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You shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free
The Heart's Reasons: Thoughts on Pascal's Pensees Index Site Contents
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When I first read Pascal's Pensees, I was in no condition to
understand or appreciate him. But since my own conversion and Christian
walk have depended so heavily on the heart, I think I understand him
very well. I found my intellectual footing in a kind of chastened
rationalism, which Pascal would approve. And I have fixed my faith
on my own reasons of the heart, which, far from contradicting reason,
rather confirm reason, as reason is founded on the first
principles of the heart (intuition). Though he is vastly above me in
intellect, Pascal has become the familiar friend and companion of my
heart. The following are quotations from Pascal's Thoughts, with my own thoughts intermingled. "We know truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart, and it is in this last way that we know first principles; and reason, which has no part in it, tries in vain to impugn them. The skeptics, who have only this for their object, labor to no purpose. We know that we do not dream, and, however impossible it is for us to prove it by reason, this inability demonstrates only the weakness of our reason, but not, as they affirm, the uncertainty of all our knowledge. For the knowledge of first principles, as space, time, motion, number, is as sure as any of those which we get from reasoning. And reason must trust these intuitions of the heart, and must base on them every argument. (We have intuitive knowledge of the tri-dimensional nature of space and of the infinity of number, and reason then shows that there are no two square numbers one of which is double of the other. Principles are intuited, propositions are inferred, all with certainty, though in different ways.) And it is as useless and absurd for reason to demand from the heart proofs of her first principles, before admitting them, as it would be for the heart to demand from reason an intuition of all demonstrated propositions before accepting them. This inability ought, then, to serve only to humble reason, which would judge all, but not to impugn our certainty, as if only reason were capable of instructing us. Would to God, on the contrary, that we had never need of it, and that we knew everything by instinct and intuition! But nature has refused us this boon. On the contrary, she has given us but very little knowledge of this kind; and all the rest can be acquired only by reasoning. Therefore, those to whom God has imparted religion by intuition are very fortunate and justly convinced. But to those who do not have it, we can give it only by reasoning, waiting for God to give them spiritual insight, without which faith is only human and useless for salvation." 282 Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them and not contrary to them. 265. The last proceeding of reason is to recognize that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it. It is but feeble if it does not see so far as to know this. But if natural things are beyond it, what will be said of supernatural? 267 (In progress)
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