Pascal's Pensées
Wisdom sends us to childhood. _Nisi efficiamini sicut parvuli._[105]
272
There is nothing so conformable to reason as this disavowal of reason.
273
If we submit everything to reason, our religion will have no mysterious
and supernatural element. If we offend the principles of reason, our
religion will be absurd and ridiculous.
274
All our reasoning reduces itself to yielding to feeling.
But fancy is like, though contrary to feeling, so that we cannot
distinguish between these contraries. One person says that my feeling is
fancy, another that his fancy is feeling. We should have a rule. Reason
offers itself; but it is pliable in every sense; and thus there is no
rule.
275
Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they
are converted as soon as they think of being converted.
276
M. de Roannez said: "Reasons come to me afterwards, but at first a thing
pleases or shocks me without my knowing the reason, and yet it shocks me
for that reason which I only discover afterwards." But I believe, not
that it shocked him for the reasons which were found afterwards, but
that these reasons were only found because it shocks him.
277
The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. We feel it in a
thousand things. I say that the heart naturally loves the Universal
Being, and also itself naturally, according as it gives itself to them;
and it hardens itself against one or the other at its will. You have
rejected the one, and kept the other. Is it by reason that you love
yourself?
278
It is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason. This, then,
is faith: God felt by the heart, not by the reason.
279
Faith is a gift of God; do not believe that we said it was a gift of
reasoning. Other religions do not say this of their faith. They only
gave reasoning in order to arrive at it, and yet it does not bring them
to it.
280
The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.
281
Heart, instinct, principles.
282
We know truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart, and it is
in this last way that we know first principles; and reason, which has no
part in it, tries in vain to impugn them. The sceptics, who have only
this for their object, labour to no purpose. We know that we do not
dream, and however impossible it is for us to prove it by reason, this
inability demonstrates only the weakness of our reason, but not, as they
affirm, the uncertainty of all our knowledge. For the knowledge of first
principles, as space, time, motion, number, is as sure as any of those
which we get from reasoning. And reason must trust these intuitions of
the heart, and must base them on every argument. (We have intuitive
knowledge of the tri-dimensional nature of space, and of the infinity of
number, and reason then shows that there are no two square numbers one
of which is double of the other. Principles are intuited, propositions
are inferred, all with certainty, though in different ways.) And it is
as useless and absurd for reason to demand from the heart proofs of her
first principles, before admitting them, as it would be for the heart to
demand from reason an intuition of all demonstrated propositions before
accepting them.
This inability ought, then, to serve only to humble reason, which would
judge all, but not to impugn our certainty, as if only reason were
capable of instructing us. Would to God, on the contrary, that we had
never need of it, and that we knew everything by instinct and intuition!
But nature has refused us this boon. On the contrary, she has given us
but very little knowledge of this kind; and all the rest can be acquired
only by reasoning.
Therefore, those to whom God has imparted religion by intuition are very
fortunate, and justly convinced. But to those who do not have it, we can
give it only by reasoning, waiting for God to give them spiritual
insight, without which faith is only human, and useless for salvation.
283
_Order.--Against the objection that Scripture has no order._
The heart has its own order; the intellect has its own, which is by
principle and demonstration. The heart has another. We do not prove that
we ought to be loved by enumerating in order the causes of love; that
would be ridiculous.
Jesus Christ and Saint Paul employ the rule of love, not of intellect;
for they would warm, not instruct. It is the same with Saint Augustine.
This order consists chiefly in digressions on each point to indicate the
end, and keep it always in sight.
284
Do not wonder to see simple people believe without reasoning. God
imparts to them love of Him and hatred of self. He inclines their heart
to believe. Men will never believe with a saving and real faith, unless
God inclines their heart; and they will believe as soon as He inclines
it. And this is what David knew well, when he said: _Inclina cor meum,
Deus, in ..._[106]
285
Religion is suited to all kinds of minds. Some pay attention only to its
establishment,[107] and this religion is such that its very
establishment suffices to prove its truth. Others trace it even to the
apostles. The more learned go back to the beginning of the world. The
angels see it better still, and from a more distant time.
286
Those who believe without having read the Testaments, do so because they
have an inward disposition entirely holy, and all that they hear of our
religion conforms to it. They feel that a God has made them; they desire
only to love God; they desire to hate themselves only. They feel that
they have no strength in themselves; that they are incapable of coming
to God; and that if God does not come to them, they can have no
communion with Him. And they hear our religion say that men must love
God only, and hate self only; but that all being corrupt and unworthy of
God, God made Himself man to unite Himself to us. No more is required to
persuade men who have this disposition in their heart, and who have this
knowledge of their duty and of their inefficiency.
287
Those whom we see to be Christians without the knowledge of the prophets
and evidences, nevertheless judge of their religion as well as those who
have that knowledge. They judge of it by the heart, as others judge of
it by the intellect. God Himself inclines them to believe, and thus they
are most effectively convinced.
I confess indeed that one of those Christians who believe without proofs
will not perhaps be capable of convincing an infidel who will say the
same of himself. But those who know the proofs of religion will prove
without difficulty that such a believer is truly inspired by God, though
he cannot prove it himself.
For God having said in His prophecies (which are undoubtedly
prophecies), that in the reign of Jesus Christ He would spread His
spirit abroad among nations, and that the youths and maidens and
children of the Church would prophesy;[108] it is certain that the
Spirit of God is in these, and not in the others.
288
Instead of complaining that God had hidden Himself, you will give Him
thanks for having revealed so much of Himself; and you will also give
Him thanks for not having revealed Himself to haughty sages, unworthy to
know so holy a God.
Two kinds of persons know Him: those who have a humble heart, and who
love lowliness, whatever kind of intellect they may have, high or low;
and those who have sufficient understanding to see the truth, whatever
opposition they may have to it.
289
_Proof._--1. The Christian religion, by its establishment, having
established itself so strongly, so gently, whilst contrary to
nature.--2. The sanctity, the dignity, and the humility of a Christian
soul.--3. The miracles of Holy Scripture.--4. Jesus Christ in
particular.--5. The apostles in particular.--6. Moses and the prophets
in particular.--7. The Jewish people.--8. The prophecies.--9.
Perpetuity; no religion has perpetuity.--10. The doctrine which gives a
reason for everything.--11. The sanctity of this law.--12. By the course
of the world.
Surely, after considering what is life and what is religion, we should
not refuse to obey the inclination to follow it, if it comes into our
heart; and it is certain that there is no ground for laughing at those
who follow it.
290
_Proofs of religion._--Morality, Doctrine, Miracles, Prophecies, Types.
SECTION V
JUSTICE AND THE REASON OF EFFECTS
291
In the letter _On Injustice_ can come the ridiculousness of the law that
the elder gets all. "My friend, you were born on this side of the
mountain, it is therefore just that your elder brother gets everything."
"Why do you kill me?"
292
He lives on the other side of the water.
293
"Why do you kill me? What! do you not live on the other side of the
water? If you lived on this side, my friend, I should be an assassin,
and it would be unjust to slay you in this manner. But since you live on
the other side, I am a hero, and it is just."
294
On what shall man found the order of the world which he would
govern?[109] Shall it be on the caprice of each individual? What
confusion! Shall it be on justice? Man is ignorant of it.
Certainly had he known it, he would not have established this maxim, the
most general of all that obtain among men, that each should follow the
custom of his own country. The glory of true equity would have brought
all nations under subjection, and legislators would not have taken as
their model the fancies and caprice of Persians and Germans instead of
this unchanging justice. We should have seen it set up in all the States
on earth and in all times; whereas we see neither justice nor injustice
which does not change its nature with change in climate. Three degrees
of latitude reverse all jurisprudence; a meridian decides the truth.
Fundamental laws change after a few years of possession; right has its
epochs; the entry of Saturn into the Lion marks to us the origin of
such and such a crime. A strange justice that is bounded by a river!
Truth on this side of the Pyrenees, error on the other side.
Men admit that justice does not consist in these customs, but that it
resides in natural laws, common to every country. They would certainly
maintain it obstinately, if reckless chance which has distributed human
laws had encountered even one which was universal; but the farce is that
the caprice of men has so many vagaries that there is no such law.
Theft, incest, infanticide, parricide, have all had a place among
virtuous actions. Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man should
have the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the
water, and because his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have none
with him?
Doubtless there are natural laws; but good reason once corrupted has
corrupted all. _Nihil amplius nostrum est;[110] quod nostrum dicimus,
artis est. Ex senatus--consultis et plebiscitis crimina exercentur.[111]
Ut olim vitiis, sic nunc legibus laboramus._[112]
The result of this confusion is that one affirms the essence of justice
to be the authority of the legislator; another, the interest of the
sovereign;[113] another, present custom,[114] and this is the most sure.
Nothing, according to reason alone, is just in itself; all changes with
time. Custom creates the whole of equity, for the simple reason that it
is accepted. It is the mystical foundation of its authority;[115]
whoever carries it back to first principles destroys it. Nothing is so
faulty as those laws which correct faults. He who obeys them because
they are just, obeys a justice which is imaginary, and not the essence
of law; it is quite self-contained, it is law and nothing more. He who
will examine its motive will find it so feeble and so trifling that if