This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler.
PASCAL
by
PRINCIPAL TULLOCH
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
edinburgh and london
1878.—reprint, 1882
All Rights reserved
p.iPREFATORY NOTE.
The translations in this volume are chiefly my own; but I havealso taken expressions and sentences freely from others—andespecially from Dr M’Crie, in his translation of the‘Provincial Letters’—when they seemed to conveywell the sense of the original. It would be impossible todistinguish in all cases between what is my own and what I haveborrowed. The ‘Provincial Letters’ have beentranslated at least four times into English. Thetranslation of Dr M’Crie, published in 1846, is the mostspirited. The ‘Pensées’ were translatedby the Rev. Edward Craig, A.M. Oxon., in 1825, following theFrench edition of 1819, which again followed that of Bossut in1779. A new translation, both of the ‘Letters’and ‘Pensées,’ by George Pearce,Esq.—the latter after the restored text of M.Faugère—appeared in 1849 and 1850.
J. T.
p. iiiCONTENTS.
chap. |
| page |
| INTRODUCTION | |
I. | PASCAL’S FAMILY AND YOUTH | |
II. | PASCAL’S SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES | |
III. | PASCAL IN THE WORLD | |
IV. | PORT ROYAL AND PASCAL’S LATER YEARS | |
V. | THE ‘PROVINCIAL LETTERS’ | |
VI. | THE ‘PENSÉES’ |
p.1INTRODUCTION.
There are few names which have become more classical in modernliterature than that of Blaise Pascal. There is hardly anyname more famous at once in literature, science, andreligion. Cut off at the early age of thirty-nine—thefatal age of genius—he had long before attained pre-eminentdistinction as a geometer and discoverer in physical science;while the rumour of his genius as the author of the‘Provincial Letters,’ and as one of the chiefs of anotable school of religious thought, had spread far andwide. His writings continue to be studied for theperfection of their sty