The Provincial Letters; Pensées; Scientific Treatises

by Blaise Pascal

Publisher:

Encyclopedia Britannica

, 1990

Overview

The makers of Encyclopædia Britannica bring you one of the Great Books of the Western World. This text captures major ideas, stories, and discoveries that helped shape Western culture.

Contents

Top Highlights

“What is it, then, that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.” (Page 244)

“We do not require great education of the mind to understand that here is no real and lasting satisfaction; that our pleasures are only vanity; that our evils are infinite; and, lastly, that death, which threatens us every moment, must infallibly place us within a few years under the dreadful necessity of being for ever either annihilated or unhappy.” (Page 207)

“In matters in which we seek to know only what authors have written, as in history, geography, jurisprudence, languages, and above all in theology, and in short wherever either the simple fact or an institution, human or divine, is the starting point, we must necessarily have recourse to books, since all that can be known about such matters is contained there.” (Page 355)

“The clearing up of this difference should make us pity the blindness of those who advance authority alone as proof in physics instead of reason or experiment, and should fill us with horror at the wickedness of others who use reason alone in theology instead of the authority of Scripture and the Fathers. We must strengthen the courage of those timid souls who dare discover nothing in physics, and confound the insolence of that temerity which introduces novelty into theology.” (Page 356)

Product Details

• Title: The Provincial Letters; Pensées; Scientific Treatises
• Author: Blaise Pascal
• Edition: Second Edition
• Series: Great Books of the Western World
• Volume: 30
• Publisher: Encyclopedia Britannica
• Print Publication Date: 1990
• Logos Release Date: 2016
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subjects: Apologetics › Early works to 1800; Apologetics › History--17th century; Catholic Church › Doctrines
• ISBNs: 0852295316, 9780852295311
• Resource ID: LLS:GBWW30
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T00:11:25Z

About Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) was a French mathematician, inventor, writer, and Catholic philosopher. Pascal began studying science at an early age; he invented the mechanical calculator around 1642. He first identified with Jansenism—a movement within the Roman Catholic church—in 1646, and after a “mystical experience” in 1654, he stopped his scientific work and focused on philosophy and theology. Volume 48 of The Harvard Classics features many of Pascal’s works and essays.