PASCAL. 143 3. Pascal, Malebranche, Bayle. Returning from Holland to France, we find a combina- tion of Cartesianism and mysticism similar to that which we have noticed in the former country. Under Geulincx these two forces had lived peacefully together; in Spinoza they had entered into the closest alliance ; with Blaise Pascal (1623-62), the first to adopt a religious tendency, they came into a certain antithesis. Spinoza had taught : through the knowledge of God to the love of God; in Pasca l the watchword becomes, God__Ls not ronreivffj through thej;ea son, but felt with the hearty. After attack- ing the Jesuits in his Provincial Letters, and unveiling the worthlessness of their casuistical morality, Pascal, con- strained by a genuine piety, undertook to construct a philosophy of Christianity ; but the attempt was ended by the early death of the author, who had always suf- fered under a weak constitution. Fragments of this work were published by his friends, the Jansenists, under the title, Thoughts on Religion, 1669, though not without mediating alterations. The Port-Royal Z^J^fV {The Art of Thinking, 1662), edited by Arnauld and Nicole, was based on a treatise of Pascal. His thought, which was not dis- tinguished by clearness, but by depth and movement, and which, after the French fashion, delighted in antitheses, was influenced by Descartes, Montaigne, and Epictetus. He, too, finds in mathematics the example for all science, and holds that whatever transcends mathematics transcends the reason. By the application of mathematics to the study of nature we attain a mundane science, which is cer- tain, no doubt, and which makes constant progress,* but which does not satisfy, since it reveals nothing of the infinite, of the whole, without which the parts remain unin- telligible. Hence all natural philosophy together is not worth an hour's toil. Pascal consoles himself for our igno- rance concerning external things by the stability of ethics. The leading principles of his ethics are as follows : In sin
- It is this uninterrupted progress which raises the reason above the opera-
tions of nature and the instincts of animals. While the bees build their cells to-day just as they did a thousand years ago, science is continually developing. This guarantees to us our immortal destiny.
