Synopsis "The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal: Large Print Edition"
Preface 5 Pascal's Profession of Faith 16 General Introduction 18 Notes for the General Introduction 30 The Misery of Man Without God 33 Preface to the First Part 33 Man's Disproportion 35 Diversion 57 The Greatness and Littleness of Man 70 Of the Deceptive Powers of the Imagination 79 Of Justice, Customs, and Prejudices 94 The Weakness, Unrest, and Defects of Man 112 The Happiness of Man with God 134 Preface to the Second Part 134 Of the Need of Seeking Truth 139 The Philosophers 154 Thoughts on Mahomet and on China 169 Of the Jewish People 174 The Authenticity of the Sacred Books 181 The Prophecies 188 Of Types in General and of their Lawfulness 231 That the Jewish Law was Figurative 247 Of the True Religion and its Characteristics 263 The Excellence of the Christian Religion 270 Of Original Sin 279 The Perpetuity of the Christian Religion 288 Proofs of the Christian Religion 297 Proofs of the Divinity of Jesus Christ 311 The Mission and Greatness of Jesus Christ 329 The Mystery of Jesus 338 Of the True Righteous Man and of the True Christian 347 The Arrangement 371 Of Miracles in General 376 Jesuits and Jansenists 401 Thoughts on Style 445 Various Thoughts 452 PREFACE. Those to whom the Life of Pascal and the Story of Port Royal are unknown, must be referred to works treating fully of the subject, since it were impossible to deal with them adequately within the limits of a preface. Sainte-Beuve's great work on Port Royal, especially the second and third volumes, and "Port Royal," by Charles Beard, B.A., London, 1863, may best be consulted by any who require full, lucid, and singularly impartial information. But for such as, already acquainted with the time and the man, need a recapitulation of the more important facts, or for those who may find an outline map useful of the country they are to study in detail, a few words are here given. Blaise Pascal was born at Clermont-Ferrand in Auvergne, on June 19, 1623. He sprung from a well-known legal family, many members of which had held lucrative and responsible positions. His father, Etienne Pascal, held the post of intendant, or provincial administrator, in Normandy, where, and at Paris previously, Pascal lived from the age of sixteen to that of twenty-five; almost wholly educated by his father on account of his precarious health. His mother died when he was eight years old. Etienne Pascal was a pious but stern person, and by no means disposed to entertain or allow any undue exaltation in religion, refusing as long as he lived to allow his daughter Jaqueline to take the veil. But he had the usual faiths and superstitions of his time, and believing that his son's ill-health arose from witchcraft, employed the old woman who was supposed to have caused the malady to remove it, by herbs culled before sunrise, and the expiatory death of a cat. This made a great impression on his son, who in the "Thoughts" employs an ingenious argument to prove that wonders wrought by the invocation of the devil are not, in the proper sense of the term, miracles. At any rate the counter-charm was incomplete, as the child's feeble health remained feeble to the end.
