Pascal's Pensées: Introduction

he thinker of these "thoughts" ---that is what PmsPes means -was a humanist and a scientist, a specialist and a generalT ist, a shrewd observer of the social world and a spirit consumed by religious passion. This extraordinary c0mbinitl;ic)n of traits and powers would be hard io match. The Pmse'es form a comprehunive portrayal of this singular mind ml personality. They ;ire also a unique work in that it is not ii collection of polished maxims but a set of notes, jotted down haphazardly, f(ur a projected treatise on the nature. he mind, and the life of Man, whose position in the cosmos. Pascal believed, must necessarily lead to a belief in Christ. The grroup of notes that follows comes from the tirst section of what has become a classic of some 275 pages, and these opening thoughts constitute what might be called Pascal's psychology, the basis of his ethics, which in turn is the basis of his theology. The use and value of even these few pages to anyone today who is engaged in teaching or learning, or in ponderiirg and judging current opinion, will appcar in a moment. Because they are rootiid in Pascal's experience of life, they dew-ve a note on that life. When Pascal, aged thirty-three, began his jottings in 1656. he had been for over a decade famous as a physicist and mathematician and as the inventor of the first calculating machine. He had recently astonished the literary world by contributing to a public debate on ethics and religion a polemical work full of wit and devastating arguments. It was directed against one of the contestants. the Jesuit order. The public, convinced and entertained, no doubt expected more from Pascal's pen. But he was very ill and had already decided to withdraw from the social world and give all his time and mind to a comprehensive work justifying the Christian religion. By the end of the next six and final years of his life he had amassed a great body of "thoughts" and had incidentally solved one more problem in mathematics. The importance of these memos he had written to himself was at once felt to justify publication. They were put in ordered groups and some were altered to suit certain prejudices of his family and his time. But the originals survived, and after a number of different classifications by various scholars, they have reached the present sequence and textual accuracy. What is today their particular relevance'? The first striking point, in an age of specialization such as ours, is the range of Pascal's concerns and abilities. The spectacle of his all-embracing mind is a lesson in itself. Next is his insistence on what is native and spontaneous, individual and diverse. His own time was one of stiff formality and of rules intended to fashion a single social type. I t encouraged pretentiousness, unreality by verbal abstraction, and falseness generally. Pascal calls for the concrete and the particular. His often quoted remark that in reading a book one wants to find a man, not an author, is the perfect sample of his attitude toward man and society. Today also, the pressure is to conform to a single social type, the "democratic. " We have discarded forinality and made compulsory its opposilc. the casual and undemanding. Everybody is to be no better than anybody else. A third teaching i n these penshes is the distinction between the geometrical and the intuitive mind. There is only one species of human mind, but it can think in radically different directions. Pascal gives the definition of each and to make it unmistakable repeats the features and examples of the contrast. Since his own mind worked brilliantly in either direction. he is the best witness to the errors and dangers of' failing to learn how they differ and what consequences follow from ignoring the fact that they do. Today, the distinction has been lost. Under the sway of science, common opinion takes i t for granted that the geometrical, numerical, mechanical outlook is the only reliable, all-purpose means of satisfying our needs and solving our difficulties. This quasi-religious faith breeds the habit of denying the existence