In these latter sentences—which we have been obliged, for the sake of brevity, to compress—we have the suggestion of Pascal’s philosophy both of human nature and
of Divine revelation. He recurs over and over again to the same idea, that man is great and yet weak, full of capacity and yet miserable, and that the Gospel alone holds the key to this enigma of human nature. This, more than any other, is the pervading thought round which all the others gather.
“This twofoldness (duplicité),” he says, “is so visible, that some have conceived that man must have two souls—a simple subject appearing to them incapable of such and so sudden variations; an immeasurable presumption on the one hand, a horrible abasement on the other. In spite of all the miseries which cleave to us, and hold us, as it were, by the throat (nous tiennent à la gorge), there is within us an irrepressible instinct which exalts us. The greatness of man is so visible that it may be deduced from his very misery. His very miseries prove his greatness. They are the miseries of a great lord, of a dethroned sovereign. The greatness of man consists in his knowledge of his misery. A tree does not know itself to be miserable. . . . He is miserable—the fact is beyond question; but he is great in knowing it.” [186]
Again, reverting to the very same line of thought, as in the conversation with De Saci—
“Philosophers have propounded sentiments not at all adapted to the twofold condition of man. They have sought to inspire emotions of pure greatness; but this is not man’s condition. They have sought on the other hand to inspire sentiments of mere baseness; but neither is this man’s condition. Man needs abasement, not of nature, however, but of penitence; not that he remain degraded, but that he may rise to greatness. He needs to feel within him the emotion of greatness,—not of merit, however, but of grace. . . . Two sects have sprung out of this conflict between reason and sense in man. The one, in renouncing passion, has aspired to divinity; the other, in renouncing reason, has sunk to mere brutality. . . . The principles of the respective philosophies are so far true—Pyrrhonism, Stoicism, Atheism even. But the conclusions are false, because the opposite principles are equally true. . . . We labour under an incapacity of demonstrating all things invincible to Dogmatism. We have an innate idea of truth invincible to all Pyrrhonism. . . . Nature confounds the Pyrrhonist, and reason the Dogmatist;”—
or, as the passage was originally written,—
“We cannot be Pyrrhonists without violating nature; we cannot be Dogmatists without renouncing nature.” [187]
These and other passages sufficiently show Pascal’s relation to philosophy, and to Pyrrhonism in particular. He is no enemy of philosophy, but he certainly does not believe it capable of explaining the riddle of human nature. He is so far from being a Pyrrhonist in the sense of resting on Pyrrhonism, that he seeks to mount on its shoulders to a higher truth. Nay, he clearly recognises that man has an inborn faculty for truth which not all the contradictions of his experience can belie. We may and must doubt as to many things; but there are principles lying at the root of human life which are invincible to all doubt. We can demonstrate many things; but there are natural realities beyond our power of demonstration. On the side of sense, all things seem to fluctuate and waver in uncertainty; on the side of mere intellect we soon cross the limit of our powers. But Humanity is more than either sense or intellect. There is, as he believes, a primitive endowment of spiritual instinct in man, which looks forth upon
a higher world of reality. Repeatedly, and in various applications, he recurs to these three radical sides or elements of Humanity; “the sensible—the intellectual, or the exercise of reason left to itself—and the spiritual or divine.” Pascal despairs of a philosophy which is either a mere generalisation of sensible experience, or which aims at demonstrating everything from a purely rational point of view; but he is so far from resting in mere intellectual doubt, that he tries to find a ground for human certitude in a deeper stratum of Humanity than either sense or what he calls “reason.” Neander and others have vindicated for him a supreme position as a philosopher on this very account. With them he is not only no sceptic, but he stands forth among the men who have specially vindicated the claims of Humanity as endowed with the divine attributes of “spirit” and “will”—the men of “full mental healthiness” who have recognised in man a free spiritual life no less than a life of sense and intellect. This may or may not be. But the mere fact that Pascal has aimed at a deeper ground of certitude, whether he has made it clear or not, and whether or not he has spoken with undue depreciation of other sources of knowledge, should be enough to vindicate him from the charge of even philosophical scepticism. In the following passage he has explained his views more fully. More than any other, perhaps, it may be taken as the text of his philosophy.
“We discover truth,” he says, “not only by reasoning, but by feeling (le cœur); and it is in this latter manner that we discover first principles—and in vain does reasoning, which has no share in their production, try to combat these principles. The Pyrrhonists, who attempt this, labour in vain. We know that we are not deceived, however incapable we may be of proving so by any power of reasoning. This incapacity only demonstrates the weakness of our reasoning faculty, and not the incertitude of all our knowledge, as they pretend. Nay, our knowledge of first principles, such as the ideas of space, time, motion, number, is as certain as any obtained by reasoning. It is, in fact, upon such conclusions of feeling and instinct that Reason must ultimately rest and base all its arguments. We feel that there are three dimensions in space, and that numbers are infinite; and reason hence demonstrates that there are no two square numbers the one of which is double the other. Principles are felt, propositions deduced, and both with certitude, although in different ways. And it is as absurd for the ‘reason’ to demand of the ‘heart’ proofs of its first principles before asserting them, as it would be for the ‘heart’ to demand of the ‘reason’ a feeling of all propositions that she demonstrates before accepting them. This weakness, therefore, should only serve to humble reason in its desire to make itself judge of everything, but by no means to moderate the certitude of our conviction, as if reason were alone capable of instructing us.” [189]