais, 1200-1264, to Empedocles.

P. 21, l. 36. _I will discourse of the all._ This saying of Democritus is taken by Pascal from Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. xii.

P. 22, l. 4. _De omni scibili._ The title given to nine hundred propositions, put forth at Rome by Pico della Mirandola, then aged twenty-three, in 1486.

P. 22, l. 8. _The Principles of Philosophy._ Descartes wrote a work with this title, _Principia Philosophiæ_.

P. 22, l. 38. _Beneficia eo usque lata sunt._ Tacitus, _Ann._ lib. iv. c. xviii. Taken by Pascal from Montaigne, _Essais_, l. iii. ch. viii.

P. 24, l. 27. _And what completes our inability._ Compare for the whole of the passage on matter and spirit, Descartes, _Discours de la Méthode_.

P. 25, l. 34. _Modus quo corporibus adhæret spiritus._ S. Aug. _De Civitate Dei_, xxi. 10. Taken by Pascal from Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. xii.

P. 26, l. 31. _Lustravit lampade terras._ The full couplet is

_Tales sunt hominum mentes, quali pater ipse Jupiter auctiferas lustravit lampade terras_.

S. Aug. _De Civitate Dei_, v. 8, a translation by Cicero of two lines in the _Odyssey_, xviii. 136. The quotation is borrowed from Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. xii.

P. 27, l. 20. _a fly is buzzing._ Borrowed from Montaigne, _Essais_, l. iii. ch. xiii.

P. 27, l. 26. _flies which win battles._ Montaigne relates that the Portuguese besieging the town of Tamly were obliged to raise the siege on account of the clouds of flies. _Essais_, l. ii. ch. xii.

P. 28, l. 12. _Memoria hospitis unius diei prætereuntis._ Lib. Sap. v. 14.

P. 30, l. 4. _Plerumque gratæ_, altered from Hor. _Carm._ iii. 29, v. 13. _plerumque gratæ_ divitibus _vices_.

P. 30, l. 13. _Epaminondas._ The example is taken from Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. xxxvi.

P. 31, l. 22. _Sneezing absorbs all the faculties._ A paraphrase of a passage in Montaigne, _Essais_, l. iii. ch. v.

P. 31, l. 28. _Scaramouch_. One of the traditional parts in Italian Comedy, at that time played by the well-known actor Tiberio Fiorelli, whom Pascal had probably seen.

P. 31, l. 29. _The doctor_, also a common character in Italian forces. Molière has borrowed from the Italian stage his doctor, so often a pedant and a fool, of whom le docteur Pancrace, in _Le Marriage Forcé_, is perhaps the most notable example, though that comedy was produced after the death of Pascal.

P. 32, l. 11. _the Condrieu, the Desargues._ Gerard Desargues was a mathematician at Condrieu on the Rhone, who had been Pascal's teacher. Among the Muscat grapes grown at Condrieu, Pascal distinguishes a special variety of Desargues, and among these a particular vine.

P. 32, l. 28. _the Passion of Cleobuline._ In _Artamène, on le Grand Cyrus_, the celebrated romance of Mademoiselle de Scudery, Cleobuline, princess, afterwards queen of Corinth, is one of the principal characters. She is represented as in love with Myrinthe, one of her subjects, but "she loved him without thinking of love; and remained so long in her error, that when she became aware of it, her affection was no longer in a condition to be overcome."

P. 33. _Diversion._ Under this heading Pascal comprises not only trivial occupations, and the distractions of idle society, but all which, save truth alone, can form the study or the research of man. The main idea of the chapter is borrowed from Montaigne, _Essais_, l. iii. chap. x.

P. 35. l. 17. _The counsel given to Pyrrhus._ _Ib._, l. i. ch. xliii.

P. 36, l. 11. _as children are frightened at a face._ Borrowed from Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. iii., and Montaigne in his turn borrowed it from Seneca, _Ep._ 24.

P. 36, l. 28. _superintendent._ Of finances. The last who held this office was Fouquet, still in office when this was written. He was dismissed in disgrace in 1661.

P. 36, l. 29. _first president._ Of the Parliament of Paris.

P. 36, l. 32. _dismissed to their country houses._ At that date, and for a long time afterwards, a Minister of State rarely fell from Office without receiving a _Lettre de cachet_ which banished him to the seclusion of his country estate.

P. 39, l. 17. _In omnibus requiem quæsivi._ Eccles. xxiv. 7.

P. 40, l. 9. _will arise weariness._ Compare Montaigne, _Essais_, l. iii.

P. 41, l. 7. _Cæsar was too old._ See Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. xxxiv.

P. 43. _The Greatness and Littleness of Man._ The title suggested by Pascal, in many passages of the autograph MS.

P. 43, l. 11. _for Port Royal._ The letters A. P. R. occur in several places in Pascal's MS. It is generally thought that they mean _à Port-Royal_, and are intended to indicate subjects to be developed later in _conférences_ or lectures at that house.

P. 45, l. 1. _Man is neither angel nor brute._ This is closely borrowed from Montaigne, _Essais_, l. iii. ch. xiii.

P. 46, l. 15. _Corrumpunt mores bonos colloquia prava._ 1 ad Cor. xv. 33, but the Vulgate reading has _mala_.

P. 47, l. 18. _Paulus Emilius._ The example is taken from Montaigne, _Essais_, l. i. ch. xix. See also Cic. _Tuscul._ v. 40.

P. 47, l. 31. _Ego vir videns_, Lament, iii. 1. _Ego vir videns paupertatem meam in virga indignationis ejus._

P. 51. _Of the deceptive powers_, etc. This is Pascal's own title for this section.

P. 51, l. 14. _Imagination._ Pascal uses this word in an extended sense already given to it by Montaigne, and means that faculty by which we attribute a value to those things which in fact have none.

P. 53, l. 11. _furred cats._ Rabelais, bk. v. ch. 11.

P. 54, l. 2. _Della Opinione._ No work is known under this name. Pascal possibly means a work of Carlo Flosi, _L'Opinione tiranna, moralmente considerata ne gli affari del mondo_, Mondovi, 1690. But it is not certain that this edition is the reprint of a work extant before Pascal wrote.

P. 54, l. 27. _Diseases are another source of error._ Taken from Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. xii.

P. 56, l. 20. _in Switzerland that of the burgesses._ This may be compared with p. 66, l. 6. In the majority of Swiss towns every candidate for municipal office must needs possess the freedom of the town, but the intention was not to set aside those of noble birth, as Pascal supposes, but foreigners, and those of other towns, each of which was considered as a separate state.

P. 57, l. 27. _would care nothing for Provence._ Compare Montaigne, _Essais_, l. i. ch. xxii. "_C'est par l'entremise de la coustume que chascun est contant du lieu où nature l'a planté: et les sauvages d'Escosse n'ont que faire de la Touraine, ny les Scythes de la Thessalie._"

P. 57, l. 28. _Ferox gens._ Livy, l. xxxiv. c. 17.

P. 58. l. 20. _Brave deeds._ Borrowed from Montaigne, _Essais_, l. i. ch. xl.

P. 61. _Of Justice_, etc. These fragments, now among the best known of Pascal's Thoughts, but for the most part brought to notice in the Edition of Bossut, 1779, have their present arrangement and title from Molinier.

P. 61, l. 30. _Nihil amplius._ These sentences, borrowed from Montaigne, are quoted, the first of them wrongly, from Cicero, _De Finibus_, v. 21; the second from Seneca, _Ad Lucilium_, _Ep._ 95; the third from Tacitus, _Annales_, iii. 25. Compare with the whole passage Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. xii. and l. iii. ch. xiii.

P. 62, l. 29. _Quum veritatem._ S. Aug., _De Civit. Dei_, iv. 31. From Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. iii.

P. 62, l. 27. _the wisest of law givers._ Socrates, in the _Republic_ of Plato.

P. 63, l. 9. _Archesilas._ Born at Pitane in Æolis of a Scythian father, about 300 B.C. He was founder of the School known as the Second Academy. See Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. iii.

P. 64, l. 19. For all that is here said on Custom, see Montaigne, _Essais_, l. i. ch. xxii.

P. 65, l. 7. _Pasce oves meas._ Joh. xxi. 17. The words are those taken as the foundation of papal authority. You owe me pasturage, _i.e._ you owe me justice.

P. 65, l. 30. _the soldiers of Mahomet, thieves, heretics._ Pascal boldly joins heretics and thieves, for those who did not hold his creed appeared to him as men _sans foi ni loi_, faithless and lawless. In his eyes a Turk was scarce a man. See the _Provincial Letters_, let. xiv. "_Sont-ce des religieux et des prêtres qui parlent de cette sorte? Sont-ce des Chrétiens? Sont-ce des Tures? Sont-ce des demons?_" And _Thoughts_, p. 211, l. 30. "Do we not see beasts live and die like men, and Turks like Christians."

P. 66, l. 6. _The Swiss._ See note on p. 56, l. 20.

P. 66, l. 10. _condemning so many Spaniards to death._ Possibly an allusion to the battle of the Dunes, 1659, which led to the Peace of the Pyrenees, so long desired by all but Spain, then obliged to consent.

P. 67, l. 13. _Summum jus, summa injuria._ Charron, _Traité de la Sagesse_, etc. ch. xxvii. art. 8.

P. 67, l. 26. _The end of the Twelfth Provincial._ The following is the passage to which Pascal alludes. "_C'est une etrange et longue guerre que celle où la violence essaye d'opprimer la vérité. Tons les efforts de la violence ne peuvent affaiblir la vérité, et ne servent qu'à la relever davantage. Toutes les lumières de la vérité ne peuvent rien pour arrêter la violence et ne font que l'irriter encore plus ... la violence et la vérité ne peuvent rien l'une sur l'autre._"

P. 67, l. 27. _The Fronde._ This was the name given to the party which rose against Mazarin and the Court during the minority of Louis XIV., and plunged France into civil war.

P. 69, l. 10. _give me the strap._ This is no exaggeration, since fifty years after Pascal wrote, Voltaire was beaten by the servants of the Duc de Rohan.

P. 69, l. 12. _It is odd that Montaigne._ _Essais_, l. i. ch. xlii.

P. 69, l. 16. _When power attacks craft._ _Satyre Menippée_, Harangue du Sire de Rieux: "_il n'y a ny bonnet quarré, ny bourlet, que je ne face voler_."

P. 69, l. 30. _figmentum malum._ Ps. ciii. 13. _Quomodo miseretur pater filiorum, misertus est Dominus timentibus se: Quoniam ipse cognovit figmentum nostrum._

P. 70, l. 14. _Savages laugh at an infant king._ Pascal is alluding to the story in Montaigne, _Essais_, l. i. ch. xxx., of the savages presented to Charles IX. at Rouen, who were astonished to see bearded men obey a child.

P. 72, l. 16. _Epictetus._ See p. 45, l. 30, in order to understand this somewhat enigmatic fragment. In the next paragraph is an allusion to the passage in which Epictetus says, l. iv. ch. 7, that the philosopher may well be constant and detached from life by wisdom, as were the Galilæans by their fanaticism.

P. 73. _Weakness, unrest, and defects of man._ The arrangements of these fragments under this title is Molinier's.

P. 73, l. 1. _We anticipate the future._ Compare Montaigne, _Essais_, l. i. ch. iii.

P. 74, l. 28. _Alexander's chastity._ To attribute this virtue to Alexander is strange, but no doubt the circumstance in Pascal's thought was his generous conduct to the family of Darius, after the battle of Issus.

P. 75, l. 12. _the King of England._ Probably Charles II., then living in exile, rather than Charles I. The King of Poland was Jean Casimir, driven from his throne by Charles X. of Sweden, after the battle of Warsaw in 1656. The Queen of Sweden was Christina, daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, who abdicated in favour of her cousin, Charles X., in 1654.

P. 75, l. 29. _we shall die alone_, "on mourra seul." It is a curious instance of the fact how little Pascal is known in England, that Keble having quoted this sentence wrongly, probably from memory, in the first edition of the _Christian Year_, as "Je mourrai seul," it has remained uncorrected and apparently unnoticed to this day.

P. 76, l. 12. _Cromwell._ As Charles II. was restored in 1660, this fragment was written about that date, two years before Pascal's death. Cromwell's death did not arise from the cause stated in the text.

P. 77, l. 8. _the automaton._ The expression of Descartes and his school for the animal body.

P. 77, l. 25. _Inclina cor meum, Deus._ Ps. cxix. 36. "_Inclina cor meum in testimonia tua, et non in avaritiam._"

P. 77, l. 30. _Eritis sicut dii._ Gen. iii. 5.

P. 79, l. 30. _men laugh and weep at the same thing._ The thought is from Charron, _Traité de la Sagesse_, l. i. ch. xxxviii.

P. 80, l. 35. _the grand Sultan._ None of Pascal's editors have discovered whence he drew this purely fictitious description of the Sultan.

P. 81, l. 9. _That epigram about the two one-eyed people._ This is not Martial's. It is found in _Epigrammatum Delectus_, published by Port Royal in 1659.

_Lumine Acon dextro, capta est Leonilla sinistro, Et potis est forma vincere uterque Deos. Blande puer, lumen quod habes concede parenti; Si tu cæcus Amor, sic erit illa Venus._

P. 81, l. 12. _Ambitiosa recidet ornamenta._ Horace, _De Arte Poetica_, v. 447.

P. 83, l. 22. _Spongia solis._ The spots on the sun. Du Cange explains _spongia_ by _macula_. Pascal seems to mean that the spots on the sun prepare us for its total extinction; that the sun will eventually expire, so that, contrary as it seems to the course of nature, there will come a day when there will be no sun.

P. 89. The title given to this second part is furnished by Pascal. In the first part he has wished to prove the fallen state of man, and his weakness; he now maintains that man may be restored by faith in Jesus Christ, and the practice of religion.

P. 91, l. 26. _Nemo novit._ Matt. xi. 27. _Et nemo novit Filium nisi Pater: neque Patrem quis novit, nisi Filius, et cui voluerit Filius revelare._

P. 92, l. 3. _Vere tu es._ Is. xlv. 15, see p. 3, l. 8.

P. 92, l. 10. _Quod curiositate cognoverint._ Probably cited from recollection of Saint Augustine, but the passage is not verbally to be found.

P. 96, l. 6. _neither the stars._

_Porrum et cæpe nefas violare et frangere morsu O sanctas gentes, quibus hæc nascuntur in hortis Numina!_ Juvenal, _Sat._ xv. 9.

See also Montaigne, _Essais_, l. i. ch. xlii.

P. 97, l. 28. _stultitiam._ 1 Cor. i. 19.

P. 101, l. 12. _the opinion of Copernicus._ Pascal no doubt refers to a passage in Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. xii., in which he abstains from deciding between the rival systems of astronomy. Pascal, however, had no doubt on the matter himself, as is plain from the passage on Galileo in the Eighteenth _Provincial_.

P. 101, l. 16. _Fascinatio nugacitatis._ Lib. Sap. iv. 12. _Fascinatio enim nugacitatis obscurat bona._ See note on p. 165.

P. 102, l. 12. _So our people often act._ Fénélon, _Lettre à l'Evêque d'Arras_, says, "_Toutes les difficultés s'evanouissent sans peine des qu'on a l'esprit gueri de la présomption. Alors suivant le règle de Saint Augustin_, Epist. ad Hier., _on passe sur tout ce que l'on n'entend pas, et on s'edifie de tout ce qu'on entend_."