The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

Preface 5 Pascal's Profession of Faith16 General Introduction18 Notes for the General Introduction 30 The Misery of Man Without God33 Preface to the First Part33 Man's Disproportion 35 Diversion57 The Greatness and Littleness of Man70 Of the Deceptive Powers of the Imagination79 Of Justice, Customs, and Prejudices94 The Weakness, Unrest, and Defects of Man 112 The Happiness of Man with God134 Preface to the Second Part134 Of the Need of Seeking Truth139 The Philosophers154 Thoughts on Mahomet and on China169 Of the Jewish People174 The Authenticity of the Sacred Books181 The Prophecies188 Of Types in General and of their Lawfulness231 That the Jewish Law was Figurative247 Of the True Religion and its Characteristics263 The Excellence of the Christian Religion270 Of Original Sin279 The Perpetuity of the Christian Religion288 Proofs of the Christian Religion 297 Proofs of the Divinity of Jesus Christ311 The Mission and Greatness of Jesus Christ329 The Mystery of Jesus338 Of the True Righteous Man and of the True Christian347 The Arrangement371 Of Miracles in General376 Jesuits and Jansenists401 Thoughts on Style445 Various Thoughts 452 PREFACE. Those to whom the Life of Pascal and the Story of Port Royal are unknown, must be referred to works treating fully of the subject, since it were impossible to deal with them adequately within the limits of a preface. Sainte-Beuve's great work on Port Royal, especially the second and third volumes, and "Port Royal," by Charles Beard, B. A., London, 1863, may best be consulted by any who require full, lucid, and singularly impartial information. But for such as, already acquainted with the time and the man, need a recapitulation of the more important facts, or for those who may find an outline map useful of the country they are to study in detail, a few words are here given. Blaise Pascal was born at Clermont-Ferrand in Auvergne, on June 19, 1623. He sprung from a well-known legal family, many members of which had held lucrative and responsible positions. His father, Etienne Pascal, held the post of intendant, or provincial administrator, in Normandy, where, and at Paris previously, Pascal lived from the age of sixteen to that of twenty-five; almost wholly educated by his father on account of his precarious health. His mother died when he was eight years old. Etienne Pascal was a pious but stern person, and by no means disposed to entertain or allow any undue exaltation in religion, refusing as long as he lived to allow his daughter Jaqueline to take the veil. But he had the usual faiths and superstitions of his time, and believing that his son's ill-health arose from witchcraft, employed the old woman who was supposed to have caused the malady to remove it, by herbs culled before sunrise, and the expiatory death of a cat. This made a great impression on his son, who in the "Thoughts" employs an ingenious argument to prove that wonders wrought by the invocation of the devil are not, in the proper sense of the term, miracles. At any rate the counter-charm was incomplete, as the child's feeble health remained feeble to the end.