highest truth. He spoke of the philosophy of Descartes without respect. With most of the Port Royalists, indeed, he seems to have concurred in the Cartesian doctrine of automata,7 strangely revived in our day by Professor Huxley. But he repudiated the notion page 177of “subtle matter,” and even spoke of it with contempt (dont il se moquait fort). “He could not bear,” his niece tells us, in a passage often quoted and emphasised, “the Cartesian manner of explaining the formation of all things.” “I cannot forgive Descartes,” he said. “He would willingly in all his philosophy have done without God, if he could; but he could not get on without letting him give the world a fillip to set it agoing: after that, he has nothing more to do with God.” Whether he had studied Descartes or not, he evidently did not share the enthusiasm of Arnauld and others for his philosophy. He even spoke of it as “useless, uncertain, and troublesome—nay, as ridiculous.”8 He has added, in that brusque, rapid, forceful style characteristic of many of his Thoughts, that “he did not think the whole of philosophy worth an hour’s trouble.” Again: “To set light by philosophy is the true philosophy.” When we look at such expressions, and many others, it is not to be wondered at that Pascal has been accused of scepticism. As he could not forgive Descartes, so Cousin cannot forgive him for his depreciation of Descartes. One who saw nothing in Cartesianism or philosophy in general beyond what these rash sentences, freshly restored in all their audacity, declare, could be nothing but an “enemy of all philosophy.”
It is impossible not to feel that there is some ground for this accusation, and that, if we were to draw our knowledge of Pascal merely from such passages, Cousin makes out something of a case against him. But many other passages, hardly less emphatic, must make every candid reader pause before he comes to any definite page 178conclusion on the subject, if it is necessary to come to such a conclusion at all. It must never be forgotten that we have nowhere the complete mind of Pascal; that it was of the very nature of thoughts rapidly dashed upon paper—as the very form of many we have quoted clearly indicates they were—to be one-sided