Page:Studies of a Biographer 2.djvu/295

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PASCAL
283

implicit judgments, and the morality in which they are embodied, are modified more or less directly by the adoption of new philosophical or scientific beliefs. We do not fear for a moment that in seeking for truth and applying the most rigid logical tests, we are endangering whatever is really sound in the judgments or valuable in the morality. A coherent and reliable philosophy would, we are fully assured, incorporate whatever may be sound in the beliefs and feelings which are instinctive rather than reasoned. But the possibility, or rather the certainty, of such a conflict imposes a responsibility upon his opponents. For, in the first place, it explains why persuasion does not go with conviction or exposure of fallacy lead to adoption of the truth. The clearest exposition of the logical error may only lead, as it led Pascal, to a revolt against reason; and the blind instinct will somehow assert itself as a matter of fact, and be an irreconcilable element until a satisfaction be provided for it in a more comprehensive and rational construction. Nor is the instinct, blind though it be, without its light. Its very existence affords a presumption, not that it is true, but that it is an imperfect effort to impress a truth. And this is, in fact, the reason which is impressed upon