automata, as Descartes had said, though we are also spirits; as automata we believe by custom and instinct, and all that we can do is to accustom ourselves to submit to the right impulses. How, then, will you believe? Learn from those who have preceded you, aud observe them cured of the disease from which you suffer. How is that? By acting as if they believed, he replies; by taking holy water, causing masses to be said, and so forth. 'Naturellement cela vous fera croire et vous abêtira.' That will make you believe, and will stupefy you. Pascal's commentators have again shrunk from this daring phrase, and tried to explain it away as a mere note to be more delicately put.[1] The crudity of the words perhaps lets out the secret. Some people seem to think that it gives the truth. Now that the danger of appealing to reason has become more marked, Pascal's remedy has become more popular; and I need hardly say that there are plenty of establishments in this neighbourhood where you may try the efficacy of the Holy Water cure.
Was Pascal then a sceptic or a sincere believer?
- ↑ I guess that Pascal was thinking of Montaigne, who, in the essay upon Raymond de Sebonde, says, speaking of the evil of excessive sensibility, 'Il nous faut abestir pour nous assagir.'
