Pensées (Thoughts) [translated by W. F. Trotter with an introduction by Thomas S. Kepler]

By Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal was a 17th century French scientist, author, and Christian philosopher who is best known for his work, “Pensées” or “Thoughts.” First published posthumously in 1670, “Thoughts” is an edited compilation of the notes that Pascal had prepared for a planned work that scholars refer to as an “Apology for the Christian Religion.” Given its incompleteness when Pascal died, the order and composition of the work has been debated and as a result has produced many variant publications. In spite of their incompleteness and frequent incoherence, “Thoughts” has long held a high place among the great classics of the Christian religion. Much of the theological argument implied in these utterances has little appeal to the modern mind, but the acuteness of the observation of human life, the subtlety of the reasoning, the combination of precision and fervid imagination in the expression, make this a book to which the discerning mind can return again and again for insight and inspiration. This edition follows the translation of W. F. Trotter with an introduction by Thomas S. Kepler.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digireads.com Publishing
• Release date: Jun 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781420958324

Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) was one of history’s most famous mathematicians. A prodigy who was said to have discovered the basic precepts of geometry while doodling in his playroom, Pascal published his first work at the age of sixteen. In 1646, he converted to the Catholic sect of Jansenism. He is best remembered for his Pensées (1669), a defense of Christianity.

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PENSÉES

(THOUGHTS)

By BLAISE PASCAL

Translated by W. F. TROTTER

Introduction by THOMAS S. KEPLER

Pensées (Thoughts)

By Blaise Pascal

Translated By W. F. Trotter

Introduction by Thomas S. Kepler

Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5831-7

eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5832-4

This edition copyright © 2018. Digireads.com Publishing.

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Cover Image: a detail of a colored engraving of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) / Tarker / Bridgeman Images.

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Introductory Note

Section I. Thoughts on Mind and on Style.

Section II. The Misery of Man without God.

Section III. Of the Necessity of the Wager.

Section IV. Of the Means of Belief.

Section V. Justice and the Reason of Effects.

Section VI. The Philosophers.

Section VII. Morality and Doctrine.

Section VIII. The Fundamentals of the Christian Religion.

Section IX. Perpetuity.

Section X. Typology.

Section XI. The Prophecies.

Section XII. Proofs of Jesus Christ.

Section XIII. The Miracles.

Section XIV. Appendix: Polemical Fragments.

Introduction

Although trained as a mathematician and a philosopher, Blaise Pascal is best known as one of the ablest writers of devotional literature. Certain aspects of his Pensées (Thoughts), wherein he makes his defense of the Christian faith, remain as a great classic of mystical writings. Recently someone said to me: "The one piece of literature I remember from my college days is Pascal’s Pensées, which I read in the French. Each of his passages was a fascinating insight into the artistry of religious living."

Blaise Pascal was born on June 27, 1623, into a French home of privilege. His father, Etienne, was a man of wealth and education, who held a remunerative judicial position at Clermont in Auvergne. Blaise’s mother, Antoinette, died in 1626. Hence he was reared by a father who was a lonely and saddened man, whose hobbies were ancient languages and mathematics, and who believed in a maxim for raising children: Always hold the child above his task. A close comradeship developed between Blaise and his father, which left a deep impression upon the boy prodigy. The father, though deeply religious, was more interested in ancient languages and mathematics than theology, and said to Blaise about God: That, my child, is not for us to talk about.

When Blaise was eight years old, his father sold his government position, converted his wealth into government bonds, and moved to Paris, where from 1631 to 1639 he devoted himself to the education of his children. Blaise was especially precocious, and by the time he was twelve had discovered mathematics by himself, by sixteen had written treatises on the cone which anticipated modern projective geometry, by nineteen had invented a calculating machine, and by twenty-five had established knowledge of the weight of atmosphere and had invented the mathematical triangle. Never a person of robust body, his health was undermined by his industrious study habits, which ultimately contributed to his early death at the age of thirty-nine.

In January, 1646, Etienne Pascal, now living at Rouen with his family, fell on icy ground and dislocated his hip. The two doctors who attended him, Adrien and Jean Deschamps, were advocates of Jansenism, and by the time he was healed in three months, they had made him a convert of this sect. Jansenism, a movement begun by Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres, attempted to bring about an enthusiasm for Augustinian ideas within the Roman Catholic Church and to eliminate much of the Scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas. It was an evangelical movement, submerging reason for the sake of a trusting faith for salvation; and at this time Blaise, his health bothering him, became interested in this movement, which appealed to the helplessness of man and which stressed the idea that man’s human helplessness resulted in his physical sufferings—that only by the intervention of the grace of God could man be raised from his ailments to a higher state of well-being. Radiating his deep concern for Jansenism, Blaise was able to convert his sister Jacqueline to the movement. This keen interest for Jansenism is often referred to as Pascal’s first conversion. It caused him to face the Bible more directly, where he found the basis for salvation as well as in Augustinian ideas.

In 1647 Blaise and Jacqueline moved from Rouen to Paris, where both came into closer contact with Jansenism. Jacqueline became a nun. In 1648 their father joined them in Paris, much distressed by Jacqueline’s vow to become a nun. She did not renounce the world, however, until after Etienne’s death in 1651. In January, 1652, she joined the group at Port Royal and in June of that year, taking her final vows, became Sister Sainte-Euphemie. Blaise, now alone, his father dead and his sister away from the world, went through a period of depression. He found new friends in the Due de Roannez and Chevalier de Méré. These men were persons of literary experience and wide appreciation of life, who helped to enlarge Blaise’s understanding of the world and to give him more grace and finish in his literary style. It was at this time that Pascal entered into a time of worldliness and extravagant spending. By 1654, he tired of his experiences in the world of men and affairs; he found himself in a state of depression and despair. He was undergoing his dark night of the soul, in which God seemed distant from him; he was lonely, he hated himself, and he seemed to lack the power to find a right relationship with God. At this time he returned with a renewed interest to the Bible; the theories of Jansenism were of great aid to him.

During this era, with revitalized interest in the Bible, Pascal’s second conversion occurred. As he read the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John on the night of November 23, 1654, he received in his experience a message from God, which he wrote on a piece of paper. For the rest of his life, he wore this message sewed into his garment. The heart of the message, which was found after his death, was that the living Word and the written Word of the Bible are the same, and that it is through the Bible that God speaks His message to those in need, if they fully surrender to Christ. His second conversion was also partially brought about through advice he received from his sister Jacqueline, to whom he confessed his tiring of the world and its lures and who advised him that complete repentance was his only resort. The message which he wore on his garment was this:

In the year of Grace, 1654.

On Monday, 23rd of November, Feast of St. Clerment,

Pope and Martyr, and of others in the Martyrology, Virgin of Saint Chrysogonus, Martyr, and others, From about half past ten in the evening until about half past twelve.

FIRE

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars.

Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.

God of Jesus Christ.

My God and Thy God.

Thy God shall be my God.

Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except God.

He is to be found only by the ways taught in the Gospel.

Greatness of the soul of man.

Righteous Father, the world hath not known Thee, but I have known Thee.

Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.

I have fallen away from Him.

They have forsaken Me, the Fountain of living waters.

My God, wilt Thou forsake me?

May I not fall from Him for ever.

This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, The only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.

Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ.

I have fallen away: I have fled from Him, denied Him, crucified Him.

May I not fall from Him forever,

We keep hold of Him only by the ways taught in the Gospel.

Renunciation, total and sweet.

Total submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.

Eternally in joy for a day’s exercise on earth.

I will not forget Thy word. amen.

After writing these words and sewing them on his garment, Pascal resigned himself to a life of absolute humility, vowing never to sign his name again to his writing. He secretly took the pseudonym of Monsieur de Mons, leaving Paris to reside first in Vaumurier and then in Port Royal. Later, when he wrote his Lettres Provinciales, his arguments against the Jesuits, he signed his name Louis de Montalte.

While at Port Royal his life deepened; he realized that man in his depraved state can only be saved by the intervention of God’s grace, which will raise him to a level where he can share God’s divinity. It was then that he wrote: The Christian religion alone has been able to cure these twin vices, pride and sloth, not expelling one by means of the other, according to the wisdom of the world, by expelling both according to the simplicity of the Gospel. The Bible especially posed itself as the answer to all human problems, speaking to men of pure hearts. Pascal’s Thoughts are based on biblical foundations; his is a biblical theology. Though he saw the interpretation of religion through the eyes of a staunch Roman Catholic, he was also strengthened in his loyalty to the Bible by the viewpoints of the Jansenists. Though his adherence to both groups created at times a severe tension in his life, Pascal found a mystical relationship to Christ as he concentrated his attention with a devoted attitude to the Scripture. Pascal felt that the whole man should find its relationship to God; the heart has its approach to God that reason itself cannot understand.

Pascal was a careful, honest student of the Bible. He studied commentaries of the rabbis regarding the Old Testament; he was loyal to the spirit of Paul and the view of the Jansenists; he tried to understand the Bible in its pure relationship to Judaism, before the interpretations of Origen and the Scholastics, Platonic philosophy, and Stoic ethics colored its views for Western Christianity. As he found contradictions in the Scripture, he was convinced that in Jesus Christ all the contradictions are reconciled. The meaning and authority of the Bible are to be found in Jesus Christ, whose life was filled with redemptive love. All in the Bible which does not culminate in such love must be viewed as figurative. While man himself is not able to understand the Scripture by himself, the grace of God aids man to interpret the meaning of the Scripture; only to the repentant man can the prophecies of the Bible have value.

In 1658 Pascal decided to write a defense of Christianity. In a two-hour period, he outlined for his friends at Port Royal what he would include in the volume; he said that he would require ten years of good health to complete his apology. In the spring of 1659, however, Pascal’s health began to fail, and in order to escape his terrific headaches, he turned to the diversion of mathematics, working out a solution of the cycloid, and he devised the first omnibus service for Paris; his creative mind was full of inventions. But in 1660 he began to concentrate his thoughts on the defense of Christianity. Only a year was to remain for him to finish his work. From his labors we have a miscellany of written and oral notes, of maxims, scraps of papers with ideas written upon them, but arranged in no order or sequence. It is tragic that Pascal could not have lived long enough to record many more ideas on the subject of Christianity and to organize them into an orderly sequence, for it would have been one of the most stimulating Christian autobiographies.

After Pascal’s death in 1662, his nephew, Etienne Pascal, had the miscellaneous notes copied by a secretary. The first edition of these notes was made at Port Royal in 1670, but this edition was so much altered by its editors that it contributes little to our understanding of Pascal’s Thoughts. Editions to follow were by Condorcet in 1776, Bossut in 1779, Ducreux in 1785, de Frantin in 1835. A more authentic edition by Faugère was published in 1844, to be followed by those of Havet in 1852, de Molinier in 1877—1879, Michaut in 1896, Brunschvig in 1897 and 1904. The Grand Ecrivains de la France, containing fourteen volumes edited by Brunschvig and Boutroux (volumes xii-xiv comprise Pascal’s writings), was published in 1908— 1914; this is considered the standard edition of Pascal’s writings. In 1904, Pensées was published as one of the Temple Classics, with the English translation made by William Finlayson Trotter from the French edition prepared by Leon Brunschvig of the College of Rouen. This present volume in the World Devotional Classics is revised from Trotter’s English translation made in 1904.

Professor Brunschvig attempted to organize the fragments under certain topics. Hence, his chapters contain a mixture of materials attempting to vindicate Christianity scattered among ideas dealing with other topics. In more recent times, H. F. Stewart of Cambridge University has attempted to separate the materials of Pensées which defend Christianity from those which discuss other problems. Professor Stewart was preceded in his efforts by such scholars as Strowski, Dedieu, Tourner, Massis, Chevalier. Recently Professor Stewart has not only separated the defense of Christianity from other ideas, but has also attempted to organize the miscellaneous ideas into the probable order of Pascal’s intent—had Pascal been able to finish his apology for the Christian faith. This present volume, in its organization of Pascal’s Thoughts as related to his defense of Christianity, is especially indebted to the findings of Etienne Perier, Filleau de la Chaise, and H. F. Stewart. It attempts to arrange the apology for Christianity as closely as possible in the order which Pascal intended, as related in his initial lecture to his friends at Port Royal in 1658.

The outline of thought briefly runs as follows: Man, careless in his concern for God, needs to have his heart awakened, that he may know and love God. There are two portraits of man: man without God and man with God. Man without God is in a sorrowful state, burdened by his imagination, pride, vanity, self-love, and spiritual blindness. Yet man is a paradox, for at the same time he possesses greatness, as observed in his thoughts, his yearning for the highest good, his love of truth and glory, his consciousness of his own misery. The freethinker remains confused in confronting himself; the Christian finds his light through Jesus Christ, and happiness and justice through faith. Men have searched for light through philosophies, the religions of the world, the law and the prophets of Judaism. By a more thorough study of the Bible, man knows himself, the greatness of religion, and the pattern of liberation from his bondage. The Old Testament, through its law, the history of the Jewish people, and its prophecies, bears witness to the ultimate purpose of Christ for mankind’s salvation. The New Testament portrays Christ at the center of history; he is mankind’s redeemer, the mediator between God and man. The Church, through its apostles, historians, and converts, bears witness to Christ as the mediator of man’s salvation. This whole procedure of salvation is of God, whom man cannot resist. Man needs to open his heart to God, to think purely of God’s love, and submit his will to Him. He must repent and subdue his passions, be satisfied with the degree of light God gives him. Instead of expecting God to work a miracle for his salvation, he should wait quietly and patiently for the gift of God’s grace.

At one o’clock on the morning of August 19, 1662, Blaise Pascal died, after the torturing pain of convulsions. Shortly before midnight he had answered affirmations regarding the Roman Catholic faith satisfactorily, so that M. de Sainte-Marthe gave him the rite of extreme unction. Pascal’s last words were: May God never abandon me! One of God’s great saints had journeyed into eternity; but his notes remained, which were to be the basis for his Pensées. As people today read these thoughts, especially those which build up a defense for Christianity, they understand what religion meant to Pascal, and what he found in the Christian religion (particularly in the Bible), which made him a great and saintly figure. Although he was a Roman Catholic, Pascal lived close to the spirit of evangelical Protestantism in his response to the Bible as his way of salvation. But Pascal is bigger than Protestantism or Roman Catholicism; he belongs to all mankind, which is trying to find salvation through a total submission to God and a trust in His saving grace.

THOMAS S. KEPLER.

1955.

Introductory Note

Blaise Pascal was born at Clermont in Auvergne on June 19, 1623, the son of the president of the Court of Aids of Clermont. He was a precocious child, and soon showed amazing mathematical talent. His early training was scientific rather than literary or theological, and scientific interests predominated during the first period of his activity. He corresponded with the most distinguished scholars of the time, and made important contributions to pure and applied mathematics and to physics.

Meantime, an accident had brought the Pascal family into contact with Jansenist doctrine, and Blaise became an ardent convert. Jansenism, which took its name from Jansenius, the bishop of Ypres, had its headquarters in the Cistercian Abbey of Port-Royal, and was one of the most rigorous and lofty developments of post-Reformation Catholicism. In doctrine it somewhat resembled Calvinism in its insistence on Grace and Predestination at the expense of the freedom of the will, and in its cultivation of a thoroughgoing logical method of apologetics. In practise it represented an austere and even ascetic morality, and it did much to raise the ethical and intellectual level of seventeenth century France.

Jansenism was attacked as heretical, especially by the Jesuits; and the civil power ultimately took measures to crush the movement, disbanding the nuns of Port-Royal, and by its persecutions affording to many of the Jansenists opportunities for the display of a heroic obstinacy. In this struggle Pascal took an important part by the publication, under the pseudonym of Louis de Montalte, of a series of eighteen letters, attacking the morality of the Jesuits and defending Jansenism against the charge of heresy. In spite of the fact that the party for which he fought was defeated, in these Provincial Letters, as they are usually called, Pascal inflicted a blow on the Society of Jesus from which that order has never entirely recovered.

Pascal now formed the plan of writing an Apology for the Christian Religion, and during the rest of his life he was collecting materials and making notes for this work. But he had long been feeble in health; in the ardor of his religious devotion he had undergone incredible hardships; and on August 19, 1662, he died in his fortieth year.

It was from the notes for his contemplated Apology that the Port-Royalists compiled and edited the book known as his Pensées or Thoughts. The early texts were much tampered with, and the material has been frequently rearranged; but now at last it is possible to read these fragmentary jottings as they came from the hand of their author. In spite of their incompleteness and frequent incoherence, the Thoughts have long held a high place among the great religious classics. Much of the theological argument implied in these utterances has little appeal to the modern mind, but the acuteness of the observation of human life, the subtlety of the reasoning, the combination of precision and fervid imagination in the expression, make this a book to which the discerning mind can return again and again for insight and inspiration.

Section I. Thoughts on Mind and on Style.

1. The difference between the mathematical and the intuitive mind.—In the one the principles are palpable, but removed from ordinary use; so that for want of habit it is difficult to turn one’s mind in that direction: but if one turns it thither ever so little, one sees the principles fully, and one must have a quite inaccurate mind who reasons wrongly from principles so plain that it is almost impossible they should escape notice.

But in the intuitive mind the principles are found in common use, and are before the eyes of everybody. 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; and intuitive minds would be mathematical if they could turn their eyes to the principles of mathematics to which they are unused.

The reason, therefore, that some intuitive minds are not mathematical is that they cannot at all turn their attention to the principles of mathematics. But the reason that mathematicians are not intuitive is that they do not see what is before them, and that, accustomed to the exact and plain principles of mathematics, and not reasoning till they have well inspected and arranged their principles, they are lost in matters of intuition where the principles do not allow of such arrangement. They are scarcely seen; they are felt rather than seen; there is the greatest difficulty in making them felt by those who do not of themselves perceive them. These principles are so fine and so numerous that a very delicate and very clear sense is needed to perceive them, and to judge rightly and justly when they are perceived, without for the most part being able to demonstrate them in order as in mathematics; because the principles are not known to us in the same way, and because it would be an endless matter to undertake it. We must see the matter at once, at one glance, and not by a process of reasoning, at least to a certain degree. And thus it is rare that mathematicians are intuitive, and that men of intuition are mathematicians, because mathematicians wish to treat matters of intuition mathematically, and make themselves ridiculous, wishing to begin with definitions and then with axioms, which is not the way to proceed in this kind of reasoning. Not that the mind does not do so, but it does it tacitly, naturally, and without technical rules; for the expression of it is beyond all men, and only a few can feel it.

Intuitive minds, on the contrary, being thus accustomed to judge at a single glance, are so astonished when they are presented with propositions of which they understand nothing, and the way to which is through definitions and axioms so sterile, and which they are not accustomed to see thus in detail, that they are repelled and disheartened.

But dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.

Mathematicians who are only mathematicians have exact minds, provided all things are explained to them by means of definitions and axioms; otherwise they are inaccurate and insufferable, for they are only right when the principles are quite clear.

And men of intuition who are only intuitive cannot have the patience to reach to first principles of things speculative and conceptual, which they have never seen in the world, and which are altogether out of the common.

2. There are different kinds of right understanding; some have right understanding in a certain order of things, and not in others, where they go astray. Some draw conclusions well from a few premises, and this displays an acute judgment.

Others draw conclusions well where there are many premises.

For example, the former easily learn hydrostatics, where the premises are few, but the conclusions are so fine that only the greatest acuteness can reach them.

And in spite of that these persons would perhaps not be great mathematicians, because mathematics contain a great number of premises, and there is perhaps a kind of intellect that can search with ease a few premises to the bottom: and cannot in the least penetrate those matters in which there are many premises.

There are then two kinds of intellect: the one able to penetrate acutely and deeply into the conclusions of given premises, and this is the precise intellect; the other able to comprehend a great number of premises without confusing them, and this is the mathematical intellect. The one has force and exactness, the other comprehension. Now the one quality can exist without the other; the intellect can be strong and narrow, and can also be comprehensive and weak.

3. Those who are accustomed to judge by feeling do not understand the process of reasoning, for they would understand at first sight, and are not used to seek for principles. And others, on the contrary, who are accustomed to reason from principles, do not at all understand matters of feeling, seeking principles, and being unable to see at a glance.

4. Mathematics, Intuition.—True eloquence makes light of eloquence, true morality makes light of morality; that is to say, the morality of the judgment, which has no rules, makes light of the morality of the intellect.

For it is to judgment that perception belongs, as science belongs to intellect. Intuition is the part of judgment, mathematics of intellect.

To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

5. Those who judge of a work by rule are in regard to others as those who have a watch are in regard to others. One says, It is two hours ago; the other says, It is only three-quarters of an hour. I look at my watch, and say to the one, You are weary, and to the other, Time gallops with you; for it is only an hour and a half ago, and I laugh at those who tell me that time goes slowly with me, and that I judge by imagination. They do not know that I judge by my watch.

6. Just as we harm the understanding, we harm the feelings also.

The understanding and the feelings are moulded by intercourse; the understanding and feelings are corrupted by intercourse. Thus good or bad society improves or corrupts them. It is, then, all-important to know how to choose in order to improve and not to corrupt them; and we cannot make this choice, if they be not already improved and not corrupted. Thus a circle is formed, and those are fortunate who escape it.

7. The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

8. There are many people who listen to a sermon in the same way as they listen to vespers.

9. When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken, and that he only failed to see all sides. Now, no one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true.

10. People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.

11. All great amusements are dangerous to the Christian life; but among all those which the world has invented there is none more to be feared than the theatre. It is a representation of the passions so natural and so delicate that it excites them and gives birth to them in our hearts, and, above all, to that of love, principally when it is represented as very chaste and virtuous. For the more innocent it appears to innocent souls, the more they are likely to be touched by it. Its violence pleases our self-love, which immediately forms a desire to produce the same effects which are seen so well represented; and, at the same time, we make ourselves a conscience founded on the propriety of the feelings which we see there, by which the fear of pure souls is removed, since they imagine that it cannot hurt their purity to love with a love which seems to them so reasonable.

So we depart from the theatre with our hearts so filled with all the beauty and tenderness of love, the soul and the mind so persuaded of its innocence, that we are quite ready to receive its first impressions, or rather to seek an opportunity of awakening them in the heart of another, in order that we may receive the same pleasures and the same sacrifices which we have seen so well represented in the theatre.

12. Scaramouch,{1} who only thinks of one thing.

The doctor,{2} who speaks for a quarter of an hour after he has said everything, so full is he of the desire of talking.

13. One likes to see the error, the passion