but words into words, so that an unknown language can be deciphered.
When in a discourse we find words repeated, and in trying to correct them find we cannot change them for others without manifest disadvantage, we must let them stand, for this is the true test; our criticism came of envy which is blind, and does not see that repetition is not in this place a fault, for there is no general rule.
_Miscellaneous. Language._--Those who force words for the sake of antitheses are like those who make false windows for symmetry.
Their rule is not to speak accurately, but in accurate form.
To put a mask on nature and disguise her. No more King, pope, bishop, but _sacred majesty_, no more Paris, but _the capital of the Kingdom_.
There are places in which we should call Paris, Paris, and others in which we ought to call it the capital of the Kingdom.
There are those who speak well and write ill. Because the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than would have been produced without that warmth.
_Miscellaneous._--A figure of speech, "I should have wished to apply myself to that."
The _aperitive_ virtue of a key, the _attractive_ virtue of a crook.
To guess. _The part that I take in your sorrow._ The Cardinal did not choose to be guessed.
_My mind is disquieted within me._ I am disquieted is better.
_To extinguish the torch of sedition_, too luxuriant.
_The restlessness of his genius._ Two striking words too much.
A coach _upset_ or _overturned_, according to the meaning.
_Spread abroad_, or _upset_, according to the meaning.
The argument by force of M. le M. over the friar.
Symmetry.
Is what we see at one glance.
Founded on the fact that there is no reason for any difference.
And founded also on the face of man.
Whence it comes that symmetry is only wanted in breadth, not in height or depth.
Sceptic, for obstinate.
Descartes useless and uncertain.
No one calls another a courtier but he who is not one himself, a pedant save a pedant, a provincial but a provincial, and I would wager it was the printer who put it on the title of _Letters to a Provincial_.
The chief talent, that which rules all others.
If the lightning were to strike low-lying places, etc., poets, and those whose only reasonings are on things of that nature would lack proofs.
_Poetical beauty._--As we talk of poetical beauty, so ought we to talk of mathematical beauty and medical beauty; yet we do not use those terms, because we know perfectly the object of mathematics, that it consists in proofs, and the object of medicine, that it consists in healing, but we do not understand wherein consists charm which is the object of poetry. We do not know what is the natural model to be imitated, and for want of that knowledge we invent a set of extravagant terms, "_the golden age_, _the wonder of our times_, _fatal_," etc., and fall this jargon poetic beauty.
But if we imagine a woman on that pattern, which consists in saying little things in great words, we shall see a pretty girl bedecked with mirrors and chains absurd to our taste, because we know better wherein consists the charm of woman than the charm of verse. But those who do not know, would admire her in such trimmings, and in many villages she would be taken for the queen, wherefore sonnets made on such a pattern have been called _The Village Queens_.
Those who judge of a work without rule are in regard to others as those who possess a watch are in regard to others. One says, "it was two hours ago," another, "it is only three-quarters of an hour." I look at my watch and say to the one, "you are weary of us," and to the other, "time flies fast with you, for it is only an hour and a half." And I laugh at those who say that time goes slowly with me, and that I judge by fancy. They do not know that I judge by my watch.
_VARIOUS THOUGHTS._ _Mathematics, Tact._--True eloquence makes light of eloquence, true morality makes light of morality, that is to say, the morality of the judgment makes light of the morality of the intellect, which has no rules.
For perception belongs to judgment, as science belongs to the intellect. Tact is the part of judgment, mathematics of the intellect.
To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.
The nourishment of the body is little by little, too much nourishment gives little substance.
There is an universal and essential difference between the actions of the will and all others.
The will is one of the principal organs of belief, not that it forms belief, but because things are true or false according to the side from which we regard them. The will, pleased with one rather than the other, turns the mind from the consideration of that which has the qualities it cares not to see, and thus the intellect, moving with the will, stays to regard the side it loves, and thus judges by what it sees.
The heart has its reasons, which reason knows not, as we feel in a thousand instances. I say that the heart loves the universal Being naturally, and itself naturally, according as it gives itself to each, and it hardens itself against one or the other at its own will.
You have rejected one and kept the other, does reason cause your love?
It is the heart which is conscious of God, not the reason. This then is faith; God sensible to the heart, not to the reason.
Reason acts slowly and with so many views, on so many principles, which it ought always to keep before it, that it constantly slumbers and goes astray, from not having its principles at hand. The heart does not act thus, it acts in a moment, and is always ready to act.
We must then place our faith in the heart, or it will be always vacillating.
Men often mistake their imagination for their heart, and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.
Those who are accustomed to judge by the heart do not understand the process of reasoning, for they wish to understand at a glance, and are not accustomed to seek for principles. And others on the contrary, who are accustomed to reason by principles, do not at all understand the things of the heart, seeking principles and not being able to see at a glance.
If we wished to prove those examples by which we prove other things, we should have to take those other things to be examples. For as we always believe the difficulty is in the matter we wish to prove, we find the examples clearer and aids to demonstration.
Thus when we wish to demonstrate a general proposition, we must give the rule special to a case, but if we wish to demonstrate a particular case, we must begin with the particular rule. For we always find the thing obscure which we wish to prove, and that clear which we employ as proof; for when a matter is proposed for proof we first fill ourselves with the imagination that it is therefore obscure, and on the contrary that what is to prove it is clear, and so we understand with ease.
Far from believing a thing because you have heard it, you ought to believe nothing without having put yourself in the same position as if you had never heard it.
What should make you believe is your own assent to yourself, and the constant voice of your reason, not that of others.
Belief is so important!
A hundred contradictions might be true.
If antiquity were the rule of faith then the men of old time had no rule. If general consent, if men had perished...False humility is pride.
Lift the curtain.
You may try as you please. You must either believe, or deny, or doubt.
Have we then no rule?
We judge that animals do well what they do. Is there no rule whereby to judge men?
To deny, to believe, and to doubt well are to a man what paces are to a horse.
Memory is necessary for every operation of the reason.
Memory and joy are feelings, and even mathematical propositions become so, for reason makes what is felt natural, and natural feelings are effaced by reason.
All our reasoning is reduced to yielding to feeling.
But fancy is like yet contrary to feeling, so that we cannot distinguish between these contraries. One man says that my feeling is fancy, another that his fancy is feeling. We must have a rule. Reason offers herself, but she is pliable in all directions, and so there is no rule.
Reason commands us much more imperiously than a master, for in disobeying the one we are unhappy, and in disobeying the other we are fools.
When we are accustomed to use bad reasons for proving natural effects, we do not wish to receive good reasons even when they are discovered. An example may be taken from the circulation of the blood, to give a reason why the vein swells below the ligature.
We are usually better persuaded by reasons which we have ourselves discovered, than by those which have come into the mind of others.
M. de Roannez said: "Reasons come afterwards, but at first a thing pleases or shocks me, without my knowing the reason, and yet it displeased me for the reason which I only discover later." But I believe, not that he was displeased for those reasons which he afterwards discovered, but that those reasons were only discovered because the thing was displeasing.
_The difference between the mathematical mind and the practical mind._--In the one the premisses are palpable, but removed from ordinary use, so that from want of habit it is difficult to look in that direction, but if we take the trouble to look, the premisses are fully visible, and we must have a totally incorrect mind if we draw wrong inferences from premisses so plain that it is scarce possible they should escape our notice.
But in the practical mind the premisses are taken from use and wont, and are before the eyes of every body. We have only to look that way, there is no difficulty in seeing them; it is only a question of good eyesight, but it must be good, for the premisses are so numerous and so subtle, that it is scarce possible but that some escape us. Now the omission of one premiss leads to error, thus we must have very clear sight to see all the premisses, and then an accurate mind not to draw false conclusions from known premisses.
All mathematicians would then be practical if they were clear-sighted, for they do not reason incorrectly on premisses known to them. And practical men would be mathematicians if they could turn their eyes to the premisses of mathematics to which they are unaccustomed.
The reason therefore that some practical men are not mathematical is that they cannot at all turn their attention to mathematical premisses. But the reason that mathematicians are not practical is that they do not see what is before them, and that, accustomed to the precise and distinct statements of mathematics and not reasoning till they have well examined and arranged their premisses, they are lost in practical life wherein the premisses do not admit of such arrangement, being scarcely seen, indeed they are felt rather than seen, and there is great difficulty in causing them to be felt by those who do not of themselves perceive them. They are so nice and so numerous, that a very delicate and very clear sense is needed to apprehend them, and to judge rightly and justly when they are apprehended, without as a rule being able to demonstrate them in an orderly way as in mathematics; because the premisses are not before us in the same way, and because it would be an infinite matter to undertake. We must see them at once, at one glance, and not by process of reasoning, at least up to a certain degree. And thus it is rare that mathematicians are practical, or that practical men are mathematicians, because mathematicians wish to treat practical life mathematically; and they make themselves ridiculous, wishing to begin by definitions and premisses, a proceeding which this way of reasoning will not bear. The mind does indeed the same thing, but tacitly, naturally and without art, in a way which none can express, and only a few can feel.
Practical minds on the contrary, being thus accustomed to judge at a glance, are amazed when propositions are presented to them of which they understand nothing and the way to which is through sterile definitions and premisses, which they are not accustomed to see thus in detail, and therefore are repelled and disheartened.
But inaccurate minds are never either practical or mathematical.
Mathematicians who are only mathematicians have exact minds, provided all things are clearly set before them in definitions and premisses, otherwise they are inaccurate and intolerable, for they are only accurate when the premisses are perfectly clear.
And practical men, who are only practical, cannot have the patience to condescend to first principles of things speculative and abstract, which they have never seen in the world, and to which they are wholly unaccustomed.
There are various kinds of good sense, there are some who judge correctly in a certain order of things, and are lost in others.
Some are able to draw conclusions well from a few premisses, and this shows a penetrative intellect.
Others draw conclusions well where there are many premisses.
For instance, the first easily understand the laws of hydrostatics, where the premisses are few, but the conclusions so nice, that only the greatest penetration can reach them. And these persons would perhaps not necessarily be great mathematicians, because mathematics embrace a great number of premisses, and perhaps a mind may be so formed that it searches with ease a few premisses to the bottom, yet cannot at all comprehend those matters in which there are many premisses.
There are then two kinds of mind, the one able to penetrate vigorously and deeply into the conclusions of certain premisses, and these are minds true and just. The other able to comprehend a great number of premisses without confusion, and these are the minds for mathematics. The one kind has force and exactness, the other capacity. Now the one quality can exist without the other, a mind may be vigorous and narrow, or it may have great range and no strength.
When we do not know the truth of a thing, it is not amiss that there should be a common error to fix the mind of men, as for instance the moon, to which is attributed the change of seasons, the progress of diseases, etc. For the principal malady of man is that restless curiosity about matters which he can not understand, and it is not so bad for him to be mistaken, as to be so idly curious.
The way in which Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie wrote, is the most usual, the most insinuating, the most easily remembered, and the most often quoted; because it is wholly composed of thoughts which arise out of the ordinary conversations of life. As when a man speaks of the vulgar error that the moon is the cause of all, we never fail to say that Salomon de Tultie says, that when we know not the truth of a matter, it is well there should be a common error, etc; which is the thought above.
To write against those who plunged too deep into science. Descartes.
Descartes.
We must say in general: "This is made by figure and motion for it is true." But to say what these are, and to compose the machine, is ridiculous, for it is useless, uncertain, and painful. And if it were true we do not think that all philosophy is worth one hour of pain.
I cannot forgive Descartes.
If an animal did by mind what it does by instinct, and if it spoke by mind what it speaks by instinct, in hunting, and warning its companions that the quarry is found or lost, it would certainly also speak in regard to those things which affect it more strongly, as for instance, "Gnaw me this cord which hurts me, and which I cannot reach."
The story of the pike and frog of Liancourt. They do it always and never otherwise, nor any other thing of mind.
The calculating machine works results which approach nearer to thought than any thing done by animals, but it does nothing which enables us to say it has any will, as animals have.
When it is said that heat is only the motion of certain molecules, and light the _conatus recedendi_ which we feel, we are surprised.
And shall we think that pleasure is but the buoyancy of our spirits?
We have conceived so different an idea of it, and these sensations seem so removed from those others which we say are the same as those with which we compare them. The feeling of fire, the warmth which affects us in a manner wholly different from touch, the reception of sound and light, all this seems to us mysterious, and yet it is as material as the blow of a stone. It is true that the minuteness of the spirits which enter into the pores touch different nerves, yet nerves are always touched.
What is more absurd than to say that inanimate bodies have passion, fear, horror, that insensible bodies, without life, and even incapable of life, have passions, which presuppose at least a sensitive soul to feel them, nay more, that the object of their terror is a vacuum? What is there in a vacuum which should make them afraid? What can be more base and more ridiculous? Nor is this all; it is said they have in themselves a principle of motion to avoid a vacuum. Have they arms, legs, muscles, nerves?
How foolish is painting, which draws admiration by the resemblance of things of which we do not admire the originals.
In the same way that we injure the understanding we injure the feelings also.
The feelings and the understanding are formed by society, and are perverted by society. Thus good or bad society forms or perverts them. It is then of the first importance to know how to choose in order to form and not to pervert them, and we cannot make this choice if they be not already formed and not perverted. Thus a circle is formed, and happy are those who escape it.
Have you never seen persons, who, in order to complain of the little you make of them, bring before you the example of people in high position who esteem them? To such I answer, "Show me the merit by which you have charmed these persons, and I will esteem you too."
The world is full of good maxims. All that is needed is their right application. For instance, no one doubts that we ought to risk our lives for the common weal, and many do so. But for Religion, none.
Nature diversifies and imitates, art imitates and diversifies.
The more intellect we have ourselves, the more originality do we discover in others. Ordinary people find no difference between men.
Since we cannot be universal, and know all that is to be known of everything, we should know a little of everything. For it is far better to know something of all than to know the whole of one thing, this universality is the best. If we can have both, still better, but if we must choose, let us choose the first. The world feels and acts on this, and the world is often a good judge.
Certain authors speaking of their works, say: "My book, my commentary, my history, etc." They are like the middle-class people who have a small house of their own, and have "my house" always on the tongue. They would do better to say: "Our book, our commentary, our history, etc."; because there is in them generally more of other people's than their own.
A true friend is so great an advantage, even for the greatest lords, in order that he may speak well of them, and uphold them in their absence, that they ought to do all that is possible to have one. But they should choose well, for spite of all they may do for fools, whatever good these say of them would be useless, and they would not even speak well of them if they found themselves in the minority, for they are without authority. And thus they would abuse them in company.
"You are ungraceful, excuse me, I beg." Without that excuse I had not known there was aught amiss. "With reverence be it spoke..." The only evil is the excuse.
I always dislike such compliments as these: _I have given you a great deal of trouble._ _I fear I am tiring you._ _I fear this is too long._ For we either have our audience with us, or we provoke them.
Rivers are roads which move and carry us whither we wish to go.
In every action we must look beyond the action at our past, present and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all these things. And then we shall be very careful.
In every dialogue and discourse we ought to be able to say to those who are offended, "Of what do you complain?"
There are many people who listen to the sermon as they listen to vespers.
When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace.
_NOTES._ _NOTES._ death, a servant discovered this profession sewed into a fold of his master's waistcoat, _pourpoint_. It was written on parchment, with a copy on paper. His family believed that he had carefully placed this in each new garment, desiring to have always about him the memorial of the great spiritual crisis.
P. 3. _General Introduction._ In this are apparently two drafts of the same preface, the second beginning with the paragraph "Before entering," p. 9, l. 6. M. Faugère was the first to recognize the true character of this sketch, which has borne various titles. The Port Royal edition called it: "Against the Indifference of Atheists;" Condorcet headed it: "On the Need of Concern for the Proofs of a Future Life;" Bossut: "On the Need of a Study of Religion." See note on p. 61.
absconditus, Deus Israel salvator._ P. 11. _Notes for the General Introduction._ The fragments following are thus arranged by Molinier as having been in his judgment intended for and many of them expanded in the preceding Preface.
P. 12, l. 23. _Miton_ was a man of fashion at Paris, a friend of Pascal's friend, the Chevalier de Méré.
P. 17. _Preface to the First Part._ This is Pascal's own title to the section.
P. 17, l. 2. _Charron_, Pierre, was born at Paris in 1541. He was a friend of Montaigne, whose philosophy he adopted. His _Traité de la Sagesse_, Bordeaux, 1601, is the work of whose elaborate divisions Pascal complains.
Montaigne's adopted daughter, defends the Essayist in regard to this matter, in the preface to her edition of the Essays, Paris, 1595.
xii.
ch. ii.
P. 19, l. 34. _the centre of which is every where, the circumference no where._ Voltaire attributed this famous saying to the pseudo-Timæus of Locris, an abridgement of Plato's _Timæus_, but in neither work is the whole sentence to be found. The saying, however, is not originally Pascal's. It is probably borrowed from Mlle. de Gournay's preface to her edition of Montaigne, Paris, 1635, and was taken by her from Rabelais, bk. iii. ch. 13, where it is attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. M. Havet, who gives these, and many more details, finally traces it, on the authority of Vincent de Beauvais, 1200-1264, to Empedocles.
P. 21, l. 36. _I will discourse of the all._ This saying of Democritus is taken by Pascal from Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch.
xii.
P. 22, l. 4. _De omni scibili._ The title given to nine hundred propositions, put forth at Rome by Pico della Mirandola, then aged with this title, _Principia Philosophiæ_.
iv. c. xviii. Taken by Pascal from Montaigne, _Essais_, l. iii. ch.
viii.
P. 24, l. 27. _And what completes our inability._ Compare for the whole of the passage on matter and spirit, Descartes, _Discours de la Méthode_.
Civitate Dei_, xxi. 10. Taken by Pascal from Montaigne, _Essais_, l.
ii. ch. xii.
_Tales sunt hominum mentes, quali pater ipse Jupiter auctiferas lustravit lampade terras_.
S. Aug. _De Civitate Dei_, v. 8, a translation by Cicero of two lines in the _Odyssey_, xviii. 136. The quotation is borrowed from Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. xii.
l. iii. ch. xiii.
P. 27, l. 26. _flies which win battles._ Montaigne relates that the Portuguese besieging the town of Tamly were obliged to raise the siege on account of the clouds of flies. _Essais_, l. ii. ch. xii.
v. 14.
P. 30, l. 13. _Epaminondas._ The example is taken from Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. xxxvi.
passage in Montaigne, _Essais_, l. iii. ch. v.
P. 31, l. 28. _Scaramouch_. One of the traditional parts in Italian Comedy, at that time played by the well-known actor Tiberio Fiorelli, whom Pascal had probably seen.
forces. Molière has borrowed from the Italian stage his doctor, so often a pedant and a fool, of whom le docteur Pancrace, in _Le Marriage Forcé_, is perhaps the most notable example, though that comedy was produced after the death of Pascal.
a mathematician at Condrieu on the Rhone, who had been Pascal's teacher. Among the Muscat grapes grown at Condrieu, Pascal distinguishes a special variety of Desargues, and among these a particular vine.
Grand Cyrus_, the celebrated romance of Mademoiselle de Scudery, Cleobuline, princess, afterwards queen of Corinth, is one of the principal characters. She is represented as in love with Myrinthe, one of her subjects, but "she loved him without thinking of love; and remained so long in her error, that when she became aware of it, her affection was no longer in a condition to be overcome."
P. 33. _Diversion._ Under this heading Pascal comprises not only trivial occupations, and the distractions of idle society, but all which, save truth alone, can form the study or the research of man.
The main idea of the chapter is borrowed from Montaigne, _Essais_, l.
iii. chap. x.
Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. iii., and Montaigne in his turn borrowed it from Seneca, _Ep._ 24.
P. 36, l. 28. _superintendent._ Of finances. The last who held this office was Fouquet, still in office when this was written. He was dismissed in disgrace in 1661.
P. 36, l. 32. _dismissed to their country houses._ At that date, and for a long time afterwards, a Minister of State rarely fell from Office without receiving a _Lettre de cachet_ which banished him to the seclusion of his country estate.
iii.
xxxiv.
P. 43. _The Greatness and Littleness of Man._ The title suggested by Pascal, in many passages of the autograph MS.
places in Pascal's MS. It is generally thought that they mean _à Port-Royal_, and are intended to indicate subjects to be developed later in _conférences_ or lectures at that house.
P. 45, l. 1. _Man is neither angel nor brute._ This is closely borrowed from Montaigne, _Essais_, l. iii. ch. xiii.
33, but the Vulgate reading has _mala_.
P. 47, l. 18. _Paulus Emilius._ The example is taken from Montaigne, paupertatem meam in virga indignationis ejus._ P. 51. _Of the deceptive powers_, etc. This is Pascal's own title for this section.
P. 51, l. 14. _Imagination._ Pascal uses this word in an extended sense already given to it by Montaigne, and means that faculty by which we attribute a value to those things which in fact have none.
P. 54, l. 2. _Della Opinione._ No work is known under this name.
Pascal possibly means a work of Carlo Flosi, _L'Opinione tiranna, moralmente considerata ne gli affari del mondo_, Mondovi, 1690. But it is not certain that this edition is the reprint of a work extant before Pascal wrote.
P. 54, l. 27. _Diseases are another source of error._ Taken from Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. xii.
P. 56, l. 20. _in Switzerland that of the burgesses._ This may be compared with p. 66, l. 6. In the majority of Swiss towns every candidate for municipal office must needs possess the freedom of the town, but the intention was not to set aside those of noble birth, as Pascal supposes, but foreigners, and those of other towns, each of which was considered as a separate state.
_Essais_, l. i. ch. xxii. "_C'est par l'entremise de la coustume que chascun est contant du lieu où nature l'a planté: et les sauvages d'Escosse n'ont que faire de la Touraine, ny les Scythes de la Thessalie._" ch. xl.
P. 61. _Of Justice_, etc. These fragments, now among the best known of Pascal's Thoughts, but for the most part brought to notice in the Edition of Bossut, 1779, have their present arrangement and title from Molinier.
Montaigne, are quoted, the first of them wrongly, from Cicero, _De the third from Tacitus, _Annales_, iii. 25. Compare with the whole passage Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. xii. and l. iii. ch. xiii.
From Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. iii.
of Plato.
P. 63, l. 9. _Archesilas._ Born at Pitane in Æolis of a Scythian father, about 300 B.C. He was founder of the School known as the Second Academy. See Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. iii.
P. 64, l. 19. For all that is here said on Custom, see Montaigne, P. 65, l. 7. _Pasce oves meas._ Joh. xxi. 17. The words are those taken as the foundation of papal authority. You owe me pasturage, _i.e._ you owe me justice.
boldly joins heretics and thieves, for those who did not hold his creed appeared to him as men _sans foi ni loi_, faithless and lawless. In his eyes a Turk was scarce a man. See the _Provincial Letters_, let. xiv. "_Sont-ce des religieux et des prêtres qui parlent de cette sorte? Sont-ce des Chrétiens? Sont-ce des Tures?
beasts live and die like men, and Turks like Christians."
P. 66, l. 10. _condemning so many Spaniards to death._ Possibly an allusion to the battle of the Dunes, 1659, which led to the Peace of the Pyrenees, so long desired by all but Spain, then obliged to consent.
Sagesse_, etc. ch. xxvii. art. 8.
P. 67, l. 26. _The end of the Twelfth Provincial._ The following is the passage to which Pascal alludes. "_C'est une etrange et longue guerre que celle où la violence essaye d'opprimer la vérité. Tons les efforts de la violence ne peuvent affaiblir la vérité, et ne servent qu'à la relever davantage. Toutes les lumières de la vérité ne peuvent rien pour arrêter la violence et ne font que l'irriter encore plus...la violence et la vérité ne peuvent rien l'une sur l'autre._" P. 67, l. 27. _The Fronde._ This was the name given to the party which rose against Mazarin and the Court during the minority of Louis XIV., and plunged France into civil war.
P. 69, l. 10. _give me the strap._ This is no exaggeration, since fifty years after Pascal wrote, Voltaire was beaten by the servants of the Duc de Rohan.
du Sire de Rieux: "_il n'y a ny bonnet quarré, ny bourlet, que je ne face voler_."
pater filiorum, misertus est Dominus timentibus se: Quoniam ipse cognovit figmentum nostrum._ P. 70, l. 14. _Savages laugh at an infant king._ Pascal is alluding to the story in Montaigne, _Essais_, l. i. ch. xxx., of the savages presented to Charles IX. at Rouen, who were astonished to see bearded men obey a child.
this somewhat enigmatic fragment. In the next paragraph is an allusion to the passage in which Epictetus says, l. iv. ch. 7, that the philosopher may well be constant and detached from life by wisdom, as were the Galilæans by their fanaticism.
P. 73. _Weakness, unrest, and defects of man._ The arrangements of these fragments under this title is Molinier's.
l. i. ch. iii.
Alexander is strange, but no doubt the circumstance in Pascal's thought was his generous conduct to the family of Darius, after the battle of Issus.
P. 75, l. 12. _the King of England._ Probably Charles II., then living in exile, rather than Charles I. The King of Poland was Jean Casimir, driven from his throne by Charles X. of Sweden, after the battle of Warsaw in 1656. The Queen of Sweden was Christina, daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, who abdicated in favour of her cousin, Charles X., in 1654.
P. 75, l. 29. _we shall die alone_, "on mourra seul." It is a curious instance of the fact how little Pascal is known in England, that Keble having quoted this sentence wrongly, probably from memory, in the first edition of the _Christian Year_, as "Je mourrai seul," it has remained uncorrected and apparently unnoticed to this day.
P. 76, l. 12. _Cromwell._ As Charles II. was restored in 1660, this fragment was written about that date, two years before Pascal's death. Cromwell's death did not arise from the cause stated in the text.
P. 77, l. 8. _the automaton._ The expression of Descartes and his school for the animal body.
meum in testimonia tua, et non in avaritiam._" P. 79, l. 30. _men laugh and weep at the same thing._ The thought is from Charron, _Traité de la Sagesse_, l. i. ch. xxxviii.