Pascal's Pensées eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 370 pages of information about Pascal's Pensées.

Pascal's Pensées eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 370 pages of information about Pascal's Pensées.

231

Do you believe it to be impossible that God is infinite, without parts?—­Yes.  I wish therefore to show you an infinite and indivisible thing.  It is a point moving everywhere with an infinite velocity; for it is one in all places, and is all totality in every place.

Let this effect of nature, which previously seemed to you impossible, make you know that there may be others of which you are still ignorant.  Do not draw this conclusion from your experiment, that there remains nothing for you to know; but rather that there remains an infinity for you to know.

232

Infinite movement, the point which fills everything, the moment of rest; infinite without quantity, indivisible and infinite.

233

Infinite—­nothing.—­Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension.  Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature, necessity, and can believe nothing else.

Unity joined to infinity adds nothing to it, no more than one foot to an infinite measure.  The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing.  So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.  There is not so great a disproportion between our justice and that of God, as between unity and infinity.

The justice of God must be vast like His compassion.  Now justice to the outcast is less vast, and ought less to offend our feelings than mercy towards the elect.

We know that there is an infinite, and are ignorant of its nature.  As we know it to be false that numbers are finite, it is therefore true that there is an infinity in number.  But we do not know what it is.  It is false that it is even, it is false that it is odd; for the addition of a unit can make no change in its nature.  Yet it is a number, and every number is odd or even (this is certainly true of every finite number).  So we may well know that there is a God without knowing what He is.  Is there not one substantial truth, seeing there are so many things which are not the truth itself?

We know then the existence and nature of the finite, because we also are finite and have extension.  We know the existence of the infinite, and are ignorant of its nature, because it has extension like us, but not limits like us.  But we know neither the existence nor the nature of God, because He has neither extension nor limits.

But by faith we know His existence; in glory we shall know His nature.  Now, I have already shown that we may well know the existence of a thing, without knowing its nature.

Let us now speak according to natural lights.

If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us.  We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is.  This being so, who will dare to undertake the decision of the question?  Not we, who have no affinity to Him.

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Pascal's Pensées from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.