Studies on Pascal, tr., with an appendix of notes, partly taken from the writings of lord Bacon and dr. Chalmers, by T. Smith - Tapa blanda

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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1859 Excerpt: ... ness, and never attains it; man sees himself on all sides governed by necessity, and he feels himself free. Pascal might have said, in like manner, that nature confounds the fatalists; that nature confounds, or rather relieves, the despairing;--nature, which is the first and the most sovereign necessity; nature, which is intuition, evidence, truth in us; nature, the immortal foundation which sin has covered with rubbish, but has not been able to crush; nature, that is to say, the best foundation of man, without which, to say truth, he would not be man. It is the opposition between the discursive and the intuitive, which some, I believe, have called the impersonal, reason. For the thought of Pascal is not simply that man is of necessity a dogmatist, and that a blind necessity has reason against reason. He thinks that nature is the principle of reason, of truth, and of certainty. He thinks that logic, which is an abstraction, may upset all; he thinks further that, in our present condition, an unhappy tendency bears us towards scepticism, which disregards intuition, as towards fatalism, which disregards freedom; but with this difference, that the tendency towards fatalism draws on all men, while that towards scepticism draws on only thinkers. He acknowledges that, on certain subjects of the last importance, the feebleness of intuition, and especially of moral intuition, gives a favourable opportunity to the irruptions of logic, that fierce and implacable enemy which steals our best convictions, and sits unabashed at our fireside to count its booty. He considers that we hold only by a precarious title the most necessary and the best founded of our beliefs; that even their evidences do not insure them against the attacks of doubt; and that a great number of the ...