Pascal's Pensées
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;[2] 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[3] 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.[4]
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 heart 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,[5] who only thinks of one thing.
The doctor,[6] 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 of Cleobuline,[7] because she is
unconscious of it. She would be displeasing, if she were not deceived.
14
When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, one feels within
oneself the truth of what one reads, which was there before, although
one did not know it. Hence one is inclined to love him who makes us feel
it, for he has not shown us his own riches, but ours. And thus this
benefit renders him pleasing to us, besides that such community of
intellect as we have with him necessarily inclines the heart to love.
15
Eloquence, which persuades by sweetness, not by authority; as a tyrant,
not as a king.
16
Eloquence is an art of saying things in such a way--(1) that those to
whom we speak may listen to them without pain and with pleasure; (2)
that they feel themselves interested, so that self-love leads them more
willingly to reflection upon it.
It consists, then, in a correspondence which we seek to establish
between the head and the heart of those to whom we speak on the one
hand, and, on the other, between the thoughts and the expressions which
we employ. This assumes that we have studied well the heart of man so as
to know all its powers, and then to find the just proportions of the
discourse which we wish to adapt to them. We must put ourselves in the
place of those who are to hear us, and make trial on our own heart of
the turn which we give to our discourse in order to see whether one is
made for the other, and whether we can assure ourselves that the hearer
will be, as it were, forced to surrender. We ought to restrict
ourselves, so far as possible, to the simple and natural, and not to
magnify that which is little, or belittle that which is great. It is not
enough that a thing be beautiful; it must be suitable to the subject,
and there must be in it nothing of excess or defect.
17
Rivers are roads which move,[8] and which carry us whither we desire to
go.
18
When we do not know the truth of a thing, it is of advantage that there
should exist a common error which determines the mind of man, as, for
example, the moon, to which is attributed the change of seasons, the
progress of diseases, etc. For the chief malady of man is restless
curiosity about things which he cannot understand; and it is not so bad
for him to be in error as to be curious to no purpose.
The manner in which Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie[9]
wrote, is the most usual, the most suggestive, the most remembered, and
the oftenest quoted; because it is entirely composed of thoughts born
from the common talk of life. As when we speak of the common error which
exists among men that the moon is the cause of everything, we never fail
to say that Salomon de Tultie says that when we do not know the truth
of a thing, it is of advantage that there should exist a common error,
etc.; which is the thought above.
19
The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in
first.
20
_Order._--Why should I undertake to divide my virtues into four rather
than into six? Why should I rather establish virtue in four, in two, in
one? Why into _Abstine et sustine_[10] rather than into "Follow
Nature,"[11] or, "Conduct your private affairs without injustice," as
Plato,[12] or anything else? But there, you will say, everything is
contained in one word. Yes, but it is useless without explanation, and
when we come to explain it, as soon as we unfold this maxim which
contains all the rest, they emerge in that first confusion which you
desired to avoid. So, when they are all included in one, they are hidden
and useless, as in a chest, and never appear save in their natural
confusion. Nature has established them all without including one in the
other.
21
Nature has made all her truths independent of one another. Our art makes
one dependent on the other. But this is not natural. Each keeps its own
place.
22
Let no one say that I have said nothing new; the arrangement of the
subject is new. When we play tennis, we both play with the same ball,
but one of us places it better.
I had as soon it said that I used words employed before. And in the same
way if the same thoughts in a different arrangement do not form a
different discourse, no more do the same words in their different
arrangement form different thoughts!
23
Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings
differently arranged have different effects.
24
_Language._--We should not turn the mind from one thing to another,
except for relaxation, and that when it is necessary and the time
suitable, and not otherwise. For he that relaxes out of season wearies,
and he who wearies us out of season makes us languid, since we turn
quite away. So much does our perverse lust like to do the contrary of
what those wish to obtain from us without giving us pleasure, the coin
for which we will do whatever is wanted.
25
_Eloquence._--It requires the pleasant and the real; but the pleasant
must itself be drawn from the true.
26
Eloquence is a painting of thought; and thus those who, after having
painted it, add something more, make a picture instead of a portrait.
27
_Miscellaneous. Language._--Those who make antitheses by forcing words
are like those who make false windows for symmetry. Their rule is not to
speak accurately, but to make apt figures of speech.
28
Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no
reason for any difference, and based also on the face of man; whence it
happens that symmetry is only wanted in breadth, not in height or depth.
29
When we see a natural style, we are astonished and delighted; for we
expected to see an author, and we find a man. Whereas those who have
good taste, and who seeing a book expect to find a man, are quite
surprised to find an author. _Plus poetice quam humane locutus es._
Those honour Nature well, who teach that she can speak on everything,
even on theology.
30