Key ideas: A collection of essays written by the French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal (born in 1662).
But dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.
Mathematicians who are only mathematicians have exact minds, provided all things are explained to them by means of definitions and axioms; otherwise they are inaccurate and insufferable, for they are only right when the principles are quite clear.
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. [...]
The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men. [...]
Epictetus asks still more strongly: "Why are we not angry if we are told that we have a headache, and why are we angry if we are told that we reason badly, or choose wrongly?" The reason is that we are quite certain that we have not a headache, or are not lame but we are not so sure that we make a true choice.[...]
The cords which bind the respect of men to each other are in general cords of necessity; for there must be different degrees, all men wishing to rule, and not all being able to do so, but some being able.
Let us then imagine we see society in the process of formation. Men will doubtless fight till the stronger party overcomes the weaker, and a dominant party is established. But when this is once determined, the masters, who do not desire the continuation of strife, then decree that the power which is in their hands shall be transmitted as they please. Some place it in election by the people, others in hereditary succession, &c.
And this is the point where imagination begins to play its part. Till now power makes fact; now power is sustained by imagination in a certain party, in France in the nobility, in Switzerland in the burgesses, &c.
These cords which bind the respect of men to such and such an individual are therefore the cords of imagination.
The most unreasonable things in the world become most reasonable, because of the unruliness of men. What is less reasonable than to choose the eldest son of a queen to rule a State? We do not choose as captain of a ship the passenger who is of the best family.
This law would be absurd and unjust; but because men are so themselves, and always will be so, it becomes reasonable and just. For whom will men choose, as the most virtuous and able? We at once come to blows, as each claims to be the most virtuous and able.
Let us then attach this quality to something indisputable. This is the king's eldest son. That is clear, and there is no dispute. Reason can do no better, for civil war is the greatest of evils.
The world is a good judge of things, for it is in natural ignorance, which is man's true state. The sciences have two extremes which meet.
The first is the pure natural ignorance in which all men find themselves at birth.
The other extreme is that reached by great intellects, who, having run through all that men can know, find they know nothing, and come back again to that same ignorance from which they set out; but this is a learned ignorance which is conscious of itself.
Those between the two, who have departed from natural ignorance and not been able to reach the other, have some smattering of this vain knowledge, and pretend to be wise. These trouble the world, and are bad judges of everything. The people and the wise constitute the world; these despise it, and are despised. They judge badly of everything, and the world judges rightly of them.
We can only think of Plato and Aristotle in grand academic robes. They were honest men, like others, laughing with their friends, and when they diverted themselves with writing the Laws and the Politics, they did it as an amusement.
That part of their life was the least philosophic and the least serious; the most philosophic was to live simply and quietly.
If they wrote on politics, it was as if laying down rules for a lunatic asylum; and if they presented the appearance of speaking of a great matter, it was because they knew that the mad-men, to whom they spoke, thought they were kings and emperors. They entered into their principles in order to make their madness as little harmful as possible.
The Stoics. They conclude that what has been done once can be done always, and that since the desire of glory imparts some power to those whom it possesses, others can well do hkewise. There are feverish movements which health can not imitate.
What the Stoics propose is so difficult and foolish!
The Stoics lay down that all those who are not at the high degree of wisdom are equally foolish and vicious, as those who are two inches under water.
Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.