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Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662)Among the contemporaries of Descartes none displayed greater natural genius than Pascal, but his mathematical reputation rests more on what he might have done than on what he actually effected, as during a considerable part of his life he deemed it his duty to devote his whole time to religious exercises. From `A Short Account of the History of Mathematics' (4th edition, 1908) by W. W. Rouse Ball.
Religion is so great a thing that it is right that those who will not take the trouble to seek it if it be obscure, should be deprived of it. Pensees (1670) Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us consider
the two possibilities. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.
Hesitate not, then, to wager that He is. Perfect clarity would profit the intellect but damage the will. The more I see of men, the better I like my dog.
"As I know not whence I come, so I know not whither I go. I know only that, in leaving this world, I fall for ever either into annihilation or into the hands of an angry God, without knowing to which of these two states I shall be for ever assigned. Such is my state, full of weakness and uncertainty. And from all this I conclude that I ought to spend all the days of my life without caring to inquire into what must happen to me. Perhaps I might find some solution to my doubts, but I will not take the trouble, nor take a step to seek it; and after treating with scorn those who are concerned with this care, I will go without foresight and without fear to try the great event, and let myself be led carelessly to death, uncertain of the eternity of my future state." Who would desire to have for a friend a man who talks in this fashion? Who would choose him out from others to tell him of his affairs? Who would have recourse to him in affliction? And indeed to what use in life could one put him? In truth, it is the glory of religion to have for enemies men so unreasonable; and their opposition to it is so little dangerous that it serves, on the contrary, to establish its truths. For the Christian faith goes mainly to establish these two facts: the corruption of nature, and redemption by Jesus Christ. Now I contend that, if these men do not serve to prove the truth of the redemption by the holiness of their behaviour, they at least serve admirably to show the corruption of nature by sentiments so unnatural. 1660 PENSEES by Blaise Pascal translated by W. F. Trotter |