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ON MIND AND ON STYLE
        o SECTION II: THE MISERY OF MAN WITHOUT GOD
        o SECTION III: OF THE NECESSITY OF THE WAGER
        o SECTION IV: OF THE MEANS OF BELIEF
        o SECTION V: JUSTICE AND THE REASON OF EFFECTS
        o SECTION VI: THE PHILOSOPHERS
        o SECTION VII: MORALITY AND DOCTRINE
        o SECTION VIII: THE FUNDAMENTALS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
        o SECTION IX: PERPETUITY
        o SECTION X: TYPOLOGY
        o SECTION XI: THE PROPHECIES
        o SECTION XII: PROOFS OF JESUS CHRIST
        o SECTION XIII: THE MIRACLES
        o SECTION XIV: APPENDIX: POLEMICAL FRAGMENTS
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                                   PENSÉES
                              by Blaise Pascal
                                    1660
                         translated by W. F. Trotter
                                   PENSÉES
                  SECTION I: THOUGHTS ON MIND AND ON STYLE
1. The difference between the mathematical and the intuitive mind.--In the
one, the principles are palpable, but removed from ordinary use; so that for
want of habit it is difficult to turn one's mind in that direction: but if
one turns it thither ever so little, one sees the principles fully, and one
must have a quite inaccurate mind who reasons wrongly from principles so
plain that it is almost impossible they should escape notice.
But in the intuitive mind the principles are found in common use and are
before the eyes of everybody. One has only to look, and no effort is
necessar

possess
only a lie. Incapable of absolute ignorance and of certain knowledge, we
have thus been manifestly in a degree of perfection from which we have
unhappily fallen.
It is, however, an astonishing thing that the mystery furthest removed from
our knowledge, namely, that of the transmission of sin, should be a fact
without which we can have no knowledge of ourselves. For it is beyond doubt
that there is nothing which more shocks our reason than to say that the sin
of the first man has rendered guilty those who, being so removed from this
source, seem incapable of participation in it. This transmission does not
only seem to us impossible, it seems also very unjust. For what is more
contrary to the rules of our miserable justice than to damn eternally an
infant incapable of will, for a sin wherein he seems to have so little a
share that it was committed six thousand years before he was in existence?
Certainly nothing offends us more rudely than this doctrine; and yet without
this mystery, the most incomprehensible of all, we are incomprehensible to
ourselves. The knot of our condition takes its twists and turns in this
abyss, so that man is more inconceivable without this mystery than this
mystery is inconceivable to man.
Whence it seems that God, willing to render the difficulty of our existence
unintelligible to ourselves, h

it by the same authority by which they attack
it. So by this providence it still exists.
635. Chronology of Rabbinism. (The citations of pages are from the book
Pugio.)
Page 27. R. Hakadosch (anno 200), author of the Mischna, or vocal law, or
second law.
Commentaries on the Mischna (anno 340): The one Siphra.
Barajetot.
Talmud Hierosol.
Tosiphtot.
Bereschit Rabah, by R. Osaiah Rabah, commentary on the Mischna.
Bereschit Rabah, Bar Naconi, are subtle and pleasant discourses, historical
and theological. This same author wrote the books called Rabot.
A hundred years after the Talmud Hierosol was composed the Babylonian
Talmud, by R. Ase, A.D. 440, by the universal consent of all the Jews, who
are necessarily obliged to observe all that is contained therein.
The addition of R. Ase is called the Gemara, that is to say, the commentary
on the Mischna.
And the Talmud includes together the Mischna and the Gemara.
636. If does not indicate indifference: Malachi, Isaiah.
Isaiah, Si volumus, etc.
In quacumque die.[115]
637. Prophecies.--The sceptre was not interrupted by the captivity in
Babylon, because the return was promised and foretold.
638. Proofs of Jesus Christ.--Captivity, with the assurance of deliverance
within seventy years, was not real captivity. But now they are captives
without any hope.
God has promised them that, even though He should scatter them to the ends
of the earth, nevertheless, if they were faithful to His law, He would
assemble them together again. They are very faithful to it and remain
oppressed.
639. When Nebuchadnezzar carried away the people, for fear they should
believe that the sceptre had departed from Judah, they were told beforehand
that they would be there for a short time, and that they would be restored.
They were always consoled by the prophets; and their kings continued. But
the second destruction is

This people are not eminent solely by their antiquity, but are also singular
by their duration, which has always continued from their origin till now.
For, whereas the nations of Greece and of Italy, of Lacedaemon, of Athens
and of Rome, and others who came long after, have long since perished, these
ever remain, and in spite of the endeavours of many powerful kings who have
a hundred times tried to destroy them, as their historians testify, and as
it is easy to conjecture from the natural order of things during so long a
space of years, they have nevertheless been preserved (and this preservation
has been foretold); and extending from the earliest times to the latest,
their history comprehends in its duration all our histories which it
preceded by a long time.
The law by which this people is governed is at once the most ancient law in
the world, the most perfect, and the only one which has been always observed
without a break in a state. This is what Josephus admirably proves, Against
Apion, and also Philo the Jew, in different places, where they point out
that it is so ancient that the very name of law was only known by the oldest
nation more than a thousand years afterwards; so that Homer, who has written
the history of so many states, has never used the term. And it is easy to
judge of its perfection by simply reading it; for we see that it has
provided for all things with so great wisdom, equity, and judgement, that
the most ancient legislators, Greek and Roman, having had some knowledge of
it, have borrowed from it their principal laws; this is evident from what
are called the Twelve Tables, and from the other proofs which Josephus
gives.
But this law is at the same time the severest and strictest of all in
respect to their religious worship, imposing on this people, in order to
keep them to their duty, a thousand peculiar and painful observances, on
pain of death. Whence it is very astonishing that it has been constantly
preserved during many ce

where
she could find God. She answered, In heaven. Why, said she, have you
been in heaven? No, said the child. By this it seems not to have been
any imagination of any thing seen with bodily eyes, that she called God,
when she said, I can find God now. Her mother asked her, whether she was
afraid of going to hell, and if that had made her cry? She answered,
Yes, I was; but now I shan't. Her mother asked her, whether she thought
that God had given her salvation: she answered, Yes. Her mother asked
her. When? She answered, Today. She appeared all that afternoon
exceeding cheerful and joyful. One of the neighbors asked her, how she
felt herself. She answered, I feel better than I did. The neighbor asked
her, what made her feel better. She answered, God makes me. That
evening, as she lay a-bed, she called one of her little cousins to her,
who was present in the room, as having something to say to him; and when
he came, she told him, that heaven was better than earth. The next day,
her mother asked her what God made her for? She answered, To serve him;
and added, Every body should serve God, and get an interest in Christ.
The same day the elder children, when they came home from school, seemed
much affected with the extraordinary change that seemed to be made in
Phebe. And her sister Abigail standing by, her mother took occasion to
counsel her, now to improve her time, to prepare for another world. On
which Phebe burst out in tears, and cried out, Poor Nabby! Her mother
told her, she would not have to cry; she hoped that God would give Nabby
salvation; but that did not quiet her, she continued earnestly crying
for some ti