P. 17, l. 12. Montaigne's defects. Mademoiselle de Gournay, Montaigne's adopted daughter, defends the Essayist in regard to this matter, in the preface to her edition of the Essays, Paris, 1595.
P. 17, l. 14. people without eyes. Montaigne, Essais, l. ii. ch. xii.
P. 17, l. 15. squaring the circle. Ib., l. ii. ch. xiv.
P. 17, l. 15. a greater world. Montaigne, Essais, l. ii. ch. xii.
P. 17, l. 16. on suicide and on death. Ib., l. i. ch. iii.
P. 17, l. 17. without fear and without repentance. Ib., l. iii. ch. ii.
P. 19. Man's Disproportion. Pascal's own title.
P. 19, l. 34. the centre of which is every where, the circumference no where. Voltaire attributed this famous saying to the pseudo-Timæus of Locris, an abridgement of Plato's Timæus, but in neither work is the whole sentence to be found. The saying, however, is not originally Pascal's. It is probably borrowed from Mlle. de Gournay's preface to her edition of Montaigne, Paris, 1635, and was taken by her from Rabelais, bk. iii. ch. 13, where it is attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. M. Havet, who gives these, and many more details, finally traces it, on the authority of Vincent de Beauvais, 1200-1264, to Empedocles.
P. 21, l. 36. I will discourse of the all. This saying of Democritus is taken by Pascal from Montaigne, Essais, l. ii. ch. xii.