Descartes’s incredulity was not without reason; but there is no room to doubt the fact. The little treatise, ‘Pour les Coniques,’ still survives. It bears the date of 1640, and occupies only six pages. 2 After a very clear statement of his subject, the writer modestly concludes:—
“We have several other problems and theorems, and several consequences deducible from the preceding; but the mistrust which I have of my slight experience and capacity does not permit me to advance more till my present effort has passed the examination of able men who may oblige me by looking at it. Afterwards, if they think it has sufficient merit to be continued, we shall endeavour to push our studies as far as God will give the power to conduct them.”
It is interesting to notice the beginning of relations betwixt Descartes and Pascal, considering the jealousy that afterwards arose betwixt them. There is something of this feeling from the first in the older philosopher, page 27who was now in the forty-fourth year of his age, and in the full zenith of his great reputation. He appears to have been greatly fascinated by Pascal’s peculiar powers; but the men were of too marked individuality of character, and too divergent in intellectual sympathy and personal aspiration, to appreciate each other fully.
Pascal’s next achievement was the invention of an arithmetical machine, chiefly prompted by a desire to assist his father in his official duties at Rouen. He has given us no description of this machine from his own pen. In the “Avis” addressed to all whose curiosity was excited by it, he excuses himself from this task by the natural remark that such a description would be useless without entering into a number of technical details unintelligible to the general reader; and that an actual inspection of it, combined with a brief vivâ voce explanation, would be far more satisfactory than any lengthened account in writing. There is an