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Updated: May 16, 2025
Now Pascal's Pensees enshrined a theory of life the doctrine of original sin, the idea that the object of life is to prepare for death which was sternly opposed to the spirit of Progress. Voltaire instinctively felt that this was an enemy that had to be dealt with. O le bon temps que ce siecle de fer! Life in Paris, London, or Rome to-day is infinitely preferable to life in the garden of Eden.
One is reminded here of Pascal's famous prosopopoeia: "I know not who has put me into the world, nor what the world is, nor myself. I am in a terrible ignorance about everything.... All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least of all is this very death which I cannot escape." The phrases of the Pensees are only the echo of the phrases of the Confessions. But how different is the tone!
But it is greatly for his advantage to have both set before him. Pensees de Pascal. The man who wrote that, my dear child, did not trouble himself much about children.
His custom was, in the course of the endless talks about morals and the soul, "to conceal half of his own opinion, and to show tact with an obstinate opponent, so as to spare him the annoyance of having to yield." There is something very like this in the "Pensées" of Pascal.
M. CROUSSE, "Des Principes," pp. 199, 211, 296. BAYLE, "Pensées," III. 67. The well-known lines of the sixth Æneid, "Principio coelum, ac terras, camposque liquentes," &c. are thus applied. ABBÉ MARET, "Essai," pp. 152, 156, 221. DR. MERLE D'AUBIGNÉ, "History of Reformation," V. 84. ABBÉ MARET, "Essai," p. 89; "Theodicée," p. 368. FRED. VON SCHLEGEL, "Philosophy of Life," p. 417.
White lilacs for the bride, and lilies for the holy altar! pinks for the button of the young man who thinks himself handsome. Who buys my bluets, my paquerettes, my marguerites, my penseés?" It was strangely like something I well knew, yet my mind, confused with the baggage of unexpected travel, refused to throw a clear light over this fascinating rencounter.
In the last years of his short life he sank into a torpor of superstition ascetic, self-mortified, and rapt in a strange exaltation, like a medieval monk. Thus there is a tragic antithesis in his character an unresolved discord which shows itself again and again in his Pensées. 'Condition de l'homme, he notes, 'inconstance, ennui, inquiétude. It is the description of his own state.
I don't know; shall we say Pascal's Pensees?" He articulated the title with an ironic emphasis so as not to appear pedantic.
The drawback to a migratory existence, however, is the fact that, as a French saying has put it, Ceux qui se refusent les pensees serieuses tombent dans les idees noires. These people are surprised to find as the years go by that the futile amusements to which they have devoted themselves do not fill to their satisfaction all the hours of a lifetime.
He was dressed in a hunting jacket of blue cloth, trousers of ribbed green velvet and a waistcoat of yellow piqué. He put two loaded English pistols in the pockets of his jacket and carried a sword-cane. Mlle. de Montfiquet gave him a little book of "Pensées Chrétiennes," in which she had written her name; then, accompanied by her servant, she led him across the suburbs to Saint-Vigor-le-Grand.
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