4.
Montaigne. See _Essais_, iii, 8.
Sebond's _Apologie_, from which Pascal has derived his illustrations.
name. It may refer to a treatise by Carlo Flori, which bears a title like this. But its date (1690) is after Pascal's death (1662), though there may have been earlier editions.
ii, 12.
Montaigne, _Essais_, iii, 1.
ibid.
[57] P. 29, l. 1. _Spongia solis._--The spots on the sun. Pascal sees in them the beginning of the darkening of the sun, and thinks that there will therefore come a day when there will be no sun.
_Essais_, i, 22.
Reformation.
mind Alexander's treatment of Darius's wife and daughters after the battle of Issus.
translation of two lines from Homer, _Odyssey_, xviii, 136.
Montaigne, _Essais_, ii, 12.
_Tales sunt hominum mentes, quali pater ipse Jupiter auctiferas lustravit lampade terras._ iii, 13.
ii, 34.
i, 40.
40. See also ibid., iii, 10.
the Vulgate.
3.
[79] P. 50, l. 14. _Solomon._--Considered by Pascal as the author of Ecclesiastes.
not of the gravel. The Restoration took place in 1660, and this fragment was written about that date.
Queen Christina of Sweden abdicated in 1654; Jean Casimir, King of Poland, was deposed in 1656.
[83] P. 50, l. 32. _Macrobius._--A Latin writer of the fifth century. He was a Neo-Platonist in philosophy. One of his works is entitled _Saturnalia_.
_Essais_, ii, 12.
[85] P. 53, l. 5. _Miton._--A man of fashion in Paris known to Pascal.
traditional argument of the Stoics like Cicero and Seneca, and of rationalist theologians like Raymond Sebond, Charron, etc. It is the argument from Design in modern philosophy.
it is _Neque patrem quis novit_, etc. Pascal's biblical quotations are often incorrect. Many seem to have been made from memory.
Vulgate we have_ut non_ instead of _ne_.
considered animals as mere automata. According to Pascal, whatever does not proceed in us from reflective thought is a product of a necessary mechanism, which has its root in the body, and which is continued into the mind in imagination and the passions. It is therefore necessary for man so to alter, and adjust this mechanism, that it will always follow, and not obstruct, the good will.
xv, 6, 16.
fourth beatitude that the thought directly refers.
stars according to Ptolemy's catalogue.
Christian Church.
[108] P. 81, l. 20. _The youths and maidens and children of the Church would prophesy._--Joel ii, 28.
Finibus_, v, 21.
Cyrenaics. Montaigne, _Essais_, iii, 13.
authority._--Montaigne, _Essais_, iii, 13. See also ii, 12.
Augustine, _De Civ. Dei_, iv, 27. Montaigne, _Essais_, ii, 12.
Montaigne, _Essais_, iii, I.
iii, 12.
_Essais_, iii, 11.
visit of some savages to Europe. They were greatly astonished to see grown men obey the child king, Charles IX. Montaigne, _Essais_, i, 30.
St. James. James ii, 1.
[128] P. 96, l. 9. _The account of the pike and frog of Liancourt._--The story is unknown. The Duc de Liancourt led a vicious life in youth, but was converted by his wife. He became one of the firmest supporters of Port-Royal.
the following fragment, see Montaigne, _Essais_, ii, 29.
36. See also iii, 1.
_Odes_, III, xxix, 13, cited by Montaigne, _Essais_, i, 42. Horace has _divitibus_ instead of _principibus_.
_Essais_, iii, 13.
See Montaigne, _Essais_, ii, 3.
Montaigne, _Essais_, iii, I.
inaccurate. Montaigne, _Essais_, ii, 12.
ii, 12, relates that the Portuguese were compelled to raise the siege of Tamly on account of the number of flies.
He lived in the third century before Christ.
to sceptics who doubt their own doubt.
the good as certain and finite, and evil as uncertain and He was born in 1602, and died in 1673. Balzac call him "the new Bacchus."
several places, and are generally thought to indicate what will be afterwards treated in lectures or conferences at Port-Royal, the famous Cistercian abbey, situated about eighteen miles from Paris.
Founded early in the thirteenth century, it acquired its greatest fame in its closing years. Louis XIV was induced to believe it heretical; and the monastery was finally demolished in 1711. Its downfall was no doubt brought about by the Jesuits.
i, 19.
possibility of the existence of an _evil genius_ to justify his method of universal doubt. See his _First Meditation_. The argument is quite Cartesian.
28.
this fragment are borrowed from a work of the Middle Ages, entitled _Pugio christianorum ad impiorum perfidiam jugulandam et maxime judaeorum_. It was written in the thirteenth century by Raymond Martin, a Catalonian monk. An edition of it appeared in 1651, edited by Bosquet, Bishop of Lodeve.
iv, 13.
14.
St. John, ii, 16.
is taken from St. Augustine's Commentary on Ps. cxxxvii, _Super flumina Babylonis._ ii, 4.
9-14.
[195] P. 141. In the French edition on which this translation is based there was inserted the following fragment after No. 513: "Work out your own salvation with fear."
Proofs of prayer. _Petenti dabitur._ Therefore it is in our power to ask. On the other hand, there is God. So it is not in our power, since the obtaining of (the grace) to pray to Him is not in our power. For since salvation is not in us, and the obtaining of such grace is from Him, prayer is not in our power.
The righteous man should then hope no more in God, for he ought not to hope, but to strive to obtain what he wants.
Let us conclude then that, since man is now unrighteous since the first sin, and God is unwilling that he should thereby not be estranged from Him, it is only by a first effect that he is not estranged.
Therefore, those who depart from God have not this first effect without which they are not estranged from God, and those who do not depart from God have this first effect. Therefore, those whom we have seen possessed for some time of grace by this first effect, cease to pray, for want of this first effect.
Then God abandons the first in this sense.
It is doubtful, however that this fragment should be included in the _Pensees_, and it has seemed best to separate it from the text. It has only once before appeared--in the edition of Michaut (1896). The first half of it has been freely translated in order to give an interpretation in accordance with a suggestion from M. Emile Boutroux, the eminent authority on Pascal. The meaning seems to be this. In one sense it is in our power to ask from God, who promises to give us what we ask. But, in another sense, it is not in our power to ask; for it is not in our power to obtain the grace which is necessary in asking.
We know that salvation is not in our power. Therefore some condition of salvation is not in our power. Now the conditions of salvation are two: (1) The asking for it, and (2) the obtaining it. But God promises to give us what we ask. Hence the obtaining is in our power. Therefore the condition which is not in our power must be the first, namely, the asking. Prayer presupposes a grace which it is not within our power to obtain.
After giving the utmost consideration to the second half of this obscure fragment, and seeking assistance from some eminent scholars, the translator has been compelled to give a strictly literal translation of it, without attempting to make sense.
II.
CXLI_.
_turbavit seipsum_.
34.
not occur. See, however, Matthew xxvi, 46.
text of the Vulgate is _in discipulis meis_.
had been published in 1658.
Saint Matthew in the Koran; but it speaks of the Apostles generally.
tables. About 450 B.C. a commission is said to have been appointed in Rome to visit Greece and collect information to frame a code of law. This is now doubted, if not entirely discredited.
Jewish historian, gained the favour of Titus, and accompanied him to the siege of Jerusalem. He defended the Jews against a contemporary grammarian, named Apion, who had written a violent satire on the Jews.
[224] P. 174, l. 28. _Philo._--A Jewish philosopher, who lived in the first century of the Christian era. He was one of the founders of the Alexandrian school of thought. He sought to reconcile Jewish tradition with Greek thought.
Sibyls were the old Roman prophetesses. Their predictions were preserved in three books at Rome, which Tarquinius Superbus had bought from the Sibyl of Erythrae. Trismegistus was the Greek name of the Egyptian god Thoth, who was regarded as the originator of Egyptian culture, the god of religion, of writing, and of the arts and sciences. Under his name there existed forty-two sacred books, kept by the Egyptian priests.
omnis populus prophetet_?
century after Christ. The quotation is from his _De Cultu Femin._, ii, 3.
lib. x, c 25.
[233] P. 179, l. 5. _The story in Esdras._--2 Esdras xiv. God appears to Esdras in a bush, and orders him to assemble the people and deliver the message. Esdras replies that the law is burnt. Then God commands him to take five scribes to whom for forty days He dictates the ancient law. This story conflicted with many passages in the prophets, and was therefore rejected from the Canon at the Council of Trent.
interpretation of Scripture, held by a number of Jewish rabbis.
12.
chapter in St. Augustine, _De Genesi contra Manichaeos_, i, 23.
nostrum,_ Luke xi, 3.
has _cum lacticibus agrestibus_.
17; Hebrews ix, 24; Romans ii, 28, 29.
14, 15.
xvii, 10; Leviticus xii, 3.
certain peculiarities in Jewish writing. There are some letters written in two ways, closed or open, as the _mem_.
xvii.
10.
is inaccurate.
on Luke. See chaps. xxii and xxiii.
reconcile the apparent discrepancies in the Gospels, Pascal wrote a short life of Christ.
3.
18.
18.
hydrostatics. He was born at Syracuse in 287 B.C., and was killed in 212 B.C. He was not a prince, though a relative of a king. M.
Havet points out that Cicero talks of him as an obscure man _(Tusc,_ v, 23).
14.
Royal, founded by Francis I. An edition of the Bible with notes under his name, which were not his, was published in 1539.
17.
Pt. I, Question 113, Article 10, Reply to the Second Objection.
miracle of the Holy Thorn. Marguerite Perier, Pascal's niece, was cured of a fistula lachrymalis on 24 March, 1656, after her eye was touched with this sacred relic, supposed to be a thorn from the crown of Christ. This miracle made a great impression upon Pascal.
on page 110, line 16, above. They were accused of Calvinism.
xxiv, 25, 26.
est quod debui ultra facere vineae meae, et non feci ei_.
eloquent Jesuit preacher, who died in 1660.
of Ignatius Loyola, became a Jesuit.
[359] P. 257, l. 14. _They._--The Jansenists, who believed in the system of evangelical doctrine deduced from Augustine by Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638), the Bishop of Ypres. They held that interior grace is irresistible, and that Christ died for all, in reaction against the ordinary Catholic dogma of the freedom of the will, and merely sufficient grace.
accused of rape, of murder, and of sacrilege. He was condemned by the Councils of Tyre, Aries, and Milan. Pope Liberius is said to have finally ratified the condemnation in A.D. 357. Athanasius here stands for Jansenius, Saint Thersea for Mother Angelique, and Liberius for Clement IX.
of St. John, V, 8.
and the Court during the minority of Louis XIV. They led to civil war.
two probable views, both reasonable, one may follow his own inclinations, as a doubtful law cannot impose a certain obligation. It was held by the Jesuits, the famous religious order founded in 1534 by Ignatius Loyola. This section of the _Pensees_ is directed chiefly against them.
INDEX _The figures refer to the numbers of the Pensees, and not to the pages._ ABRAHAM, took nothing for himself, 502; from stones can come children unto, 777; and Gideon, 821 Absolutions, without signs of regret, 903, 904 Act, the last, is tragic, 210 Adam, compared with Christ, 551; his glorious state, 559; _forma futuri_, 655 Advent, the time of the first, foretold, 756 Age, influences judgment, 381; the six ages, 654 Alexander, the example of his chastity, 103 Amusements, dangerous to the Christian life, 11 Animals, intelligence and instinct of, 340, 342 Antichrist, miracles of, foretold by Christ, 825; will speak openly against God, 842; miracles of, cannot lead into error, 845 Apocalyptics, extravagances of the, 650 Apostles, hypothesis that they were deceivers, 571; foresaw heresies, 578; supposition that they were either deceived or deceivers, 801 Aquinas, Thomas, 61, 338 Arcesilaus, the sceptic, became a dogmatist, 375 Archimedes, greatness of, 792 Arians, where they go wrong, 861 Aristotle, and Plato, 331 Arius, miracles in his time, 831 Athanasius, St., 867 Atheism, shows a certain strength of mind, 225 Atheists, who seek, to be pitied, 190; ought to say what is perfectly evident, 221; objections of, against the Resurrection and the Virgin Birth, 222, 223; objection of, 228 Augustine, St.,