Thoughts from the Mind and Heart of French Thinker Blaise Pascal

Creative commons, France.

He had a sharp mind and an influential pen. Blaise Pascal's primary fields were mathematics, logic, physics and theology. And like many others who achieve significance, the secular thinkers of his day wished he'd left his theological aspirations off to one side. Similar complaints were made about Sir Isaac Newton. "Think about all he could have accomplished had he left all that religious stuff in the closet," they'd say, not realize that his religious beliefs gave him confidence in an orderly universe and a foundation for his secular explorations. Pascal was cut from the same cloth.

For some today, "Pascal" is simply a computer programming language developed around 1970. I remember reading about it even if I never used it. The name was assigned to this early programming language because of Blaise Pascal's early success in creating a machine that could do calculations. In 1642, at age twenty, he invented the calculating machine pictured at the top of this page.

In the broader public, I think he is more famous for what has come to be known as Pascal's Wager, a philosophical argument that attempts to use logic to answer questions about God's existence and our purpose in this incomprehensible mystery called life. Here is a pithy distillation of the idea: "If God does not exist, one will lose nothing by believing in him, while if he does exist, one will lose everything by not believing."

You can find a more elaborate explanation here.

What follows are some insightful statements by Blaise Pascal from his letters and books.

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"I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time."
(How many of  you thought Hemingway said this?)

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"It is not well to be too much at liberty. It is not well to have all we want."

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"All the excesses, all the violence, and all the vanity of great men, come from the fact that they know not what they are."
(EdNote: Am reading about General Douglas MacArthur in David Halverstram's The Fifties. It's stunning the degree to which big egos can lose all touch with reality.)

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"It is a natural illness of man to think that he possesses the truth directly…"
--On the Spirit of Geometry

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"The art of persuasion consists as much in that of pleasing as in that of convincing, so much more are men governed by caprice than by reason!"

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"People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others."

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"Those honor nature well, who teach that she can speak on everything, even on theology."

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"Few friendships would remain, if each knew what his friend said of him when he wasn't there."

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"Make religion attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is. Worthy of reverence because it really understands human nature. Attractive because it promises true good."

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"All good maxims are in the world. We only need apply them."

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If you wish for more, here is a link to Pascal on Wikiquotes.

Rainer Maria Rilke: Exquisite Beauty from the Pen of a Mere Mortal

Nearly everyone who reads and appreciates poetry is familiar with Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). Some of the most beautiful lines in the English language were written by him. (Just kidding. He wrote in German and French.) Fortunately, the beauty of his ideas has not been lost in translation.

Just as I discovered the Wiki Quotes page on Picasso this past week, so have I been exploring others, with Rilke one of the first I looked up.

It is my pleasure here to share a few poems and lines from Rainer Maria Rilke.

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A Walk 
My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has its inner light, even from a distance—
and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are;
a gesture waves us on, answering our own wave . . .
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

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"Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything." 

* * * *
Autumn Day
Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Let thine shadows upon the sundials fall,
and unleash the winds upon the open fields.

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As I read a passage like this next one I am conscious that it is written by someone whose life and being has been so utterly foreign to the fast-paced mad rush rat race so many Americans have accepted as a normal life. Success is achieved by hustling. But what happens to the soul?

from The Book of Hours
I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough
to make every hour holy.
I am too small in the world, and yet not tiny enough
just to stand before you like a thing,
dark and shrewd.
I want my will, and I want to be with my will
as it moves towards deed;
and in those quiet, somehow hesitating times,
when something is approaching,
I want to be with those who are wise
or else alone.

*
This next one I have taped on the wall of my office perhaps 20 years ago and it still inspires me, speaks to me in a way that is deeper than words. 

I Live My Life In Growing Orbits
I live my life in growing orbits
which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God,
around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years,
and I still don’t know
if I am a falcon, or a storm,
or a great song.

* * * *

The following is a section from a small volume called Letters to a Young Poet, which I downloaded to my Kindle several years ago. It stands in stark contrast to the loud, busy world we live in today where the radio or television are always on and the myriad ways we bury ourselves in diversions to escape from ourselves.

from Letter Seven
It must be immense, this silence, in which sounds and movements have room. And if one thinks that along with all this the presence of the distant sea also resounds, perhaps as the innermost note in this prehistoric harmony, then one can only wish that you are trustingly and patiently letting the magnificent solitude work upon you, this solitude which can no longer be erased from your life; which, in everything that is in store for you to experience and to do, will act as an anonymous influence, continuously and gently decisive, rather as the blood of our ancestors incessantly moves in us and combines with our own to form the unique, unrepeatable being that we are at every turning of our life.

* * * *

Just as photographers are skilled at capturing the natural world, likewise great poets and writers have fine tuned their lenses to capture our inner landscapes.

Related Link
The Panther
Rilke Wikiquote Page