Blaise Pascal - biography, discoveries. Blaise Pascal, physicist: biography, description of scientific discoveries, review of inventions

Blaise Pascal - an outstanding French mathematician, physicist, writer, religious philosopher; he is the author of a number of works devoted to number theory, algebra, and probability theory. The scientist was one of the founders of mathematical analysis and projective geometry, created the first examples of calculating equipment, and formulated the basic law of hydrostatics. Blaise Pascal was born on June 19, 1623 in Clermont; his father was the chairman of the court, one of the most famous lawyers in the city. All Pascals were distinguished by extraordinary abilities, and in Blaise, talent manifested itself from early childhood.

In 1631, Etienne Pascal, the head of the family, moved with his children to the capital and directed his efforts to develop Blaise’s mental abilities. Both son and father paid special attention to mathematics. In their house, weekly meetings of a kind of circle of mathematicians were held. In these meetings, 16-year-old Pascal Jr. began to take an active part and was so successful that he was among the first even among adults. At the same age, he composed the work “Essay on Conic Sections”; it contained a theorem now called Pascal's theorem. This treatise has reached our time in the form of a small excerpt.

Nature endowed Blaise Pascal with unusual, outstanding abilities, but deprived him of health. When their family moved to Rouen in January 1640, Blaise's health began to deteriorate noticeably. He invented an arithmetic machine, for which he became famous even outside his homeland, but intense exercise seriously damaged his health. His father, friends, and doctors sounded the alarm and forbade any mental activity, and Blaise gradually became involved in social life with its pleasures and hobbies. However, in the true sense, he never became a secular person: with his timidity, excessive naivety, and sincerity, he stood out from the crowd.

In 1646, an event took place that sent Pascal’s biography in a completely different direction. He becomes acquainted with Jansenism and has doubts about the justification of pursuing science, wonders whether his activity is repugnant to God, but does not abandon it. On a November night in 1664, Pascal, by his own admission, experienced an insight from above, but what exactly it was, he did not tell even those closest to him. After this, the scientist cut off all secular ties, asked the head of the Port-Royal monastery to become his confessor, and left Paris.

After living for some time with the Duke de Luynes, in a desire for even greater solitude, he leaves for the Port-Royal monastery, breaks with scientific activity and directs all his mind and strength to literature that defends “eternal values.” Despite the harsh lifestyle, he experiences spiritual uplift and feels much better; his brilliant intellect becomes a powerful weapon in the fight against ideological opponents.

Throughout 1656-1657. His “Letters from a Provincial” are published, causing a real scandal in society. This work, a true masterpiece of satirical prose, played a significant role in undermining the reputation of the Jesuits. The work was published under a pseudonym, however, Pascal had to take security measures to avoid ending up in the Bastille.

Around 1652, Pascal conceived the idea of ​​a fundamental work, “Apology of the Christian Religion,” which would defend the religious worldview. For the future "Apology" from mid-1667, Pascal made notes, but later he was unable to turn them into something integral and large-scale due to deteriorating health and the doctors' ban on any mental stress.

When Pascal died, his friends discovered whole stacks of such recordings, approximately 1000 excerpts of different sizes, semantic completeness and genre. They were deciphered in 1669 and published in the form of a book, “Thoughts on Religion and Other Subjects” (the better known shortened version is “Thoughts”). This work was often compared to Montaigne's Essays and the philosophical works of Descartes.

Beginning in 1658, Blaise Pascal's illnesses progressed rapidly; he felt very weak and suffered from severe headaches. Eyewitnesses remembered him, a man in the prime of his life, as an emaciated old man. Modern scientists have determined that Pascal had a whole bunch of diseases - brain cancer, rheumatism, etc. Experiencing enormous physical suffering, unable to do his favorite things, he devotes his energy to charity and periodically visits old friends. 39-year-old Pascal died on August 19, 1662 after agony that lasted a whole day. He was buried in the Parisian parish church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont.

Blaise Pascal, whose brief biography is outlined in this article, is a French mathematician, physicist, philosopher and master of prose. He laid the foundations of modern probability theory, formulated the fundamental law of hydrostatics, and spread the religious teaching of knowing God through the heart rather than the mind. His principle of intuitionism influenced philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Henri Bergson, as well as the existentialists.

Brief biography and discoveries

Blaise Pascal was born on June 19, 1623 in Clermont-Ferrand, France. His father, Etienne Pascal, presided over the local tax court. His mother died in 1626. In 1631 the family moved to Paris, where his father devoted himself to raising and educating his children. Blaise's sister Jacqueline (b. 1625) was considered a prodigy in literary circles, and he himself turned out to be no less gifted in mathematics.

It is interesting that a certain segment of Blaise Pascal’s biography is reminiscent of Leibniz’s early years. In 1640 he wrote an essay on conic sections based on his study of Gérard Desargues' classic work on synthetic projective geometry. The young man's work was a great success in mathematical circles and even aroused the envy of the great French rationalist and mathematician René Descartes. Between 1642 and 1644, Pascal conceived and built the Pascaline computing device to assist his father, who had been appointed local administrator in Rouen in 1639, with his tax calculations. The machine was considered by contemporaries as the main achievement of the French scientist, and not without reason, since in a sense it was the first digital calculator - it worked with integers. The significance of this contribution explains the youthful pride that manifested itself in the dedication of the machine in 1644 to the French Chancellor Pierre Seguier.

Appeal to religion

Until 1646, Pascal's family adhered to strictly Roman Catholic principles, although these were often only a substitute for internal religion. However, his father's illness led Blaise to deeper religiosity. He met two students of the Abbot Saint-Cyran, who was the abbot of the Port-Royal monastery. The latter gave Pascal moral and theological ideas about Jansenism and caused him to think about the monastery. Jansenism was a form of Augustinianism in the Roman Catholic Church. He rejected free will, accepted predestination, and taught that divine grace, not good works, was the key to salvation. The center for the dissemination of the doctrine was the monastery at Port-Royal. Pascal felt the need to turn to God and convinced his family of this. His letters indicate that for several years he acted as a spiritual adviser to his family, but his internal conflict between worldly and ascetic life had not yet been resolved.

Inventions and discoveries

Once again immersed in his scientific interests, he tested the theories of Galileo and Evangelista Torricelli (the Italian physicist who discovered the principle of the barometer). To achieve this, physicist Blaise Pascal replicated and intensified experiments on atmospheric pressure, creating mercury barometers and measuring air pressure in Paris and on a mountaintop near Clermont-Ferrand. These tests paved the way for further research into hydrodynamics and hydrostatics.

Unfortunately, in a short biography of Blaise Pascal it is impossible to talk in detail about all of his works - only the main achievements of the French scientist are mentioned here. During his experiments, he invented a syringe and created a hydraulic press. The latter's work was based on the principle later named after Pascal: the pressure exerted on a fluid is transmitted in all directions, regardless of the area to which it is applied. His publications on the vacuum problem (1647-48) further enhanced his reputation.

When he fell ill from overwork (and, possibly, the effects of mercury vapor), doctors advised him to take a break. But the "secular period" (1651-54) was, in fact, a time of intense scientific work, during which he made a number of discoveries. Blaise Pascal contributed to physics by writing treatises on equilibrium in liquid solutions, on the weight and density of air, and to mathematics with his work on the arithmetic triangle. And in a fragment of his last work, De Alea Geometriae, he laid the foundations for the calculus of probabilities.

New life

Towards the end of 1653, the French scientist began to feel guilty about religion. The "Night of the Fire", the intense, perhaps mystical "conversion" he experienced on November 23, 1654, marked the beginning of a new life for him. In January 1655 Pascal moved to Port-Royal, and although he never became a hermit, he subsequently wrote only at the request of the Jansenists and never again published in his own name. The two works for which he is mainly known - Letters to a Provincial and Thoughts - refer to the years of his life spent in Port-Royal.

"Letters to a Provincial"

Blaise Pascal wrote 18 letters in defense of Antoine Arnault, an opponent of the Jesuits and defender of Jansenism, who was brought before the Faculty of Theology in Paris for his controversial religious writings. They are dedicated to divine grace and the Jesuit code of ethics. The weakened morality they taught was a weak point in their disputes with Port-Royal. Pascal freely quotes Jesuit dialogues and discreditable quotations from their own works, sometimes in a spirit of ridicule, sometimes with indignation. In the last two letters on the question of grace, the author proposed a conciliatory position, which later allowed Port Royal to sign an agreement in 1668 to temporarily end the conflict.

Meaning of "Letters"

Letters to a Provincial was an immediate success. Primarily due to their form, in which pompous and tedious rhetoric was for the first time replaced by variety, brevity and precision of style. As the founder of French literary criticism, Nicolas Boalo, recognized, they became the beginning of modern French prose. Part of their popularity in Protestant and skeptical circles is based on the strength of their attack on the Jesuits. In England, the Letters became most widespread when Roman Catholicism posed a threat to the Church of England. However, they helped Catholicism become stronger - in 1678, Pope Innocent XI himself condemned half of the statements previously condemned by Pascal.

The Letters to a Provincial thus played a decisive role in promoting a return to domestic religion and helped ensure the eventual triumph of the ideas set forth in Antoine Arnauld's treatise De la fréquente communion (1643), in which he protested against the idea that the libertine could be redeemed the continuation of sin by frequent communion without repentance - a thesis that remained almost undeniable until the French church felt the consequences of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 (which granted freedom of religion to French Protestants). While the Jesuits portrayed the Counter-Reformation primarily as their orthodoxy and obedience to ecclesiastical authority, the Provincial Letters proposed a more spiritual approach and emphasized the union of the soul with the mystical body of Christ through charity.

"Thoughts"

Pascal finally decided to write a work on Christian apologetics as a continuation of his thoughts on miracles and other evidence of Christianity. The work remained unfinished. Between 1657 and 1658 he composed most of the notes and fragments which the editors published under the inappropriate title of "Thoughts." In the Apology, Blaise Pascal shows man without grace as an incomprehensible mixture of greatness and wretchedness, incapable of truth or the achievement of the highest good towards which his nature strives. Religion explains the contradictions that, according to the author, philosophy and pragmatism are unable to resolve, and therefore it should be loved and cherished. The skeptic's indifference must be overcome by the following argument: if God does not exist, the skeptic loses nothing by believing in him; but if it exists, the skeptic, by believing in it, receives eternal life. Pascal insists that people should come to God only through Jesus Christ, because a living being would never have known the infinite if Jesus had not come down to appreciate how low man had fallen.

In the second part of the work, the author applies the Augustinian theory of allegorical interpretation of biblical types (figurative), reviews rabbinic texts, the stability of true religion, the activities of Moses and evidence concerning the godlike role of Jesus Christ; and finally gives a picture of the primitive church and the fulfillment of prophecy.

But let's return to the biography of Blaise Pascal.

last years of life

Blaise Pascal took up science again. Firstly, the “gentlemen of Port-Royal” themselves asked for his help in compiling the “Elements of Geometry” (1657-58), and, secondly, he was invited to publish what he discovered about cycloid curves - a subject over which the greatest mathematicians of that time worked. His new fame gave him a sense of self-respect, but from February 1659 illness returned him to his former mood, and he wrote the “prayer for conversion” that the English clerics Charles and John Wesley, who founded the Methodist Church, later praised so highly. Barely able to do regular work, Pascal devoted himself to helping the poor and led an ascetic and prayerful life. At the same time, he took part in disputes caused by the requirement of church authorities, before receiving the sacraments, to sign a document condemning the 5 provisions of Jansenism. Disagreements with the theologians of Port-Royal forced him to abandon the discussion, although he did not break off relations with the Jansenists.

Blaise Pascal died on August 19, 1662 after suffering terrible pain, probably from carcinomatous meningitis, which was the result of a malignant stomach ulcer. He was supported by the parish priest, who was not a Jansenist.

Heritage

Physicist, mathematician, eloquent publicist and inspired creative personality was embarrassed by the abundance of his talents. It is assumed that Blaise Pascal's too sudden change in interests prevented him from discovering the laws of infinitesimal calculus. In some places in Letters to a Provincial he treats people's relationship with God as if it were a geometric problem. But these considerations are outweighed by what he drew from his many gifts. His religious texts are rigorous because of his scientific training, and Blaise Pascal's love of facts is evident both in his use of many quotations and in his determination to abandon the energetic method of attack that he used so effectively in his Apology.

From a biographical sketch

Mikhail Mikhailovich Filippov(1858-1903) - Russian writer, philosopher, journalist, physicist, chemist, economist and mathematician, popularizer of science and encyclopedist. He studied at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Novorossiysk University, then at the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University. In 1892 he received a doctorate in natural philosophy from the University of Heidelberg.

All our dignity lies in our ability to think. Only thought elevates us, and not space and time, in which we are nothing. Let us try to think with dignity - this is the basis of morality. (Blaise Pascal)

PREFACE

Many conflicting opinions have been expressed about Pascal's life and philosophy; and it is still difficult to point out at least one study about Pascal that does not have the nature of either a defensive speech or an indictment. Even in the most recent times, the French academician Nurison found it necessary to write a lengthy “Defense of Pascal” (Defense de Pascal) and break spears with writers of the 18th century over it. This did not stop the same Nurison from belittling the significance of Pascal’s scientific discoveries, attributing one of them to the suggestion of Descartes.

As for us, our goal is neither to accuse nor to defend. Pascal was a son of the 17th century and shared the shortcomings of his time. If Newton, who lived later than Pascal, could write notes on the Apocalypse devoid of any, even literary, meaning, then Pascal could not be charged with such theological exercises. But you have to have it. too much courage not to recognize Pascal’s very definite and very honorable place in the history of philosophy and in the history of the development of Christianity. Pascal's struggle with the Jesuits alone is enough to ensure the gratitude of his posterity. As a philosopher, Pascal represents a highly peculiar combination of a skeptic and pessimist with a sincerely believing mystic; echoes of his philosophy can be found even where you least expect them. Many of Pascal's brilliant thoughts are repeated in a slightly modified form not only by Leibniz, Rousseau, Schopenhauer, Leo Tolstoy, but even by such a thinker apparently opposed to Pascal as Voltaire. So, for example, Voltaire’s well-known position, which states that in the life of mankind, small occasions often entail huge consequences, was inspired by reading Pascal’s “Pencils”. Pascal says, for example, that all the results of Cromwell's political activities were destroyed because a grain of sand got into his bladder, and this resulted in stone disease. Voltaire, in turn, states that all of Cromwell's extreme revolutionary actions were caused by the state of his digestion. Dozens of similar far from accidental analogies between Pascal and Voltaire could be cited. Quite a few of Voltaire’s arguments against the Jesuits were taken from Pascal, and one can even say that Voltaire is much more lenient towards the “venerable fathers” than Pascal,

The Jesuits anathematized Pascal; a certain Father Gardouin even promoted him to be an atheist. The Jansenists made him their saint; 18th-century philosophers declared Pascal half-mad. Both did not publish, but distorted his works, and the Jansenists crossed out everything that seemed unpious to them, and Condorcet and other writers of the last century tried to throw out everything that was too pious.

Almost everyone who wrote about Pascal agreed on one thing: everyone was amazed at the diversity, strength and extremely early development of his genius. Condorcet, mocking Pascal's confession, which he was the first to call an "amulet", however, wrote a speech laudatory of his scientific discoveries. Voltaire found it necessary to republish Pascal's Thoughts, providing them with his own notes as an antidote. Voltaire's judgments about Pascal, however, are so interesting that it does not hurt to present them at least in extracts. Having laughed most cruelly at optimism in his “Candide”, where Leibniz got it, Voltaire attacked Pascal’s pessimism with the same wit, saying about this philosopher: “This pious misanthrope, the sublime Heraclitus, who thinks that in this world everything is just misfortune and crime."

“It seems to me,” Voltaire wrote in his notes to Pascal’s “Thoughts,” that the general spirit of Pascal’s works is the portrayal of man in the most hateful light; he bitterly paints us all as evil and unhappy; he writes against human nature in much the same way as he wrote against the Jesuits. He ascribes to the essence of our nature that which belongs only to certain men, and in the most eloquent manner he denounces the human race. I dare to take the side of the human race against this sublime misanthrope; I dare say that we are not at all as evil and not as unhappy as they believe.”

Elsewhere, Voltaire tries not only to refute Pascal, but also to explain the reasons for his pessimism. Pascal's “thoughts,” says Voltaire, belong not to a philosopher, but to an enthusiast. “If the book conceived by Pascal had been built from such materials, it would have been a monstrous building built on sand. But he could not build it not only due to lack of knowledge, but also because in the last years of his short life his brain became disordered.” Referring to the testimony of Leibniz and other writers, Voltaire tries to prove that Pascal was half-crazed in the last five or six years of his life, and notes: “This illness is no more humiliating than fever or migraine. If the great Pascal was struck by her, then it was Samson who lost his strength. Of all these eternal disputants, Pascal alone remains, because he alone was a man of brilliant mind. He alone stands on the ruins of his century.”

This view of Pascal, supported by the brilliant sayings of Voltaire and other encyclopedists of the 18th century, was dominant for a long time. It was fully reflected in a remarkable study for its time, written in the forties of this century by the doctor Lelyu: the author of this work very skillfully compared all the facts known in his time, one way or another testifying to the abnormality of Pascal’s state of mind. The French philosopher Cousin is also partly inclined to the same view, who very often condemns the opinions of Pascal, but justifies them by the illness of this great man.

A completely opposite view is developed in France by a number of writers, starting with Jansenist theologians and ending with Sainte-Beuve and academician Nurison. For them, the moral and philosophical teaching of Pascal is the purest expression of Christianity, and, willingly admitting any mistakes of Pascal in his personal life or even in the field of science, they do not allow the slightest encroachment on Pascal as the author of the “Penzas”, which are the program of his apologia for Christianity. .

All these defensive and accusatory speeches had their significance in the 17th and 18th centuries, but the time has long come to regard the life and work of Pascal with complete objectivity; and with such an impartial look, it is impossible not to see that both his lawyers and prosecutors fell into obvious exaggerations.

As for Pascal's illness, firstly, this illness cannot be considered insanity. In the 18th century - and even more so now, at the end of the 19th - all kinds of ecstasies were and are too often confused with madness; There have even been attempts to draw a complete analogy and establish a close connection between all kinds of genius and insanity. Pascal was constantly ill, but he could not be called insane at any period of his life, even when he was under the influence of the strongest religious ecstasy. Moreover, Pascal's illnesses in many cases were not the cause, but the consequence of his excessive and, in this sense, abnormal mental activity. A man who possessed such amazing willpower, which we will see in Pascal, could not possibly have been subject to the influence of bad digestion to such an extent that the entire direction of his philosophy could be attributed to this influence. One thing is certain, this is the fact that constant illness, having hampered Pascal's scientific work, directed his mind too exclusively to another field, and only in this sense can it be said that Pascal's illness turned him from a physicist into a mystic. He himself recognized this influence of the disease, which he repeatedly pointed out in his writings.

But, rejecting the too one-sided judgments of the philosophers of the 18th century, it is even more difficult to accept the point of view of those writers for whom Pascal is an unattainable moral authority and who are ready to forget about his true merits, just to recognize him as a great religious preacher. This is the opposite and, perhaps, even less thorough extreme.

PASCAL'S CHILDHOOD

House of Pascals in Clermont

Blaise Pascal, son of Etienne Pascal and Antoinette née Begon, was born in Clermont on June 19, 1623.

The entire Pascal family was distinguished by outstanding abilities. Pascal's father, a highly educated man, knew languages, history, literature and was a good mathematician; Blaise's elder sister, Gilberte, was one of the most learned women of her time and studied mathematics and Latin under the guidance of her father; She also owns the most complete modern biography of her famous brother. Pascal's younger sister, Jacqueline, was distinguished by her poetic and stage talent. As for Pascal himself, from early childhood he showed signs of extraordinary mental development.

A curious fact relating to Pascal's infancy is reported in a short biographical note written by Pascal's niece, the daughter of his elder sister, who also inherited the family's literary inclinations.

When Pascal was one year old, “something extraordinary” happened to him, according to his niece. Pascal's mother was a very young woman, but nevertheless very serious. She was “very pious and very generous to the poor” - traits that we will later meet in Pascal himself. In Clermont, by the way, there lived one poor woman, whom everyone considered a witch; but Pascal’s mother was not superstitious, she laughed at women’s gossip and continued to give alms to this woman. One day, little Pascal experienced a strange nervous disorder, like an epileptic fit. This disease itself was very common among children at that time and even received a special name (in Paris it was called tomber en chartre), but Pascal’s nervous attacks were accompanied by a special kind of hydrophobia: one type of water caused him to convulse. Moreover, the following was noticed in little Pascal: the one-year-old child was jealous of his mother and father. He loved it very much when his father and mother caressed him separately; but as soon as the father caressed his mother in front of him or even approached her, the child began to scream, he had convulsions and fell into complete exhaustion.

All the Pascals' acquaintances and friends were firmly convinced that the child was bewitched and that a witch had jinxed him. Pascal's parents at first laughed at this opinion, but the child's condition worsened, and finally Pascal's father's doubts were shaken. To be completely convinced of the witch’s guilt or innocence, Etienne Pascal called the woman into his office and began to interrogate her. The woman assumed an air of oppressed innocence. Then Pascal's father changed his tone.

“I know that you bewitched my child,” he said, “and if you don’t confess your guilt right now, I will bring you to the gallows.”

Then the imaginary witch threw herself on her knees and began to repent so sincerely that finally Etienne Pascal himself believed her; and that’s all the cunning woman needed. She said that she allegedly wanted to bewitch the child in revenge for the fact that Pascal, who held a position in the financial department, refused a petition in her legal case, which turned out to be wrong.

“To take revenge on you,” said the woman, “I spoke death against your child.”

The seriously frightened father exclaimed:

- How! Does my child really have to die?

“There is only one way,” said the woman, “it is necessary for someone else to die for him.”

“No,” replied Etienne Pascal, “I don’t want anyone else to suffer for me or even for my child.”

“Don’t worry,” the old woman objected, “I can transfer his lot to some animal.”

Etienne Pascal offered a horse, but the woman was content with a cat, which she “spoke” in the most primitive way, namely, she threw out of the window and smashed its head. Then she applied some kind of poultice to the child's tummy. When Pascal's father returned home from service, he found everyone at home in tears, and the child lay as if dead. The father ran out of the room and, meeting the imaginary witch on the stairs, gave her such a slap in the face that the woman rolled down the steps. Not at all embarrassed, she stood up and said that the child was alive and would “go away” before midnight. Indeed, little Pascal “moved away,” but when the father approached his mother, in the form of experience, the child again began to rush and scream, and only after a few weeks this strange jealousy passed. Nevertheless, everyone believed in the miraculous power of the witch.

Little Pascal lost his mother when he was only three years old, and this loss determined his fate in many ways. Pascal was his father's only son, and the latter circumstance, together with the child's amazing abilities, prompted his father to spend a lot of time on his mental education; but due to the absence of a mother, physical care for the child was poor, and even as a child Pascal was not in good health.

Pascal never attended any school and had no other teacher than his father.

In 1631, when little Pascal was eight years old, his father moved with all his children to Paris, selling his position, according to the custom of that time, and investing a significant part of his small capital in the Hotel de Ville.

Having a lot of leisure, the father almost exclusively occupied himself with the mental education of his son.

Pascal's sister assures that her father tried in every possible way to moderate her brother's ardor for studies. This is partly true - but only in relation to Pascal’s earliest adolescence.

In those days, it was not uncommon to teach Latin to eight-year-old children, but Pascal's father decided to start Latin with him when the boy was twelve years old, and in the meantime taught him the general rules of grammar and, as far as can be judged from the little information available, taught him much more intelligently than the then school teachers.

Little Pascal was distinguished by remarkable understanding and curiosity. His father often told him things that could capture the imagination of a child, but Blaise immediately sought an explanation and was never satisfied with a bad or incomplete answer. He had a remarkable ability to distinguish truth from lies. If Pascal realized that an explanation was incorrect, he tried to come up with his own. One day at dinner, one of the guests struck a faience plate with a knife, and a drawn-out musical sound was heard, but as soon as a hand was placed on the plate, the sound stopped. Pascal was surprised and demanded an explanation. Having not received it, he began to do experiments himself and wrote notes about them, giving them the loud title “Treatise on Sounds.” At that time Pascal was twelve years old. Even earlier, an event occurred that revealed his amazing mathematical abilities.

Pascal's father himself studied mathematics a lot and loved to gather mathematicians in his house. But, having drawn up a plan for his son’s studies, he postponed mathematics until his son improved in Latin. Knowing Blaise's curiosity, his father carefully hid all his mathematical works from him and never had mathematical conversations with his friends in front of him. When the boy asked to teach him mathematics, his father promised this as a reward in the future. Young Pascal asked his father to explain, at least, what kind of science geometry is? “Geometry,” answered the father, “is a science that provides a means of correctly drawing figures and finding the relationships that exist between these figures.”

The twelve-year-old boy thought about this definition. Reflections took possession of him to such an extent that during his leisure hours, while in the hall where he usually played, Pascal began to draw figures, without even knowing their real names. He drew straight lines with charcoal, calling them “sticks”, drew circles, trying to make them as regular as possible, and called them “rings”; then he began to find out what proportions exist between the figures and parts of the figures. Looking for proof of the properties he found by measuring, Pascal composed his theorems and axioms and little by little reached the thirty-second theorem of the first book of Euclid, which states that the sum of the interior angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles.

Just at the moment when Pascal was finishing the proof of this theorem, the father entered the room, not suspecting anything about his son’s activities. The son, in turn, was so immersed in thoughts that he did not notice his father’s presence for a long time. It is difficult to say which of the two was more stunned: the son, caught by surprise in an illicit activity, or the father, who saw the figures drawn by his son. But the father’s amazement knew no bounds when his son admitted that he was trying to prove the basic property of a triangle.

- How did you come up with this? – the father finally asked.

“Here’s how: I first found this,” and the son gave a theorem concerning the properties of the external angle of a triangle. “And this is how I found out,” and a series of proofs followed. Following this path and saying, for example, that “two sticks taken together in a figure of three sticks are longer than the third stick,” young Pascal explained to his father all the properties of “sticks and rings” that he had discovered and finally reached his definitions and axioms.

Pascal's father was not only surprised, but also frightened by the power of this child's mind. Without answering his son a word, he left the room and went to his friend Le Pallier, a learned man and disposed towards his family. Seeing the extreme excitement of Father Pascal, noticing even tears in his eyes, Le Pallier was frightened and asked him to tell him quickly what happened?

“I cry not from grief, but from joy,” said Etienne Pascal. “You know how carefully I hid math books from my son so as not to distract him from other studies, but look what he did.

And the happy father took Le Pallier to him. He was as amazed as his father himself and said:

“In my opinion, it is impossible to keep this mind locked up and hide this science from it any longer. We need to give him books now.

Pascal's father gave his son Euclid's Elements, allowing him to read them during his rest hours. The boy read Euclid's "Geometry" himself, without ever asking for an explanation. Not content with what he read, he added and composed. It can therefore be said without any exaggeration that Pascal reinvented the geometry of the ancients, created by entire generations of Egyptian and Greek scientists. This is a fact unparalleled even in the biographies of the greatest mathematicians. At the age of eighteen, Clairaut wrote wonderful treatises, but he had good training, and eighteen years old is not like twelve. The abilities of one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, Newton, developed relatively late. Of all the great scientists, Pascal, more than anyone else, has the right to the title of a prematurely developed and equally prematurely dead genius.

FIRST SCIENTIFIC WORKS

Blaise Pascal in his youth. Drawing by J. Houses

The meetings held by Father Pascal and some of his friends, such as Mersenne, Roberval, Carcavi and others, took on the character of proper scientific meetings. Once a week, mathematicians who belonged to Etienne Pascal’s circle gathered to read the works of the circle members and propose various questions and problems. Sometimes notes sent by foreign scientists were also read. The activities of this modest private society, or rather circle of friends, became the beginning of the future glorious Paris Academy. In 1666, after the death of both Pascals, the French government officially recognized the existence of a society that had managed to acquire a strong reputation throughout the scientific world.

From the age of sixteen, young Pascal also began to take an active part in the club’s activities. He was already so strong in mathematics that he mastered almost all the methods known at that time, and among the members who most often delivered new messages, he was one of the first. Not only his father, but also the proud, envious mathematician Roberval (inventor of the famous scales) and other members of the circle were surprised at the young man’s abilities. Pascal was also strong in criticizing other people's works. Very often, problems and theorems were sent from Italy and Germany, and if there was any error in what was sent, Pascal was one of the first to notice it.

At the age of sixteen, Pascal wrote a very remarkable treatise on conic sections (that is, on curved lines resulting from the intersection of a cone with a plane - such as the ellipse, parabola and hyperbola). Unfortunately, only a fragment of this treatise has survived. Pascal's relatives and friends claimed that “since the time of Archimedes, no such mental effort has been made in the field of geometry” - an exaggerated review, but caused by surprise at the extraordinary youth of the author. Some of the theorems discovered by Pascal are indeed quite remarkable. Pascal was advised to publish this work at the same time, but he put it off, perhaps because he wanted to create something more remarkable. His sister assures him that his brother did this out of modesty, although this is rather doubtful, because Pascal showed excessive modesty only at the end of his life.

Proud of his son's extraordinary abilities, the elder Pascal almost did not interfere with his mathematical work, in which the son soon surpassed his father; but his father continued to study with Pascal ancient languages, logic and physics, which at that time was considered not so much an experimental science as a part of philosophy.

Intensive training soon undermined Pascal’s already weak health. At the age of eighteen, he was already constantly complaining of headaches, which initially did not pay much attention to. But Pascal's health finally collapsed during excessive work on the arithmetic machine he invented.

General view of the arithmetic machine

At the age of eighteen, Pascal made one of the most ingenious mechanical inventions, very important and interesting from a theoretical point of view, although it did not live up to all the hopes of the young inventor. They claim that the reason for this invention was the appointment of his father in Rouen to a position that required extensive calculations: wanting to ease his father’s work, Pascal came up with his own calculating machine. This machine is remarkable especially in the sense that with its invention Pascal proved the possibility of replacing not only physical, but also mental labor with purely mechanical devices. This invention strengthened in Pascal the idea instilled in him by Descartes' doctrine of the automatism of animals, the idea that our mind acts automatically and that some of the most complex mental processes are essentially no different from mechanical processes. The theory of “brain reflexes” was thus known in part as early as the 17th century.

The machine invented by Pascal was quite complex in design, and calculations with its help required considerable skill. This explains why it remained a mechanical curiosity that aroused the surprise of contemporaries, but did not come into practical use.

Pascal worked for three years to improve his machine, from which he expected miracles. He tried over fifty different models. The final model is still kept in the Paris Conservatoire of Arts and Crafts. It looks like a brass box half an arshin long.

How harmful the work on this invention was on the state of Pascal’s body can be seen from his own words that from the age of eighteen he does not remember a single day when he could say that he was completely healthy.

Wanting to prevent ignorant counterfeits of his machine, Pascal secured a royal privilege, which was given to him in the most flattering terms. Pascal's arithmetic machine extremely surprised his contemporaries, as can be seen, by the way, from one modern poetic description, which says that many ladies and men of the highest circle flocked to the Luxembourg Palace to look at this amazing invention of the “French Archimedes.”

THE BEGINNING OF FAME

Pascal's Arithmetic Machine

Since Pascal's invention of the arithmetic machine, his name has become famous not only in France, but also abroad. Although Pascal’s sister assures in her brother’s biography that at the age of eighteen he did not at all crave fame, this statement is in conflict with the actions of Pascal himself, who tried to notify everyone he could about his invention and, for example, wrote a letter about it to the famous Swedish Queen Christina, the eccentric daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, who studied science, invited Descartes to her place and aroused the admiration of her contemporaries with her youth and beauty even more than her learning.

The name of Pascal could not remain unknown to Descartes, especially since many of the members of the circle in which both Pascals, father and son, were members, many of Pascal the father’s closest friends were avowed opponents of Descartes. In particular, Roberval, a bad philosopher, but a skilled debater, was at enmity with Descartes. One might even say that young Pascal served as an unwitting culprit in intensifying the discord that already existed between Descartes and the founders of the future French Academy.

Even before Pascal invented the arithmetic machine, when sixteen-year-old Pascal wrote a treatise on conic sections, this was reported to Descartes as a special miracle. Descartes, who was never surprised by anything, could hardly hide his amazement, did not want to believe and wanted to personally familiarize himself with Pascal’s treatise. When the list was delivered to him, Descartes, after reading a few pages, said: “I thought so, this young man studied with Desargues; he has abilities, but from here it is still a long way from the miracles that are told about him.”

It should be noted that in the surviving excerpt from Pascal’s treatise, the young author himself mentions the Lyon mathematician Desargues, noting that he owes a lot to his works. Nevertheless, Descartes' review of Pascal's youthful works is overly harsh. Descartes could not help but see that Pascal did not limit himself to imitating Desargues, but discovered many highly remarkable theorems, one of which, which he called the “mystical hexagon,” constitutes a very major acquisition for science. The biased review of Descartes, the first philosopher of the time, probably hurt the young mathematician very sensitively; Father Pascal's friends were even more irritated, and from then on Roberval did not miss a single opportunity to annoy Descartes.

The struggle between the school of Descartes, or the so-called Cartesians, and the founders of the French Academy, grouped around Pascal, intensified when the twenty-year-old Pascal undertook a series of physical experiments aimed at continuing the research of Torricelli and other students of Galileo.

Before moving on to this era in Pascal's life, it is necessary to tell an episode that characterizes the morals of that time and had a significant impact on the fate of the entire Pascal family.

Back in December 1638, the then French government, devastated by wars and embezzlement, came up with a fairly simple way to increase its funds, namely, it cut the rents received from the capital invested in the Hotel de Ville. Pascal's father was among those receiving the annuity. The owners of the rents began to grumble loudly and hold meetings at which they openly condemned the government. Pascal's father was considered one of the leaders of this movement, which is very plausible, since he invested almost all of his fortune in the Hotel de Ville. One way or another, the all-powerful Cardinal Richelieu, who did not tolerate the slightest contradiction, gave the order to arrest Etienne Pascal and put him in the Bastille. Pascal the father, warned in advance by a trusted friend, first hid in Paris and then secretly fled to Auvergne. His famous son was only fifteen years old at that time. You can imagine the children's despair! But suddenly things took a new turn. Cardinal Richelieu suddenly had the fantasy of ordering Scuderi’s tragicomic play “Tyrannical Love” to be performed in his presence by young girls. The direction of this performance was entrusted to the Duchess of Aiguillon, who knew the Pascal family and had long noticed the stage abilities of Pascal's younger sister, Jacqueline, at that time a thirteen-year-old girl.

In the absence of his father, Pascal's older sister, Gilberte, was the head of the family. When asked by the Duchess whether she would allow her younger sister to take part in the performance, the eighteen-year-old girl gave a proud answer: “The Cardinal,” she said, “did not give us so much pleasure that we could, in turn, think about giving him entertainment.”

The Duchess insisted, and finally, seeing the young girl’s persistence, she said heatedly:

“Understand that fulfilling my request will perhaps lead to the return of your father.”

Gilberte, however, announced that she would not give an answer before consulting with her father’s close friends. At the meeting she convened, it was decided that her sister Jacqueline would accept the role assigned to her.

The play "Tyrannical Love" was performed in the presence of Cardinal Richelieu on April 3, 1639. Jacqueline played her role with remarkable grace, charming all the spectators and most of all the cardinal himself. The smart girl managed to take advantage of her success. At the end of the performance, she unexpectedly approached the cardinal and recited a poetic epilogue she had written, which said: “Do not be amazed, incomparable Armand, that I have so poorly satisfied your hearing and vision. My soul is under the influence of painful anxiety. To make me able to please you, return my unfortunate father from exile, save the innocent! With this you will return freedom to my spirit and body, voice and body movements.”

Amazed and completely enchanted, Cardinal Richelieu picked up the girl and, while she was still reciting her poems, kissed her several times and then said:

- Yes, my child, I will do for you everything you want. Write to your father so that he can return home calmly.

Then the Duchess of Aiguillon approached and began to praise the elder Pascal, saying:

“He is a remarkably honest and learned man.” It is a pity that his knowledge and hard work remain unused. “And here,” the duchess continued, pointing to Blaise Pascal, “is his son: he is only sixteen years old, but he is already a great mathematician.

Meanwhile, Jacqueline, encouraged by her success, again turned to the cardinal.

“I ask for one more of your favors,” she said.

-What is it, my child? I can’t refuse you anything, you’re too sweet.

- Let my father come to you personally to thank you for your kindness.

- Yes, by all means let him come, only with all of you.

They immediately let Etienne Pascal know about this. He rushes by courier, arrives in Paris and immediately, taking all the children, introduces himself to the cardinal. Richelieu receives him in the most kind manner.

“I know your merits and merits,” said the cardinal. - Return to your children: I entrust them to you. I want to make something great out of them.

Two years later (1641), Etienne Pascal received the post of intendant in Rouen, at that time a post very profitable for unscrupulous people; but Etienne Pascal was an honest man, and, holding this position for seven years, he did not have time to accumulate a fortune.

The move to Rouen, as has already been noted, prompted Pascal to invent an arithmetic machine. Here, in Rouen, he undertook his physical experiments.

PASCAL AS A PHYSICIST AND EXPERIMENTER

At the beginning of the 17th century, physical knowledge was still in a rather chaotic state, and progress since the times of Aristotle and Archimedes was very insignificant.

One of the most widespread misconceptions at that time, dominating both the scientific world and the public, was the doctrine of the so-called “fear of emptiness.” The statement that nature is afraid of emptiness is often found among ancient writers. As for the greatest of the Greek philosophers and natural scientists, Aristotle, he understood the “fear of emptiness” in a very special sense, almost the same way Descartes and his followers understood it later. According to Aristotle, absolutely empty space does not exist at all, and in this sense he said that nature is afraid of emptiness. Later, Aristotle's commentators understood the matter differently and imagined that nature has an irresistible desire to fill any resulting void: thus, they tried to explain physical phenomena by properties inherent only in sentient and thinking beings, such as the ability to feel fear or experience desire.

Descartes, in his physical theory, decisively rejected the very existence of emptiness, and, consequently, the doctrine of the fear of emptiness. Back in 1631, Descartes, in one of his letters, almost guessed the truth, noting that “a column of mercury can be held with just such a force as is necessary to raise a column of air extending from this column of mercury to the limits of the atmosphere.” Instead of dwelling on this simple idea and developing it with experiments and reasoning, Descartes soon plunged into the intricacies of his “subtle matter” - something like the ether of modern physicists - and thereby confused his own simpler explanation.

Meanwhile, one of Galileo’s most capable students, Torricelli, in 1643 undertook experiments on lifting various liquids in tubes and pumps. Having learned about Torricelli's experiments, Pascal, in turn, undertook a series of experiments.

At that time, Pascal still recognized the “fear of emptiness,” but considered it not some unlimited desire to fill empty space, but a force that could be changed and, therefore, limited.

Torricelli's experiments convinced Pascal that it was possible to obtain emptiness, if not absolute, then at least one in which there is no air or water vapor. He did not believe in Descartes’ “subtle matter,” and at first attributed the phenomena of rising water in a pump and mercury in a tube to “a limited fear of emptiness,” that is, as he explains, “to the resistance offered by bodies to their mutual separation.” Convinced of the insufficiency of this explanation and knowing full well that air has weight, Pascal came up with the idea of ​​explaining the phenomena observed in pumps and tubes by the action of this weight.

The experiments initiated by Pascal in 1648 prompted him to begin writing an extensive treatise on the equilibrium of liquids, but he only managed to compose a brief study, and it was not published until after his death.

There are enormous advantages in Pascal's scientific works that distinguish his works favorably from the works of most of his contemporaries. Pascal's presentation is distinguished by its extraordinary clarity and accessibility. His treatise on the equilibrium of liquids can be read by people who know only arithmetic.

Pascal also simply explains phenomena that depend on air pressure. In his treatise “On the Weight of Air,” Pascal already directly and decisively opposes the doctrine of the fear of emptiness and says that all phenomena attributed to this fear depend on the weight of the air and the uniform distribution of pressure. At every step, Pascal draws a parallel between the pressure of the air mass and the pressure of liquids; for example, speaking about how difficult it is to separate two polished plates folded together, he explains this phenomenon by air pressure on the outer surfaces of the plates and notes: “a completely similar phenomenon can be reproduced by immersing the plates folded together in water.”

Based on the discoveries that Pascal made regarding the equilibrium of liquids and gases, one would expect that he would emerge as one of the greatest experimenters of all time. But even before the famous experiments were carried out on Mount Puy de Dome, an event occurred in Pascal’s life that had a very unfavorable effect on his mental activity.

PASCAL'S FIRST "ADVERSE"

Ever since his invention of the arithmetic machine, Pascal was constantly ill and complained of fatigue and headaches. After moving to Rouen, at first he seemed to have recovered, but in 1646 an incident occurred with his father that greatly shocked Pascal’s nervous system. The elder Pascal unhappily fell during the trip and was on the verge of death. This incident, in connection with his previous mental state, influenced young Pascal so much that from then on they began to notice a certain change in him, expressed primarily in extraordinary religiosity. Pascal himself called the internal revolution that took place within him his first “conversion.” Below it will be clarified that the reasons for this “conversion” are quite complex.

Pascal was quite religious from childhood, but until then he had never shown any particular zeal in matters of faith. Now he began to diligently read the Holy Scriptures and theological works and, not content with his own conversion, tried to convert all his household, not excluding his father. His elder sister, Gilberte, fortunately, managed to marry Florent Perrier, who willingly helped Pascal in his scientific experiments; but the youngest, Jacqueline, a beautiful, graceful girl who showed brilliant hopes, who wrote poems that earned Corneille’s praise, soon submitted to her brother’s influence, began to think about renouncing the world and finally went to a monastery. Even Pascal’s father succumbed to his son’s influence and, although he had not previously been an atheist, now began to especially carefully perform rituals and attend church. Many clergy took advantage of this mood of the entire Pascal family. At the same time, many leaders of the so-called Jansenist movement became close to the Pascals.

Young Pascal was so carried away by his religious exercises that at first he discovered all the qualities that characterize proselytes. In one case, he did not even stop before formally denouncing a person who seemed religiously dangerous to him. Pascal’s sister, Gilberte, talks about this event in the most naive way: “In Rouen at that time there was a man (Jacques Forton) who taught a new philosophy that attracted many curious people. Among his listeners were my brother and two young men who were friends with him. From the very first time they noticed that this man was drawing consequences from his philosophy that were contrary to the teachings of the church. So, for example, through his conclusions he proved that the flesh of Jesus was supposedly formed not from the blood of the Holy Virgin, but from some other substance created specifically for this purpose, and many other similar things. They objected to him, but he persisted in his opinion. Having discussed among themselves the danger that threatened the youth from the free dissemination of such erroneous opinions by this man, my brother and his friends first agreed to warn him, but if he remained unconvinced, they decided to denounce him. This happened because he ignored their advice. Then they considered it their duty to report this man to the suffragan bishop of Rouen, Bellay, who sent on his own behalf to interrogate Forton, but, having interrogated him, was deceived by the ambiguous confession of faith, which he stated and signed. Moreover, Bellais did not attach much importance to the testimony of three young men in such an important matter. But they, remaining dissatisfied, immediately went to the Archbishop of Rouen himself, who, having examined the matter, found it so important that he wrote a positive order for Bellais to force this man to renounce all the points on which he was accused.

The culprit was called to the archbishop's council and actually renounced all his opinions. We can say,” explains Pascal’s sister, “that he did it quite sincerely, because he later did not have a drop of bile against those who denounced him: thus, the whole matter ended amicably.”

Some biographers of Pascal tried to whitewash his action. But even Nurison, who is very lenient towards Pascal in such cases, notes that “a low act remains low, even if it was committed even by a saint.” Pascal is justified by the fact that he sincerely believed in the disastrousness of the new teaching, but in this case he could publicly refute it, instead of running around with denunciations. The only mitigating circumstance is the painfully enthusiastic mood in which Pascal was after his first appeal.

According to his sister, Pascal, from his early youth, “was distinguished by his aversion to the then fashionable freethinking.” Science and religion constituted two completely different areas for Pascal. As inquisitive as he was in matters relating to mathematics and physics, he was equally able to limit his curiosity in matters of faith. Pascal often repeated that he owed such a distinction between questions of knowledge and faith to his father, who from childhood told him that everything that is an object of faith cannot be subject to the knowledge of reason. “These rules,” writes Pascal’s sister, “often repeated by his father, to whom my brother had great respect for and in whom he saw the combination of extensive scientific knowledge with a penetrating and strong mind, made such a strong impression on my brother that, hearing the speeches of freethinkers, he was not at all embarrassed by them. When my brother was still very young, he looked at freethinkers as people proceeding from the false principle that human reason is above everything that exists, as a result of which they did not understand the essence of faith... In matters of religion, my brother was submissive, like a child... He never dealt with subtle theological issues, but used all the power of his mind to cognize and apply Christian morality to business.”

This is the judgment of Pascal’s sister, which is somewhat correct, but, of course, does not explain the contradiction that is a feature of most religious ecstasies such as the one to which Pascal was subjected. How could a person, imbued with the principles of love for his neighbor, come to the point where he acted in a role worthy of an inquisitor?

This becomes understandable if we remember that real inquisitors like Torquemada combined stern virtues with the most brutal cruelty.

Although at the end of his life Pascal's father partially submitted to the influence of his son, it is clear from everything that his influence on young Pascal was moderating and sobering. The state of his son’s health often gave his father serious concerns, and with the help of friends at home, he more than once convinced young Pascal to have fun, abandon exclusively scientific pursuits and moderate the spirit of excessive holiness, “which had spread,” according to his sister, “to the whole house.”

Finally a temporary reaction set in, and youth took its toll. To what nervous breakdown Pascal was sometimes driven by his pious exercises is evident from the following story of his niece: “My uncle,” she writes, “lived in great piety, which he communicated to the whole family. One day he fell into an extraordinary state, which was the consequence of extraordinary studies in science. His brain was so tired that my uncle suffered a kind of paralysis. This paralysis spread from the waist to the very bottom, so that at one time my uncle could only walk on crutches. His hands and feet became cold as marble, and every day he had to put on socks soaked in vodka in order to somehow warm his feet.”

The doctors, seeing him in such a state, forbade him from all kinds of activities; but this living and active mind could not remain idle. No longer occupied with either science or works of piety, Pascal began to seek pleasure and finally began to lead a social life, play and have fun. Initially all this was moderate; but gradually he got the taste and began to live like all secular people.

The most scanty information has been preserved about this period of Pascal’s life. His first biographers - his sister and niece - tried in every possible way to throw a veil over the events of this time. Later, Pascal's enemies obviously exaggerated the matter, claiming, for example, that he turned into a passionate gambler and spendthrift, and rode in nothing other than a carriage of gears. This carriage, in all likelihood, did not belong to Pascal at all, but to his new friend, Duke Roanese, who took Pascal with him everywhere.

But the short reaction was not entirely fruitless: Pascal managed to complete his experiments on hydrostatics, invented his famous “arithmetic triangle” and laid the foundation for the theory of probability.

Pascal suffered a very great loss with the death of his father, which followed in 1651. Pascal himself says that if this death had occurred six years earlier, that is, at the time of his first conversion, he would have been a lost man.

On the occasion of his father's death, Pascal wrote a letter to his elder sister and her husband, for which he was often reproached for his heartlessness. This reproach is hardly valid. Only on a superficial reading can Pascal's letter seem reasonable and cold; in reality it is a kind of confession or repentance.

The secular entertainments that Pascal allowed himself often seemed criminal to him, and in difficult moments, such as those brought upon him by the death of his father, he again became unusually religious and reproached himself for changing his lifestyle. If Pascal's letter looks like a sermon or a pastoral epistle, then he addresses his teachings not so much to his sister as to himself. The letter conveys not only consolation to the sister, but also the cry of a tormented soul. “Let us not mourn,” writes Pascal, “like pagans who have no hope. We did not lose our father at the moment of his death; we lost him from the moment he became a member of the church: from that moment he no longer belonged to us, but to the deity. Let us no longer look at death as pagans, but as Christians, that is, with hope. Let us not look at the body as a receptacle for everything bad, but as an indestructible and eternal temple. Nature often tempts us, our lust often craves gratification, but sin is not yet committed if the mind refuses to sin.”

Given such a state of mind, it is not surprising that Pascal often thought about his own death. Frequent illnesses involuntarily brought him to this thought. Even before his father’s death, Pascal wrote a prayer in the spirit of the first Christians “for the good use of illnesses.” In this prayer he says: “Although in my past life I do not know of great crimes that I did not have the opportunity to commit, my life was shameful for its complete idleness and uselessness of all my actions and thoughts. This whole life has been a complete waste of time.” In his self-flagellation, Pascal reaches the point that he considers physical suffering to be completely deserved and looks at it as a saving punishment. “I confess,” he says, “that there was a time when I considered health a blessing.” Now he prays to the deity only so that he can suffer as a Christian. “I don’t pray for deliverance from suffering - this is the reward of the saints,” Pascal notes with touching naivety.

About how firm Pascal was in enduring physical torment, the testimony of his sister has been preserved:

“Among his other painful attacks was that he could not swallow any liquid until it was sufficiently heated, and he could swallow only drop by drop, but since at the same time he suffered from an unbearable headache, excessive heat in the insides and many other diseases, the doctors ordered him to take a laxative every other day for three months. Thus, he had to take all these medicines, for which he had to heat them and swallow them drop by drop. It was sheer torment, and all his loved ones felt sick, but no one ever heard the slightest complaint from him.”

PASCAL'S SOCIAL ACQUAINTANCES. DISCOVERY OF PROBABILITY THEORY

After the death of his father, Pascal, having become the unlimited master of his fortune, for some time continued to live a social life, although more and more often he experienced periods of repentance. There was, however, a time when Pascal became partial to female society: for example, in the province of Poitou, he courted a very educated and lovely girl who wrote poetry and received the nickname of the local Sappho. Pascal developed even more serious feelings towards the sister of the provincial governor, Duke of Roanese.

This duke was a very curious type of the time, when Puritan virtues were found alongside the most refined debauchery. Having lost his father early, the Duke was raised by his grandfather, a rude provincial gentleman, who assigned his grandson a tutor, giving him a very original order to teach the young Duke “to swear like a lord, since a real nobleman must be able to treat his servants.” Nevertheless, what came out of the young duke was not at all what his grandfather expected.

Back in 1647, young Roanez met Pascal and fell in love with him so much that he could not part with him for a long time. The Duke placed Pascal in his house, constantly traveled with him around his province and was extremely upset when Pascal left him for a long time. Pascal had enormous influence on the Duke. At the age of twenty-five, this aristocrat, despite all the requests and even threats of his relatives, refused a very profitable marriage alliance, then sold his position, transferred his title to one relative and doomed himself to celibacy.

It is difficult to determine exactly when the Duke of Roanese introduced Pascal to his sister Charlotte. Pascal was in the Duke's company so often that this acquaintance could have begun even before the death of Pascal's father; in any case, Pascal was already in love with Charlotte Roanese in 1652, when he wrote his “Speech on the Passion of Love.” A person who knew love only from books could not write like this, and this “Speech” is more eloquent than any confession. As for Pascal’s correspondence with Charlotte, much cannot be learned from it, because the surviving letters date back to a later period, when Pascal drove away all thoughts of earthly love.

In his “Thoughts” (“Pensées”) Pascal says in one place: “You can hide as much as you like: every person loves.” These words may serve as the best description of his failed novel. In all likelihood, Pascal either did not dare to tell his beloved girl about his feelings, or expressed them in such a hidden form that the girl Roanese, in turn, did not dare to give him the slightest hope, although if she did not love, she highly respected Pascal. The difference in social status, secular prejudices and natural girlish modesty did not give her the opportunity to reassure Pascal, who little by little got used to the idea that this noble and rich beauty would never belong to him.

Having been drawn into social life, Pascal, however, never was and could never be a secular person. He was shy, even timid, and at the same time too naive, so that many of his sincere impulses seemed simply bourgeois bad manners and tactlessness. In the company of real socialites surrounding the Duke of Roanese and his sister, Pascal sometimes seemed simply awkward and funny, and his closeness to the Duke and the influence that Pascal had on this nobleman made him many enemies. Even the concierge (gatekeeper) of the Duke's Parisian house hated Pascal and was so jealous of his master that one day she rushed at Pascal with a kitchen knife, and he only miraculously escaped death. Among the socialites who revolved around the duke were many brilliant young people like the then famous dandy and whippet Miton and the much more intelligent, but impudent and full of conceit, gentleman de Mere. This latter, completely by accident, became the culprit of one of Pascal’s best scientific discoveries, and it is worth talking about him only because there were biographers who imagined that this gentleman had a huge influence on Pascal and almost contributed to the new internal revolution that took place in him.

The Cavaliere de Mere was, in the full sense, the type of a brilliant salon philosopher, just like those learned ladies whom Moliere portrayed in his famous comedy “Les Précieuses ridicules”. The Chevalier de Méré was just such a précieux. He left a considerable number of works that “brought him a little honor,” as one of his contemporaries put it. Very educated for a nobleman of that time, who knew ancient languages, who knew how to sprinkle his speech with quotes from Homer, Plato and Plutarch, the Cavalier de Mere in his writings partly robbed ancient and modern writers. The motto of the Cavalier de Mere was: “Always be an honest man,” which did not stop him from playing a desperate game. After his death, he left behind debts that bankrupted all his creditors.

This aristocrat, having met Pascal at the Duke of Roanese, treated the famous mathematician the way secular people generally treat those whom they consider inferior to themselves by birth and upbringing. Méré himself describes their first acquaintance in a letter that deserves to be quoted, since it characterizes Pascal’s position in secular society.

“The Duke of Roanese,” writes the Chevalier de Mere, “has a penchant for mathematics. In order not to get bored during the trip, he stocked up with one elderly man. (Pascal, in his sickly appearance, seemed much older than his years, although in his early youth he was remarkably handsome). This gentleman,” says de Mere, “was still very little known at that time, but then they began to talk about him. He was a strong mathematician, who, however, knew nothing but mathematics - a science that has no meaning in the world. This man, who had no taste or tact, constantly interfered in our conversations, almost always surprising us and often making us laugh... So two or three days passed. Gradually, he became less confident in himself, began to only listen and ask, and had a notebook with him, where he made various comments... Little by little, he began to speak much better than before and he himself discovered joy that he had changed so much. His joy was extraordinary, and he expressed it in some mysterious way: he said, for example, that he loved all these things, because he was sure that others could not know what he knew. “Finally,” he said, “I have left these wild places and see a clean and clear sky. I assure you that I was not used to bright light, but I was blinded by it, and therefore I was angry with you; but now I'm used to it; this light delights me, and I regret the lost time.” After his journey, this man stopped thinking about mathematics, which had occupied him until then!

Based on this story, other biographers claim that Mere re-educated Pascal and, having discouraged him from mathematics, forced him to study more important matters.

To appreciate the story of the Chevalier de Mere, one must first of all know Pascal’s own opinion about this secular philosopher. In one of his essays, Pascal quickly remarks: “You must keep your thoughts locked up. I will be careful when traveling." It seems that this note directly relates to the trip described. In all likelihood, Pascal had the imprudence to openly confess out loud about the internal struggle taking place in him, and the self-satisfied gentleman imagined that it was he who influenced Pascal with his caustic ridicule of mathematics! That Pascal did not have a high opinion of the genius of de Mere is proven by Pascal's letter to the famous mathematician Fermat. “The Chevalier de Mere,” writes Pascal, “is a very witty man, but he is not a mathematician at all; this, as you know, is a huge drawback; he cannot even understand that a mathematical line is divisible to infinity, and imagines that it consists of an infinite number of points standing next to each other; There was no way I could dissuade him of this. If you succeed, he will be perfection.” The last remark is an obvious irony. In fact, is it possible to argue about mathematics with a person who is not able to understand that a mathematical point has no dimension and that an infinite number of points without any dimension is a completely indefinite concept, like zero taken as a term an infinite number of times.

A fair judgment about the correspondence that took place between Mere and Pascal was made by the great philosopher Leibniz.

“I could hardly restrain myself from laughing,” Leibniz wrote, “when I saw the tone in which the Chevalier de Mère wrote to Pascal. I see that the gentleman understood Pascal’s character, realizing that this great genius had his own imperfections, which often made him too sensitive to exaggerated spiritualistic reasoning, as a result of which he was more than once temporarily disappointed in the most solid knowledge. De Mere took advantage of this to talk down to Pascal. He seems to be making fun of Pascal, as secular people do who have an excess of wit and a lack of knowledge. They want to convince us that what they do not understand is a trifle. We should send this gentleman to Roberval’s school. True, de Mere even had great abilities in mathematics. I learned, however, from De Billet, a friend of Pascal, about the famous discovery that this gentleman so boasts about. Being a passionate gambler, he first came up with the problem of evaluating a bet. The question he proposed gave rise to excellent studies by Fermat, Pascal and Huygens, in which Roberval could not understand anything... But the fact that the Chevalier de Mere writes against infinite divisibility proves that the author of the letter is still too far from the highest world spheres, and, in all likelihood, , the delights of this world, about which he also writes, did not give him enough time to acquire the right of citizenship in a higher region.

The history of mathematics must recognize the undoubted merit of the Chevalier de Mere that he passionately loved the game of dice. Without this, probability theory might have been delayed by a whole century.

As a passionate gambler, De Mere was extremely interested in the following question: how to divide the bet between the players if the game was not over? The solution to this problem was completely resistant to all mathematical methods known up to that time.

Mathematicians are accustomed to dealing with questions that admit of a completely reliable, exact, or at least approximate solution. Here the question had to be resolved, not knowing which player could win if the game continued? It is clear that we were talking about a problem that had to be solved based on the degree of probability of winning or losing a particular player. But until then, no mathematician had ever thought of calculating only probable events. It seemed that the problem allowed only a guessing solution, that is, that the bet had to be divided completely at random, for example, by casting lots to determine who should have the final winnings.

It took the genius of Pascal and Fermat to understand that problems of this kind admit of very definite solutions and that “probability” is a quantity that can be measured.

The two tasks proposed by the Chevalier de Mere boil down to the following. First: how to find out how many times you need to throw two dice in the hope of getting the highest number of points, that is, twelve; another: how to distribute the winnings between two players in the event of an unfinished game. The first task is relatively easy: you need to determine how many different combinations of points there can be; only one of these combinations is favorable for the event, all the others are unfavorable, and the probability is calculated very simply. The second task is much more difficult. Both were solved simultaneously in Toulouse by the mathematician Fermat and in Paris by Pascal. On this occasion, in 1654, a correspondence began between Pascal and Fermat, and, without knowing each other personally, they became best friends. Fermat solved both problems through the theory of combinations he invented. Pascal's solution was much simpler: he proceeded from purely arithmetic considerations. Far from envying Fermat, Pascal, on the contrary, rejoiced at the coincidence of the results and wrote: “From now on, I would like to open my soul to you, I am so glad that our thoughts met. I see that the truth is the same in Toulouse and in Paris."

Work on the theory of probability led Pascal to a remarkable mathematical discovery, which is still not fully appreciated. He compiled the so-called arithmetic triangle, which makes it possible to replace many very complex algebraic calculations with simple arithmetic operations.

About the amazing nature of this discovery, the American scientist Martin Gardner said: “Pascal’s triangle is so simple that even a ten-year-old child can write it down. At the same time, it conceals inexhaustible treasures and connects together various aspects of mathematics that at first glance have nothing in common with each other. Such unusual properties make Pascal’s triangle one of the most elegant diagrams in all of mathematics.”

The most obvious use of Pascal's triangle is that it allows you to calculate fairly complex sums almost instantly. In probability theory, Pascal's triangle also replaces complex algebraic formulas.

PASCAL'S SECOND "ADVERSE". HIS "WILL"

As early as October 1654, Pascal was in active correspondence with Fermat on issues related to the theory of probability; A few weeks later, an event happened to Pascal that undoubtedly influenced him greatly. It would be a mistake, however, to think that the final change in Pascal’s lifestyle occurred suddenly, under the influence of this one event.

Pascal's first "conversion", as we have seen, was caused by the unfortunate fall of his father; the immediate reason for the second “conversion” was the mortal danger to which he himself was exposed. But to conclude from these two cases that Pascal suffered temporary insanity both times is to abuse psychiatric terms. Not every ecstasy and not even every hallucination serves as proof of that complete mental disorder, expressed mainly in a weakening of the will, which deserves the name of insanity. Otherwise, we would have to classify very, very many people as crazy. In the 18th century, when the classification of mental illnesses was in its most primitive state, such a confusion of concepts was still excusable, but at the present time not a single reasonable psychiatrist would dare to declare Pascal insane, although everyone would recognize his condition as abnormal.

It is remarkable that Pascal's sister does not even mention the new incident on the Neuilly Bridge, which she could not pass over in silence if Pascal really was subject to constant hallucinations associated with this event. These hallucinations probably only affected Pascal for a short period of time.

Without at all doubting the veracity of the fact itself, attested in one monastic chronicle, one should think that this incident only accelerated the internal revolution, which sooner or later would have occurred in Pascal in a different way.

One holiday day, Pascal was riding with friends in a carriage drawn by four horses, when suddenly the harnesses chomped at the bit just at the moment when the carriage traveling across the bridge reached a place not blocked by railings. In an instant, the horses fell into the water, the drawbar broke, and the body of the carriage, breaking away, remained with the riders on the very edge of the abyss.

This incident greatly shocked Pascal's nervous system, and it is not impossible that for several weeks or even months he may have suffered from insomnia and hallucinations. Abbe Boileau affirms positively the following: “This great mind always (?) imagined that he saw an abyss on his left side. He constantly placed a chair on his left hand to calm himself. His friends, his confessor, his boss (that is, the abbot, who was Pascal’s spiritual mentor in the Port-Royal Jansenist refuge) more than once convinced him that there was nothing to be afraid of, that these were nothing more than ghosts of the imagination, tired of abstract metaphysical reflections. He agreed with them in everything, and a quarter of an hour later he again saw the bottomless abyss that frightened him.”

This testimony of the Abbé Boileau is all the more important since the Abbé apparently did not know about the incident at the Pont Neuilly. It is difficult to imagine that he could falsely attribute to Pascal precisely such hallucinations that have an undoubted connection with this incident. Nevertheless, it is impossible to believe the statement that Pascal was “always” possessed by these ghosts.

If the philosophers of the 18th century went to the extreme, considering Pascal crazy, then those newest writers who certainly reject the story of Abbé Boileau, supposedly insulting to the memory of Pascal, are hardly more correct in their reasoning, as if a painful disorder is a vice or a crime.

One thing is certain: Pascal’s so-called second “conversion” was not caused solely by the stroller incident, but by a number of deeper reasons. Overly intense mental activity, the absence of any family joys and interests, except for abstract scientific ones, the influence of friends who belonged to the Jansenist sect, unsuccessful love and eternal illnesses - all this, in connection with previous religious impulses, serves as a sufficient explanation for Pascal’s final “conversion”. Moreover, for Pascal, religious ecstasy was, as it were, a reaction that came after the excessive tension required by his scientific discoveries. This happened to him for the first time after the invention of the arithmetic machine and the writing of works on hydrostatics; in the second - after the discovery of probability theory. When his strength, mental and physical, was completely exhausted, the religious sphere was the only one in which he could live and think, and even physical suffering, suppressing mental activity, did not interfere with religious ecstasy, often providing suitable material for it. In this sense, it can truly be said that Pascal's religiosity had a close connection with his illnesses. Philosophers of the 18th century, seeing this connection, misunderstood it, claiming that Pascal had become a “slave” of his body. This explanation is too crude and one-sided. It is known that Pascal, on the contrary, possessed enormous willpower.

There is no doubt that the most important role in Pascal’s conversion, in addition to the influence of the people and ideas of the 17th century around him, was played by very complex psychological reasons that prepared a gradual revolution, for which the event with the carriage served as a strong impetus, but nothing more. It is known about the conversion itself that it took place in November 1654, on one fateful night, when Pascal, under the influence of insomnia and a long internal struggle, entered an ecstatic state, close to that which seizes other epileptics before an attack of epileptic illness - a state described by Dostoevsky in his "Idiot". Under the influence of this ecstasy, Pascal wrote a kind of confession, or testament, which he sewed into the lining of his clothes and always carried with him from then on. Philosophers of the 18th century considered this confession to be the ravings of a madman; Pascal's newest defenders see in it a religious program, a kind of confession of faith.

In reality, this document, with all its incoherence, is a condensed program of Pascal’s moral and religious convictions, but a program written not as a result of deep reflection on faith, but almost unconsciously, almost in delirium.

Amulet (memorial) of Pascal

The year by the grace of God is 1654. Monday November 23rd, St. Clement the Martyr and the Pope and other martyrs. From approximately ten and a half o'clock in the evening until half past midnight.(As a mathematician, Pascal determines the duration of his ecstasy with an accuracy of half an hour.)

Deceased.

The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, but not the God of philosophers and scientists.

Credibility. Feeling. Joy. World. God of Jesus Christ. Your God will be my God. Oblivion of the world and everything except God. It can only be found along the paths indicated in the Gospel. The greatness of the human soul. Righteous father, the world did not know you, but I knew you. Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy, I separated from him: the fountains of living water left me. My God, will you leave me? I am not separated from him forever. Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ. I separated from him; I fled from him, crucified him, renounced him. May I never separate from him. It is preserved only in the ways taught in the Gospel. Renunciation of the world is complete and sweet. Complete submission to Christ and my spiritual superior. Eternal joy for one day of labor on earth. Let me not forget your commandments. Amen.

Of course, this confession is not the ravings of a madman, although it looks like delirium. It is also unlikely that this is a talisman intended to protect against all kinds of misfortunes.

The last assumption was made by Condorcet, who was so surprised by the reading of Pascal's confession that he considered it something of a spell against the devil's obsession. To justify this hypothesis, also adopted by the doctor Lelyu, who in 1846 wrote an entire book “Pascal's Amulet; the relation of the health of this great man to his genius”—some evidence seems to support this hypothesis. As we will see below, Pascal went very far in matters of faith and, for example, fully believed in the “miracle of the holy thorn.” It is therefore very plausible to assume that he could believe in the mysterious power of a piece of paper and parchment - he wrote his confession on two such scraps. But it would be a stretch to say that for Pascal his incoherent confession played only this role. Its meaning is quite obvious: it is an expression of a spiritual revolution, evidence to himself that from now on he has decided to live a new life. And indeed, Pascal’s confession did not remain only on paper: it became a real program for the last five or six years of his existence. The best objection to Pascal's madness is the literary struggle he started soon after against the Jesuits.

The gradual preparation of the described coup began in the summer of 1654. Long before the memorable November night, in September of the same year, Pascal “opened his soul” to his younger sister Jacqueline “in such a pitiful way that he touched her to the depths of her soul.”

In general, Jacqueline Pascal undoubtedly played a very prominent role in her brother’s second conversion. The sister only repaid her brother for her own conversion, which took place under his influence. A significant role was also played by Pascal’s attitude towards the girl Roanese, who in turn withdrew from the world under the influence of Pascal’s conversations and letters. In the most critical era of Pascal’s life, when he was still wavering between his love for the maiden Roanese and his religious chastity, he turned for advice and consolation to his sister Jacqueline - and it is easy to guess what advice the exalted girl who buried her own youth in a monastery could give him .

In 1652, two years before his final conversion, Pascal was not particularly pleased with his sister’s hermit life and did not even want to give Jacqueline her share of the inheritance, fearing that she would give all her property to the monastery. An eloquent letter from Jacqueline has been preserved, in which she begs her brother not to resist her calling. “I appeal to you,” Jacqueline wrote on March 5, 1652, “as a person on whom my fate depends to a certain extent, to tell you: do not take from me what you cannot reward. The Lord used you to instill in me the first impressions of his grace... do not interfere with those who do good, and if you do not have the strength to follow me, then at least do not hold me back; I ask you, do not destroy what you have built.” Then, in a different tone, Jacqueline adds: “I expect from you this proof of your friendship for me and ask you to visit me on the day of my betrothal (that is, on the day of taking the monastic vow), which will take place on Trinity Day.”

About the influence that Jacqueline Pascal had on the final conversion of her brother, the following information has been preserved, reported by Pascal’s niece.

“When my uncle,” she writes, “decided to buy a position and get married, he consulted about this with my aunt, who had become a monk, who lamented that her brother, who had introduced her to the futility and vanity of the world, was himself going to plunge into this the abyss. She often persuaded him to abandon his intentions. My uncle listened attentively and postponed the final decision from day to day. Finally, on the day of the conception of St. Virgo, December 8, he went to his aunt and talked to her. When they stopped ringing for the sermon, he entered the church to listen to the preacher. The preacher was at the pulpit, and the aunt could not have time to talk to him. The sermon was about the conception of the Holy Virgin, about the beginning of Christian life, about how important it is for a Christian to maintain holiness without burdening himself with positions and marriage ties. The preacher spoke with great power. My uncle, imagining that all this was said specifically for him, took this sermon very close to his heart. My aunt tried as hard as she could to kindle this new flame in him, and after a few days my uncle decided to finally break with the world. He went to the village to get acquainted with everyone, since until that time he had received many guests and made visits. He succeeded and broke all ties with his secular acquaintances.”

Comparing all the stories about Pascal's conversion, it is not difficult to draw a general picture of the internal revolution that took place in him.

Back in the summer of 1653, Jacqueline wrote to her older sister’s husband that her prayers for her poor brother would be heard. The extent to which Pascal began to submit to the influence of his exalted sister, who was so similar to him in intelligence, talents and even appearance, is evident from the fact that when Pascal finally entered Port-Royal and repented under the leadership of director Senglen, the latter, having fallen ill, handed Pascal over to the spiritual care of his sister Euphemia was the name by which Jacqueline was known in this Jansenist community. In the autumn of 1654, Pascal visited Jacqueline so often that, in her own words, a whole volume could be compiled from their conversations. It is clear from everything that the incident on the Neuilly Bridge was only an impetus for Pascal’s conversion and no stronger than that given by the sermon that struck him, which he heard after that night when, choking with delight and awe, he wrote his incoherent will , or confession, to yourself. Pascal spent the last months of 1654 on the final processing of his nature and at the beginning of 1655 he was already a mystic in the full sense of the word.

"LETTERS TO THE PROVINCIAL"

Even in the era of his first conversion, Pascal became close friends with some Jansenists. In the last years of his life he became one of the most prominent fighters of the Jansenist movement.

The founder of Jansenism was the Dutchman Karl Jansen, or Jansenius, who was Bishop of Ypres at the beginning of the 17th century, a man of impeccable morality, an avowed enemy of the Jesuits, who fought all his life against their teaching and against Jesuit morality. Lessius and Molina were then considered the pillars of the Jesuits, and by the name of this latter the Jesuits were often even called Molinists.

While the Jesuits argued that “grace” belonged to all Christians and that the most serious sins could be covered by repentance, Jansenius began to argue that “grace” belonged only to the elect, and demanded the most severe virtue from his followers. His teachings are in many respects similar to Calvinism.

Jansenism spread very quickly in France and especially in Paris. Many learned and noble people, both secular and spiritual, began to settle in Port-Royal, near the Latin Quarter, under the name of hermits (solitaira), engaged in their solitude in theological matters, manual labor and raising children. Arnaud, the Duke of Liancourt and subsequently Pascal were the most prominent representatives of the sect. The Jesuits became worried. In addition to raising dogmatic and moral questions by the Jansenists, the Jesuits were simply afraid of competition in the purely material field. Before the rise of Jansenism, all schools were in the hands of the Jesuits; Now Jansenist educational institutions appeared in Port-Royal, where children from the upper bourgeoisie and the nobility went. People from all over Paris began to flock to the Jansenists for confession; among their followers were many courtiers. For Jesuit schools and confessionals this was a terrible blow.

The government was hostile to Jansenism. Richelieu could not forgive Janseny for his pamphlet “Galian Mars,” in which the founder of the sect sharply condemned the cardinal for his alliance with the Protestant powers. Subsequently, Louis XIV was even less inclined towards the Jansenists, since the Jesuits managed to convince him that the new sect was undermining the foundations of the monarchical system.

In Paris, the struggle between the Jansenists and the Jesuits began back in 1643, when the Jesuits announced from the pulpits that Jansenius was “digested Calvin,” and called his students “frogs born in the mud of the Geneva swamp.” Ten years later, Pope Innocent X, under the influence of the Jesuits, issued a bull in which the teachings of Jansenius were condemned as heretical. Even later, just at the time when Pascal began a hermit's life in Port-Royal, a clash occurred that agitated all of Paris.

Among the aristocrats who had relations with the Jansenists was the Duke de Liancourt, who constantly visited the Port-Royal hermits, but did not break ties with the dominant church. The Duke of Liancourt respected the Jansenists so much that he not only gave refuge to two persecuted Jansenists in his house, but even gave his granddaughter to be raised in a Port-Royal convent, where, as you know, Pascal’s sister was also among the nuns. The Jesuits could not forgive the Duke for such actions.

In January 1655, when the Duke appeared in the Church of St. Sulpicius to confession, the Jesuit who confessed him said: “You told me your sins, but hid the main thing. First, you are hiding a heretic in your house; secondly, you sent your granddaughter to Port-Royal, and in general you have connections with these people. You must repent, and not secretly, but publicly.” The Duke remained silent, calmly left the temple, but never returned. This incident caused a great stir, especially since its hero was a nobleman, a peer of France.

The matter did not end there.

One of the leaders of the Jansenist movement, Arno, wrote a “Letter to a Noble Person,” in which he very sharply condemned the Jesuit who refused absolution to such a worthy person as the Duke de Liancourt. Then the Jesuits, in turn, issued a series of pamphlets against Arno, and the latter responded to them with a new “Letter to the Peer of France.” Soon the dispute moved from the church pulpit to the pulpit of the Sorbonne, and from December 1, 1655 to January 31, 1656, a series of debates took place in this temple of science, so heated that the French writer Sainte-Beuve compares them with the noisiest political meetings of 1815. The debate was conducted in the then barbaric Latin dialect, and the expressions of the speakers were such that the Sorbonne syndicate constantly had to resort to the solemn formula: Domine mi, importo tibi silentium (Sir, I command you to remain silent). The majority vehemently demanded the conclusion of the debate several times; shouts were heard: conclude, concludatur (finish). Despite very strong minority opposition, Arno was condemned and solemnly expelled from the Sorbonne.

In Parisian society at that time, as many people were interested in such debates as they are now interested in the most important political issues. Pascal could not remain indifferent in this dispute. Once in the company of his new friends, the hermits of Port-Royal, Pascal became keenly interested in the opinions of some of his interlocutors. One of them said that it would be extremely useful to explain to the ignorant public that all these disputes at the Sorbonne are not based on any serious data, but on empty tricks. Everyone approved of this idea and insisted that Arno write a serious defense speech. “Can it really be,” they said to him, “you will allow yourself to be condemned like a schoolboy, and not say a word in your defense, at least in order to acquaint the public with what is going on here?” Arno tried to write and read what he wrote in the company of friends, but no one made a single approving comment. “I see,” said Arno, “that you don’t like this, however, I myself am aware that it should be written in the wrong way.” And turning to Pascal, he added: “But you, you are young, you should have done something.” Pascal, who had not yet tried his hand in this new field, said that he would try to write a draft answer, but hoped that there would be people who would correct his imperfect work. The very next day Pascal set to work and, as usual, was soon carried away by it. Instead of an essay or program, he wrote a letter (January 23, 1656), which he read in the company of his Port-Royal friends. He had not even read half of it when Arno exclaimed: “Excellent!.. Everyone will like this, it must be published.” Everyone present was of the same opinion. This is the origin of the first of the famous “Letters to a Provincial.” Gradually getting carried away by his topic, Pascal rummaged through libraries, pulling out dust-covered works of Spanish, French, and German Jesuits and putting them in the pillory. In March 1657, his last letter appeared. Is it possible to assume that these letters belonged to a madman?

These “Letters written by Louis de Montalt to his provincial friend and to the venerable Jesuit Fathers,” these wonderful pamphlets against Jesuit dogma and morality, were and remain the strongest theological and polemical work ever directed against the disciples of Loyola and Molina.

Blaise Pascal. Letters to the provincial. Elsevier, 1657

The impression made by these letters was extraordinary. “Letters to a Provincial” were printed mainly in a secret printing house located in one of the water mills that then abounded in Paris. The printing was undertaken by Pierre Lepetit, the famous bookseller and royal printer, who used for this purpose some special printing ink, invented by himself, which had the property of drying almost instantly, which made it possible to print the “Letters” an hour before they were sent. “Never before,” writes one historian and opponent of Jansenism, Jesuit Daniel, “never before has the post office earned so much money. Copies were sent to all the cities of the kingdom, and although I was very little known in Port-Royal, I received a large package in my name in one Breton city, where I was then located, and the delivery was paid for.”

One can imagine the anger of the Jesuits and their patrons. First of all, searches and arrests began everywhere in order to find the printer. By order of the king, Charles Savrot, one of the Port-Royal booksellers, was arrested. The interrogation was carried out by the “criminal lieutenant” Tardif, who also interrogated Savro’s wife and clerks, but achieved nothing. Tardif also carried out a house search of Pierre Lepetit, but was no more successful, because when the royal agents arrived at Lepetit’s house, his wife ran to the printing house, grabbed heavy printing forms and, hiding them under an apron, took them to one neighbor, who That same night, 300 copies of the second letter were printed, and then another 1200. The printing was very expensive, but so many copies were sold at one sou per letter that the costs were more than recouped.

Not only the police, but also the public were eager to find out who this mysterious Louis Montalt was, the author of “Letters to a Provincial.” It never occurred to anyone to consider Pascal as the author, and the “Letters” were attributed first to Gomberville, then to Abbot Leroy. Pascal at that time lived near Luxembourg, in a house opposite the Saint-Michel gate. This refuge was offered to Pascal by the poet Patrick, an orderly of the Duke of Orleans, but for greater safety, Pascal moved to a small hotel under the King David firm, located behind the Sorbonne, just opposite the Jesuit college. “Like a skilled general,” notes Sainte-Beuve, “he stopped face to face with the enemy.” His elder sister's husband, Perrier, who came to Paris on business, settled in the same hotel. One Jesuit, Freta, a relative of Perrier, came to visit this latter and, in a kindred way, warned him about the rumors that had finally spread about the authorship of Pascal. Perrier pretended to be amazed and said that it was all fiction; and meanwhile, at that very moment, behind the half-open curtain that covered his bed, there were a dozen or two copies of the seventh and eighth “Letters,” just printed. When the Jesuit left, Perrier ran to Pascal and, telling him what was the matter, advised him to be even more careful than before. Pascal, however, managed to escape the Bastille.

It was more difficult to avoid the thunder directed against Pascal's work. In 1660, by order of the king, the “Letters” of the imaginary Montalt were examined by a commission of four bishops and nine doctors of the Sorbonne. The commission recognized that the Letters contained all the false teachings of Jansen, as well as opinions offensive to the pope, bishops, king, the theological faculty of Paris and some monastic orders. This statement was reported to the State Council, which ordered that the letters be torn and burned by the hand of the executioner. Some provincial parliaments spoke in the same spirit, but the latter acted far from sincerely. Thus, the parliament in E (Aix) ordered the “Letters” to be burned, but the members of this judicial institution themselves willingly read the “Letters”, and none of them dared to sacrifice their copy for public execution. Finally, one of the judges guessed and gave him the almanac that he had, ordering the title of “Letters” to be inscribed on the binding. This innocent almanac was burned publicly.

The significance of Pascal's Letters can be judged by the following event. As soon as the first letters appeared, one of the Rouen preachers hastened to declare from the pulpit that the author of the “Letters” was a dangerous heretic who was slandering the venerable Jesuit fathers. Then the Rouen clergy elected a commission from among themselves to check the quotations given in the “Letters.” The quotations turned out to be in complete agreement with the quoted originals; convinced of this, the Rouen priests wrote a letter to the priests of Paris, asking them to gather together for the purpose of publicly condemning the abominations preached by the Jesuits. In 1656, a congress actually took place in Paris, at which a proposal was adopted by the Rouen clergy to declare publicly that “the reading of Jesuit books horrified the listeners.” “We were forced,” wrote the Rouen priests, “to close our ears, as the fathers of the Council of Nicaea once did, who did not want to listen to the blasphemy of Arius. Each of us zealously wanted to punish these pathetic scribblers, perverting the truths of the Gospel and introducing a morality that would put honest pagans and good Turks to shame.” In the eyes of public opinion, Pascal's case was thus won even before his book was publicly burned.

"THOUGHTS" OF PASCAL. THE LAST YEARS OF PASCAL'S LIFE

Just at the time when Pascal was writing his “Letters to a Provincial,” an event occurred that was very consistent with his enthusiastic mood and was taken by him as a direct manifestation of God’s grace in relation to his own person. This event once again proves that it is possible to combine apparently contradictory spiritual qualities: remarkable insight of the mind with amazing gullibility.

The daughter of Pascal's elder sister, that is, his niece Marguerite Perrier, suffered from a very malignant fistula of the lacrimal gland. According to her mother, the fistula was so persistent that pus came out not only from the eye, but from the nose and mouth of the girl, and the most skillful surgeons in Paris considered this wound incurable. All that remained was to resort to a “miracle”. In Port-Royal there was a nail that bore the name of the “holy thorn”: they assured that this nail was taken from the crown of thorns of Christ. It is very possible that the cause of the girl’s illness was the clogging of her eye with the tip of a needle and that the wonderful nail simply had magnetic properties, and therefore could remove the splinter. One way or another, Madame Perrier assures that her daughter was healed “instantly,” with one touch of the “holy thorn.” Lovers of the miraculous, of course, will not doubt the veracity of these words of the mother, who was present at the healing and generally wrote about everything truthfully. But impartial historical research proves that in such cases the most truthful people are capable of exaggerating. Gilberte's testimony is directly contradicted by a letter from her younger sister, the Port-Royal nun Jacqueline (sister Euphemia). The latter wrote about the grief she experienced because the father of her sick niece, Perrier, due to his lack of faith, was not present at the healing and left without waiting for the result. In the same letter, Jacqueline reports that the girl was brought to the monastery and applied to the “holy thorn” for six days in a row. This does not at all look like an instantaneous miracle.

One way or another, all of Paris was talking about this “miracle”.

“This miracle,” explains Madame Perrier, “was so genuine that everyone recognized it and it was witnessed by famous doctors and the most skillful surgeons and approved by a solemn decree of the church.”

After this, it is not surprising that Pascal believed in such an undoubted and even officially “approved” miracle. This is not enough. Due to the fact that Pascal's niece was his goddaughter, that is, his spiritual daughter, Pascal took the grace poured out on her at his own expense. “My brother,” writes Madame Perrier, “was extremely comforted by the fact that God’s power was manifested so clearly at a time when faith seemed to be extinguished in the hearts of most people. His joy was so great that his mind was completely devoted to this miracle, and he had many amazing thoughts about miracles, which, presenting religion to him in a new light, doubled the love and respect he always had for objects of faith.”

How much his mind submitted to the influence of this “miracle” is shown by many of Pascal’s actions: for example, he even changed his seal, choosing an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns as his coat of arms. The most popular of Pascal's works, his Pensées, is in many places an echo of the miracle of the "holy thorn".

Title page of the first edition of "Thoughts"

Under the impression of this event, Pascal, who until then had limited his theological activity to polemics with the Jesuits, decided to write something like an extensive apology for Christianity. The essays of this apology formed a collection known as Pascal's Thoughts.

Having long ago renounced all worldly pleasures, Pascal more and more indulged in the harsh life of an ascetic. He went so far as to consider the most natural human feelings criminal: for example, he condemned his sister Gilberte Perrier for the fact that, in his opinion, she caressed her children too often, and assured that maternal caresses are supposedly developed in children only weak-hearted. Pascal not only banished all luxury and comfort from his own surroundings, but, not content with his organic ailments, deliberately inflicted on himself new physical suffering. Often he put an iron belt with points on his naked body, and as soon as any “idle” thought or desire to give himself the slightest pleasure appeared to him, Pascal hit the belt with his elbows so that the points pierced the body. This habit seemed so useful to him that he kept it until his death and did this even in the last years of his life, when he constantly suffered to such an extent that he could neither read nor write. He sometimes had to do nothing or take a walk, and at this time he was constantly afraid that idleness would lead him astray from the path of truth.

In his furnishings, Pascal introduced such simplicity that there was not the slightest rug or anything superfluous in his room. Too harsh a life soon led to the return to Pascal of all the illnesses that he had suffered from in his youth. First of all, the toothache returned and with it insomnia.

One night, tormented by severe toothache, Pascal, completely without any prior intention, began to think about questions concerning the properties of the so-called cycloid, a curved line indicating the path traversed by a point of a circle rolling in a straight line, for example, a wheel. One thought was followed by another, and a whole chain of theorems was formed. Pascal calculated as if unconsciously and was himself amazed at his discoveries. But he gave up mathematics a long time ago. Long before that, he stopped corresponding with Fermat, writing to the latter that he was completely disappointed in mathematics, that he considered it an interesting, but useless activity. This time, however, mathematical discoveries seemed to be forced on his mind against his will, and Pascal came up with the idea of ​​​​consulting with one of his Port-Royal friends. Having received advice to “print what was inspired by God,” Pascal finally decided to take up the pen.

Augustin Pajou. Pascal studying the cycloid. Louvre

He began to write with extraordinary speed. The entire study was written in eight days, and Pascal wrote immediately without rewriting. Two printing houses could barely keep up with him, and the freshly written sheets were immediately handed over to typesetting. Thus, Pascal's last scientific works were published. This remarkable study of the cycloid brought Pascal closer to the discovery of differential calculus, that is, the analysis of infinitesimal quantities, but still the honor of this discovery went not to him, but to Leibniz and Newton. If Pascal had been healthier in spirit and body, he would undoubtedly have completed his work. In Pascal we already see a very clear idea of ​​​​infinite quantities, but, instead of developing it and applying it in mathematics, Pascal gave a wide place to the infinite only in his apology for Christianity.

The last years of Pascal's life were a series of continuous physical suffering. He endured them with amazing heroism and even added new unnecessary suffering to them.

Pascal sought to make even the most basic pleasures, such as taste sensations, impossible and inaccessible for himself. Constant illnesses forced him against his will to eat not too rough food. But the simplest table already seemed like a luxury to him, and Pascal tried to swallow the food so hastily that he did not have time to recognize its taste. Both sisters - not only Gilberte, but even the nun Jacqueline-Euphemia - sometimes tried to prepare him something tasty, knowing that their brother was susceptible to loss of appetite. But if Pascal was asked whether he liked the food, he answered: “Why didn’t you warn me, I didn’t pay any attention to the taste.” If someone began to praise some food in his presence, Pascal could not stand it and called such an attitude towards food “sensuality.” Although his table was already quite simple, Pascal found it too refined and said: “Eating to indulge your taste is bad and impermissible.” In his youth, Pascal loved sweets and stimulants; Now he did not allow himself to make any sauce or stew, and there was no way to persuade him to eat an orange. Moreover, he always took a certain amount of food, which he set for himself, assuring that this was exactly what his stomach needed. No matter how strong his appetite, Pascal did not allow himself to eat more and, on the contrary, even with a complete loss of appetite, he forcibly stuffed himself with food until he ate the prescribed portion. When asked why he tortured himself so much, Pascal replied: “We must satisfy the needs of the stomach, and not the whims of the tongue.” Pascal showed no less firmness when he had to swallow the disgusting potions that were then in wide use. He always unquestioningly followed the doctors' orders and did not show the slightest sign of disgust. When those around him expressed their amazement, he laughed, saying: “I don’t understand how you can show disgust when you take medicine voluntarily and if you are warned about its bad taste. Disgust occurs only in cases of violence or surprise.”

In the last years of his life, Pascal paid special attention to charity.

Reflections on helping the poor even led Pascal to one highly practical thought. Pascal holds the honor of organizing one of the cheapest methods of transportation. He was the first in France and almost all of Europe to come up with the idea of ​​organizing the movement of “five-kopeck carriages,” that is, omnibuses. At the same time, Pascal had in mind not only to reduce the cost of transportation for poor people, but also to raise an amount sufficient to provide some serious assistance to those in need. The structure of this enterprise reflected Pascal’s mathematical mind, which immediately assessed the financial side of the matter, the success of which many refused to believe.

The idea of ​​this enterprise came to Pascal on the following occasion. In 1662, a terrible famine raged in Blois. Energetic appeals to benefactors were published in Paris. These appeals described horrors that would make your hair stand on end. Pascal, not being rich and unable to send any large sum to the starving, developed a plan for the enterprise, and at the end of January 1662, under his leadership, a society of contractors was formed, which organized omnibus service along the main streets of Paris. During negotiations on this matter, Pascal demanded that the contractors give him a deposit of three hundred rubles for the purpose of immediately sending them to those in need. Having learned about this intention of Pascal, his relatives began to dissuade him, noting that the matter had only just become established, that perhaps it would only result in losses and that he had to wait at least next year. To this Pascal objected: “I don’t see any difficulty here. If there is a loss, I will compensate from all my fortune, but there is no way to wait until next year, because need does not wait.” However, the contractors did not agree to pay in advance, and Pascal had to limit himself to sending the small sums he had.

Pascal very often convinced his older sister to devote herself to helping the poor and raise their children in the same spirit. The sister replied that every person should first of all take care of his family. “You simply lack good will,” Pascal objected to this. “You could help the poor without harming your family affairs.” When it was objected to Pascal that private charity was a drop in the ocean and that society and the state should take care of the poor, he argued with this in the most energetic way. “We are called,” he said, “not to the general, but to the particular. The best way to alleviate poverty is to help the poor in a poor way, that is, to each according to his ability, instead of making broad plans.” Pascal explained that he is not at all an opponent of state and public charity, but, in his words, “great enterprises should be left to a few persons appointed to them, while daily and constant assistance to the poor should be the work and calling of everyone.”

Pascal's moral purity led him to extremes on many occasions. According to his sister: “It’s incredible how meticulous he was about this. I was constantly afraid of saying something unnecessary: ​​he knew how to find reprehensible even in conversations that I considered very innocent. If I happened, for example, to say that I had seen a beautiful woman somewhere, he would get angry, saying that one should never have such conversations in the presence of lackeys and young people, because one cannot know what thoughts might arise in them.” .

Three months before Pascal’s death, an incident happened to him, indicating that in the depths of this ascetic soul lurked human feelings and impulses, which he suppressed in himself in every possible way.

One day Pascal returned home from mass in the Church of St. Sulpicia, when suddenly a girl of about fifteen of amazing beauty approached him and asked him for alms. Pascal looked at her and was overcome by a feeling of such pity that he had never experienced before. He understood the danger that threatened this poor beauty in a big city full of temptations and debauchery.

-Who are you and what made you beg? – asked Pascal.

The girl began to say that she was a village girl, that her father had died, and her mother was lying sick in the Hotel-Dieu.

Pascal, moved not only by his religious feelings, but also by a purely earthly feeling of compassion for the young beautiful creature, took the girl to a priest unknown to him personally, but enjoying good fame. He left him money, asking him to take care of this girl and carefully protect her from all harm. The next day he sent a woman to the priest, to whom he also gave money to buy the girl a dress and everything she needed. The girl was dressed up, and Pascal found her a place as a maid in a good family. The priest tried to find out the name of the benefactor, but he was told that the name should remain unknown, and only after Pascal’s death his sister exposed this secret.

Pascal was sometimes reproached for dryness, reasoning and even heartlessness, citing the fact that he, apparently, was not very touched even by the death of his younger sister Jacqueline, whom he loved dearly. Jacqueline died ten months earlier than Pascal, and who knows whether her death did not hasten the outcome of his own illness. Jacqueline's death was the result of a nervous shock she experienced after being forced to sign a confession of faith that was contrary to her conscience. This was during the era of persecution undertaken by the Jesuits and the court against the Jansenists, when nuns suspected of Jansenism were often expelled from monasteries by special royal command. When Pascal was informed of the death of his younger sister, he only said: “God grant that we die just as well.” When his elder sister, in his presence, indulged in grief over their common loss, Pascal became angry and said that he should praise God for rewarding him so well for the small services rendered to him. This, however, is hardly enough to conclude that Pascal is heartless. Pascal obviously made efforts to suppress or at least change all human affections in himself, giving them a direction consistent, in his opinion, with the purest Christian morality. There are facts that prove that such an internal breakdown cost Pascal himself very dearly and that sometimes even the people closest to him were mistaken. This is what his elder sister writes about this, speaking about the time when the younger sister was alive, who knew her brother better than anyone and knew how to understand him already by the extreme kinship of his nature with her own: “Not only did he not want to be tied to others, - writes Gilberte, - but he did not allow others to become attached to him. Not knowing this, I was sometimes amazed and told my sister, complaining that my brother did not love me and that, apparently, I caused him displeasure, even when I looked after him in the most affectionate way during his illnesses. My sister told me that I was wrong, that she knew the opposite, that my brother loved me as much as I could ever want.

I soon became convinced of this myself, since the slightest case presented itself when I needed any help from my brother, he hastened to provide it with such care and love that there could be no doubt about his strong feelings for me.”

Nevertheless, the brother’s relationship with others often seemed mysterious to the sister. Only after Pascal's death did she unravel the mystery when she read a small note he wrote to himself. It turned out that Pascal tried with all his might to ensure that no one could feel affection for him. “It should not be,” he wrote, “for anyone to fall in love with me, even if it was a completely voluntary and pleasant attraction. I will deceive the expectations of those in whom such a desire appears, since I am the end of personality and I cannot satisfy anyone. Am I not ready to die? So the object of their affection will die. It would be dishonest on my part to force people to believe any lie, even if I convinced someone of this lie in the most gentle way and even if they believed me with pleasure, and even if I myself experienced a feeling of pleasure. It would not be fair, therefore, if I encouraged anyone to love me. If I am causing people to become attached to me, I must warn those who are willing to believe these lies not to believe me. Instead of becoming attached to me, let them try to please God.”

It seems that in this confession one should look for the true psychological solution to the relationship that was established in the last years of Pascal’s life between him and the girl Roanez, who retired to a Port-Royal convent. Pascal had a truly fatal influence on the fate of this unfortunate girl.

While he was alive, the Duke of Roanese's sister was completely subject to his leadership. Unfortunately, her letters to Pascal have not survived; however, they were probably written in the same pious spirit that dominates Pascal’s letters to her. An image of Pascal's true feelings for this aristocrat should be sought not in letters, but in Pascal's "Thoughts". In one place in “Thoughts” he says: “A lonely person is something imperfect; he must find another in order to be completely happy. Often he looks for an equal in position. But sometimes it also happens that they look above themselves and feel that the flame is flaring up, not daring to tell the one who aroused it about it! When you love a woman higher in position than you, at first ambition is sometimes added to love; but soon love takes over everything. This is a tyrant who does not tolerate comrades: he wants to be alone, all passions must submit to him.”

Under the influence of Pascal, the girl Roanez entered Port-Royal as a novice back in 1657, having escaped secretly from her mother for this purpose. She took a vow of virginity, but did not have time to cut her hair, because her relatives obtained an cabinet decree from the king, forcing the girl Roanez to return to her family. Here she lived until Pascal’s death in solitude, shunning the world and corresponding with Pascal, his sisters and Abbot Senglen, Pascal’s spiritual leader. After Pascal's death, in 1667, this unfortunate girl finally decided to break her vow of virginity and married the Duke of Feuillade. The Jansenists anathematized her; her marriage was called "the fall," and this noble woman, tender mother and exemplary wife became a victim of fanaticism. She was tormented by eternal remorse, and she once said that she would prefer to be a paralytic patient in a Port-Royal hospital than to live in contentment among her family. Of her children, some died in early childhood, others were dwarfs or freaks. Her only son, who lived to an old age, left no offspring, and she herself died of breast cancer. We can safely say that Pascal’s love brought her nothing but misfortune.

In the last years of his life, Pascal surprised everyone with his gentleness, childish humility and extraordinary meekness. Long before Leo Tolstoy, he condemned all resistance to evil through violence. Well aware of the evil of the then political system, he, however, sharply condemned the Fronde and said that internecine war is the greatest sin that can be committed against one’s neighbors. Pascal himself described himself as follows: “I love poverty because Christ loved it. I love wealth because it gives me the opportunity to help the unfortunate. I'm loyal to everyone. I do not repay evil for evil, but I wish everyone such a state as mine, when you experience neither evil nor good from people. I try to be fair, sincere, I have tender feelings for those whom God has united with me more closely.”

Distinguished by his natural liveliness of character, Pascal often became angry and expressed impatience, but as soon as he noticed this in himself, he immediately became meek: “This is a child; he is submissive, like a child,” priest Berrier said about him. Two months before his death, Pascal began to suffer from a complete loss of appetite and felt a loss of strength. At this time, Pascal accommodated one poor man with his wife and the entire household. Pascal gave this man a room and heating, but did not accept any favors from him or his wife, but did this directly out of compassion for the poor family. When Pascal’s relatives reprimanded him for this kind of charity, he objected: “How can you say that I do not use any of the services of these people. It would be very unpleasant for me to be completely alone, but now I am not alone.”

Meanwhile, the son of the man Pascal accepted fell ill with smallpox. His older sister often came to Pascal, since, being ill, he could not do without her services. Pascal was afraid that his sister would infect her children with smallpox: one way or another, he had to part with the family he had taken into his house. But Pascal did not dare to remove the sick boy and, although he was sick himself, he reasoned like this: “The boy’s illness is more dangerous than mine and I am older than him, and therefore I can more easily endure a change of place.” On June 29, Pascal left his home so as not to return there again.

The house in Rue Neuve Saint-Etienne where Blaise Pascal died

He settled in his sister's house on the Rue Saint-Etienne, in a small outbuilding with a room with two windows covered with iron bars.

Three days after this move, Pascal felt severe colic that deprived him of sleep. But, possessing amazing willpower, he endured suffering without complaint, took medicine himself and did not allow himself to be rendered the slightest unnecessary service. The doctors said that the patient’s pulse was good, there was no fever, and, according to them, there was not the slightest danger. However, on the fourth day, the colic became so intense that Pascal ordered to send for a priest and confessed. The rumor about this soon spread among his friends, and many came to visit the sick man. Even the doctors finally became alarmed, and one of them said that he did not expect such suspiciousness from Pascal. This remark angered Pascal. “I wanted to take communion,” he said, “but you were surprised that I confessed. I’m afraid to surprise you even more and would rather put it off.”

Doctors continued to insist that the disease was not dangerous. And indeed there was a kind of temporary relief, so Pascal began to walk a little. Nevertheless, Pascal was aware of the danger and confessed several times. He wrote a spiritual will in which he bequeathed most of his property to the poor.

“If your husband were in Paris,” he said to his sister, “I would bequeath everything to the poor, since I am sure of his consent.” Then, after thinking, he added: “Where does it come from that I have never done anything for the poor, although I have always loved them?”

The sister objected:

“But you never had much wealth and nothing to give from.”

“No,” said Pascal, “if I did not have a fortune, I had to give my time and labor, and I did not do this.” If the doctors are right and I recover from this illness, I am determined to devote the rest of my life to the poor.

Pascal's acquaintances were amazed at the patience with which he endured severe pain.

“I’m afraid to get well,” Pascal answered, “because I know the dangers of health and the benefits of illness.”

When people pitied him, Pascal objected:

– Don’t be sorry, illness is the natural state of a Christian, because he must suffer, must deprive himself of all benefits and sensual pleasures.

The doctors told Pascal to drink mineral waters, but on August 14 he felt a severe headache and resolutely demanded a priest.

“No one sees my illness,” he said, “and therefore everyone is deceived: my headache is something extraordinary.”

This was almost his first complaint about his suffering; but the doctors objected that the headache came “from water vapor” and that it would soon pass. Then Pascal said:

“If they don’t want to show me this grace and give me communion, I will replace the communion with some good deed.” I ask you to find some poor patient and purposely hire for him, at my expense, a nurse who would care for him in the same way as for me. I want there not to be the slightest difference between him and me, because when I think that I am being looked after in such a way and that there are many poor people who suffer more than I do and who need the bare necessities, this thought makes me suffer unbearable.

Pascal's sister immediately sent to the priest, asking if there was any sick person who could be brought? There was no such thing; then Pascal demanded that he himself be taken to the hospital for the terminally ill.

“I want to die among the sick,” he said.

The sister objected that the doctors would oppose his wishes; This made Pascal extremely angry. The patient was only reassured by the promise that he would be transferred when he felt a little better.

Meanwhile, the headache caused Pascal hellish torment. On August 17, he asked for a consultation of doctors, but added:

“I'm afraid I'm making it too difficult with this request.”

Doctors ordered the patient to drink serum, claiming that his illness was “migraine associated with strong water vapor.”

But Pascal didn’t believe it, and even his sister saw that his brother was in very bad shape. Without saying a word to him, she sent for candles and everything needed for communion and unction.

Around midnight, Pascal began to have convulsions; when they stopped, he lay as if dead. At this time a priest appeared, who, entering the room, exclaimed loudly: “Here is the one you so desired.” This exclamation brought Pascal to consciousness; he made an effort and stood up. While taking communion, he shed tears. Pascal's last words were: "May God never leave me."

The convulsions resumed, he lost consciousness and, after twenty-four hours of agony, died on August 19, 1662, thirty-nine years old.

An autopsy of Pascal's body showed damage to the membranes of the brain and digestive organs. The insides were affected by gangrenous inflammation. The skull turned out to be almost without any seams, except for the arrow suture: this condition of the skull was probably the cause of the constant headaches that Pascal suffered from at the age of eighteen. There was a kind of bone growth on the crown of the head; not a trace remained of the coronal suture. The brain was extremely large, very heavy and dense. On the inside of the skull, opposite the cerebral ventricles, there were two depressions, like fingerprints, filled with curdled blood and purulent matter. Gangrenous inflammation began in the dura mater of the brain.

Pascal was buried in the Church of St. Etienne. Madame Genlis assures in her memoirs that the Duke of Orleans, needing a skeleton for his alchemical experiments, ordered Pascal's bones to be dug up. This fable was repeated by Michelet in his History of the Revolution, but, as has now been fully proven, it is a figment of the imagination of a witty writer.

PASCAL'S PHILOSOPHY

Monument to Pascal at the Saint-Jacques Tower in Paris

Pascal did not leave behind a single complete philosophical treatise, nevertheless, he occupies a very definite place in the history of philosophy. His worldview, it seems, can most accurately be defined as Christian skepticism. In the history of Christianity, Pascal plays the same role as the author of Ecclesiastes in the history of Judaism and Pyrrho in the history of the classical world.

In everything that concerns Christian teaching, Pascal is a sincere and unconditional believer. He does not allow the slightest doubt either regarding dogma or regarding miracles and other external manifestations of Christianity. Otherwise, he is a complete skeptic. Pascal is ready to doubt the power of the human mind, the meaning of material goods, and the dignity of human institutions.

Pascal's Thoughts were often compared with Montaigne's Essays and the philosophical writings of Descartes. From Montaigne, Pascal borrowed several thoughts, conveying them in his own way and expressing them in his own concise, fragmentary, but at the same time figurative and fiery style; Pascal agrees with Descartes only on the issue of automatism, and even in the fact that he recognizes, like Descartes, our consciousness as an indisputable proof of our existence. But Pascal’s starting point in these cases also differs from Cartesian. “I think, therefore I exist,” says Descartes. “I sympathize with my neighbors, therefore, I exist, and not only materially, but also spiritually,” says Pascal; for Descartes, deity is nothing more than an external force; for Pascal, divinity is the beginning of love, at the same time external and present in us. Pascal mocked Descartes's concept of divinity no less than his "subtle matter." “I cannot forgive Descartes,” said Pascal, “that, while recognizing the divine principle, he at the same time perfectly manages without this principle. Descartes calls on a deity only to give impetus to the world order, and then hides it in an unknown place.

Pascal's skepticism is rooted primarily in his views on the insignificance of man's mental and physical powers. The arguments he presents represent a strange mixture of poeticized mathematical definitions with biblical and classical images and comparisons. The philosopher constantly calls on the help of a geometer, theologian and even a poet.

Mathematical images dominate Pascal's mind. Whether he wants to depict the immensity of the universe, he, repeating the thoughts of medieval writers, expresses them in a concise and strong geometric form: the universe is “an endless ball, the center of which is everywhere, and the circumference is nowhere.” Whether he is trying to prove the insignificance of human life and convince us that it is completely indifferent to him whether our life will last ten years more or not, he explains his thought in a strictly mathematical form: “In view of infinite quantities, all finite ones are equal to each other.” . Whether he wants to convince us of the need for faith in a deity, Pascal resorts to his theory of probability, evaluates different hypotheses in the same way as a player evaluates a game.”

Pascal invites us to bet and says that he who asserts the existence of the divine principle can safely put everything on the line, since in any case he will lose nothing and win everything.

Even when describing the attributes of the deity, Pascal, although he claims their incomprehensibility, tries to give mathematical comparisons. So, for example, to prove the possibility of an omnipresent being, he says: imagine a point moving with infinite speed. In Chapter XI of the Pensées, Pascal expresses the unknowability of the deity as follows:

“One added to infinity does not increase it at all. The finite is destroyed in the presence of the infinite and becomes pure nothingness. So is our mind before divine justice. We know that there is an infinite, but we do not know its nature. We know that the statement that the series of numbers is finite is false. Therefore, there is an infinite number; but we don't know what number it is. It can be neither even nor odd, since by adding one to it we do not change its nature.” “We know not only the existence, but also the nature of the finite, since we ourselves are finite and extended. We know the existence of the infinite, but not its nature, because, having extension like us, it has no boundaries. But we cannot know by reason either the existence or the nature of the deity, because it has neither extension nor boundaries.”

Thus, long before Kant, Pascal realized the impossibility of proving the existence of a deity by any physical or metaphysical arguments. But while Kant was looking for the missing evidence in the moral field, Pascal believed that the only possible proof comes from faith. “We know the existence of divinity through faith,” says Pascal, “and his nature through his glory,” which expresses itself in the lives of the righteous. Of course, there is a moral principle here too, but it plays far from the first and not the exclusive role in Pascal.

Referring to St. Paul, Pascal says that Christians cannot be reproached for the fact that they cannot give any reasonable arguments in favor of their faith. After all, Christians, says Pascal, themselves declare that they believe in things that may seem absurd (stultitia, I Epistle, St. Paul to Corinth., ch. I).

According to Pascal, every person is forced to choose one of the hypotheses: either there is a divine principle, or there is not. “You have to bet,” he says. – It does not depend on your will, you are forced to make a choice. If you have to choose, let's see what interests you the least. You can lose two things: truth and goodness (if there is no deity). Let’s weigh the loss and the gain.” And then Pascal tries to prove that, in view of the possibility of infinitely large profits, one can safely gamble everything.”

But what to do if the mind refuses to submit to faith?

Leo Tolstoy would give us advice to “settle down”; Pascal had given similar advice before him, but expressed it much more sincerely, boldly and energetically. Pascal advises us to become stupid (abvtir), which, of course, cannot be taken in the literal sense, as did the French philosopher Cousin, who, with the appearance of an intelligent man, read Pascal a very severe reprimand for this advice. Pascal obviously wants to show with his advice that, in his opinion, the area of ​​​​faith should be completely separated from the area of ​​reason, which - so Pascal thinks - invades areas that are completely foreign to it. Neither David nor Solomon, according to Pascal, reasoned in this way: “The Emptiness exists, therefore there is a God.” Physics and even mathematics are powerless in matters of faith. “Instead of looking for new evidence of the existence of a deity,” writes Pascal, “work to reduce your passions.” To this end, Pascal even advises subordinating oneself to external discipline, for example, strictly observing rituals, which he himself did at the end of his life. “Of course it will make you stupid,” says Pascal. “But that’s what I’m afraid of,” you say. - "Why? – asks Pascal. – What do you have to lose? You will become honest, loyal, charitable, grateful, sincere, truthful.”

Thus, in the positive realm, Pascal could not come up with anything other than the subordination of reason to faith and the curbing of passions. But such is the inevitable result of all mysticism.

As for Pascal's skeptical attitude towards everything outside the objects of faith, it is extremely remarkable as a criticism of human reason and all human affairs. Everything seems vain and insignificant to him, everything except human thought, since it is a reflection of the deity. “Let,” he says, “let man contemplate nature in all its sublime and complete grandeur. Let him remove his gaze from the low objects surrounding him, let him look at this dazzling luminary, placed as an eternal light to illuminate the universe; let the earth appear to him as a point... Our gaze stops, but the imagination goes further. This entire visible world is just an imperceptible line in the lush bosom of nature... What is man in nature? Nothing compared to the infinite, everything compared to the insignificant: the mean between nothing and everything.”

Sometimes Pascal's judgments about human insignificance sparkle with bitter humor, reminiscent of Schopenhauer.

Everything that people enjoy, everything that makes them proud, awakens ambition and insatiable aspirations - all this, says Pascal, is nothing more than a figment of our imagination. Without the help of an amazing ability for self-delusion and for fooling other people, none of the riches of the earth would bring either fame or visible prosperity.

“Our judges,” says Pascal, “understood this secret perfectly. Their red robes, their ermines, the chambers in which they judge, all this solemn appearance was extremely necessary. If healers did not have robes and doctors their quadrangular caps, they could not fool people as much as they do now... Our kings do not wear very magnificent clothes, but they are followed by guards with halberds; all these trumpets and drums, the troops surrounding them - all this awes even the brave. One must have a too purified mind to consider the great padishah, surrounded by forty thousand Janissaries, to be the same person as everyone else... If doctors really knew how to heal, they would not need caps: the greatness of science would in itself be worthy of respect.”

Pascal is no less skeptical about all kinds of human professions. “Chance,” he says, “makes people masons, warriors, roofers. The military says: only war is real, all civilians are slackers... Habit conquers nature... Sometimes, however, nature takes over, and instead of a soldier or a mason we see just a man.”

In the same way, according to Pascal, all habits, customs and other differences created by climate, political boundaries, and era are insignificant and absurd. In Pascal's reasoning on this matter we already see a harbinger of the philosophical teachings of the 18th century; he sometimes speaks almost in the language of Rousseau. “Instead of a permanent and lasting principle of justice,” says Pascal, “we see the fantasies and whims of the Persians and Germans.” “Three degrees of latitude overturn all jurisprudence, the meridian decides the essence of truth; the entry of Saturn into the constellation Leo marks the beginning of such and such a crime. Good justice limited by the river! Truth is on this side of the Pyrenees, lies on the other side.”

The robber, the adulterer, the parricide - all in their time and place were considered virtuous people. Can there be anything more absurd than that another person has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the river and because his prince quarreled with mine, although I myself have no quarrel with him? No doubt there are natural laws; but our beautiful perverted mind ruined everything. And yet how powerless this mind is! It doesn't take a cannon shot to interrupt our train of thought, the noise of a grinding wheel is enough. Don't be surprised that this man doesn't reason well: a fly is buzzing around his ear. Good ruler of the universe! Oh, most comical hero!

What are human pleasures? Causes of new misfortunes, new suffering. “When I,” says Pascal, “sometimes think about the anxieties of people, about the dangers and misfortunes to which they expose themselves, I often say that all human disasters come from one thing, namely, from the fact that people do not know how to sit still. in the room. A person who has enough to live on, if he could stay at home, would not go to sea or to war. But when I, having found the source of our misfortunes, tried to discover the reason why people expose themselves to all these disasters, I saw that there is also some real good... Let us imagine the best situation, for example, the position of a king. If he does not have entertainment and variety, the most prosperous life from our point of view will soon become disgusting to him. He will think about conspiracies, uprisings, death, and in the end he will become more unhappy than the last of his subjects who has the opportunity to diversify his life. Hence the universal passion for entertainment. That is why they are looking for games, women, wars, and major positions. No hunter hunts a hare for the sake of the hare. If he had been given this hare for free, he would not have taken it. People are looking for noise and fuss to distract them from thoughts about the insignificance of our existence. All life goes like this: we seek peace by overcoming obstacles, but as soon as we have overcome them, peace becomes unbearable for us. A person is so unhappy that he is bored even without any reason, simply by his complexion, and he is so vain and petty that when there are thousands of reasons for boredom and melancholy, some trifle like a billiard ball can entertain him. After all, tomorrow he will boast in the company of friends that he played better than his opponent. What does it mean to be chancellor, minister, etc.? This means being in a position where, from morning to evening, crowds of people mill around in the hallway and in the office, preventing the lucky person from thinking about himself. Even if he retires, keeping all his wealth or even receiving more than before, he will be unhappy and abandoned, because no one now stops him from thinking about himself.”

After all, what is a person? We do not know what the body is, nor what the spirit is; We know even less how the spirit can be combined with the body. What is man - this judge of all things, a stupid earthworm, a vessel of truth, a cesspool of errors, the glory and shame of the universe? Neither an angel, nor an animal... All life, all philosophy depends on the question: is our soul mortal or immortal? “It is possible,” says Pascal, “not to develop the Copernican system, but the question of the immortality of the soul must certainly be resolved in one sense or another.” Meanwhile, there are philosophers who build their systems completely independently of this issue. It is amazing, says Pascal, how indifferent many people are in this case. “We are like travelers on a deserted island, or like criminals burdened with chains, who daily watch with complete indifference as one of their comrades is killed, knowing that their turn will come. What to think of a man sentenced to death who, having only an hour to submit a request for clemency and knowing that he can probably obtain a pardon, spends that hour playing picket? Here is our portrait. Who can lead us out of this chaos? Neither skeptics, nor philosophers, nor dogmatists could do anything. A skeptic cannot doubt everything, for example, when he is pricked or burned; finally, he cannot doubt his doubt. The dogmatist builds a tower to the heavens, but it collapses, and an abyss opens up under his feet. Reason, therefore, is powerless. Only the heart, only faith and love can lead us out of this abyss.”

This, in general terms, is Pascal's eloquent argument, which led him from skepticism to faith.

This is not the place to examine Pascal's teachings. It is enough to note that all those manifestations of love for one’s neighbor that Pascal speaks of do not in the least contradict the dictates of reason and do not in the least exclude reason. There is no need to follow Pascal's advice and "become stupid" by subjecting yourself to the discipline he recommends in order to be able to be honest, truthful, sincere and charitable. On the contrary, reason gives a more correct application to high moral qualities. Even if, following Pascal, we recognize the powerlessness of reason and consider our mental activity to be as automatic as the movement of wheels in Pascal’s arithmetic machine, then this does not at all serve as proof of the incompatibility of reason with the moral side of Christian teaching. As for the side that attracted Pascal so much, especially from the time he believed in the miracle of the “holy thorn,” it should be said about it that it is connected with questions of morality only in an accidental and external way: therefore, one can have very different opinions on this kind questions and hold exactly the same views regarding human morality.

The history of philosophy must, however, recognize the merit of Pascal that he posed questions more directly, sincerely and more talentedly than most of those who wrote in the same spirit; that his words did not diverge from his deeds and his whole life was an exact embodiment of his ideas. If he had weaknesses and delusions, he atoned for them through years of severe moral and physical suffering. A merciless exposer of Jesuit hypocrisy and pharisaism, he alone deserved a place in the history of human development, not to mention his brilliant scientific works.

In the same year, Pascal began creating his summing machine, the Pascalina. Pascal's machine looked like a box filled with numerous gears connected to one another. The numbers to be added were entered by turning the wheels accordingly. In about 10 years, Pascal built about 50 versions of his car. Despite the general admiration it caused, the machine did not bring wealth to its creator. However, the principle of connected wheels, invented by Pascal, became the basis for the creation of most computing devices for almost three centuries.

Pascal was a first-class mathematician. He helped create two major new areas of mathematical research. At the age of sixteen, he wrote a remarkable treatise on the subject of projective geometry and during the same year corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on the theory of probability, which subsequently had a fundamental influence on the development of modern economics and sociology.

Blaise Pascal's name is given to one of the programming languages ​​Pascal, as well as to the method of arranging binomial coefficients in a table - Pascal's triangle.

Works of Blaise Pascal

• Experience on conic sections (Essai pour les coniques,) - Pascal's theorem that in any hexagon inscribed in an ellipse, hyperbola or parabola, the intersection points of three pairs of opposite sides lie on the same straight line.
• New experiences concerning emptiness (Expériences nouvelles touchant le vuide,)
• Treatise on the equilibrium of liquids (Traités de l'équilibre des liqueurs,)
• Treatise on the weight of a mass of air (Traités de la pésanteur de la masse de l’air, )
• Treatise on the Arithmetic Triangle (Traité du triangle arithmétique avec quelques autres petits traités sur la même matière, published in)
• Letters to a Provincial - a series of eighteen letters published in -, a masterpiece of French satirical prose
• Prayer for conversion for the benefit of illnesses (Prière pour demander à Dieu le bon usages des maladies,)
• Thoughts on Religion and Other Subjects (Pensées sur la religion et sur quelques autres sujets) - posthumous edition organized by relatives: a mishmash of all the drafts they could find, mostly from the unfinished Apology of the Christian Religion (Apologie de la religion chrétienne) . Contains, among other things, the so-called. Pari's argument.
• A treatise on emptiness was not published; only fragments were found after the author's death.

Links

• Gindikin S., Blaise Pascal. , Kvant, No. 8, 1973.

Pascal (Brockhaus and Efron)

Pascal - one of the greatest thinkers of France (1623-62), b. in Clermont-Ferrand; from an early age he showed great inquisitiveness and a remarkable ability for mathematical sciences (see below). The intensive exercises greatly upset P.’s naturally weak health. Having recovered, he, at the request of his father, reduced his studies to two hours a day and began to lead the ordinary life of a wealthy young man, visiting salons, theaters, etc. The beginning of his studies in philosophy: he read, among other things, Epictetus, Descartes and Experiments Montaigne. The last book made the most bleak impression on him: Montaigne’s cold skepticism pierced like a poisoned arrow into the heart of the young man, open to faith and hope. Even Descartes' system did not bring him complete peace: Descartes turned only to reason, while P. was looking for truth that could satisfy not only the mind, but also the heart. At this time, he came across a book by the Dutch theologian Jansen: “The Transformation of the Inner Man,” where the voluptuousness of the flesh is equally condemned into the voluptuousness of the spirit, which means the satisfaction of excessive inquisitiveness, as a manifestation of refined egoism and pride. This ascetic thought seemed to P. to be so sublime that he decided to quit science forever. But this was not so easy to do: despite all his efforts, he could not, for example, resist the desire to test Torricelli’s experiments on the gravity of air. His “Nouvelles experiences louchant le Vide” published by him are of great importance in science; as John Herschel put it, he more than anyone contributed to strengthening the disposition towards experimental knowledge in the minds of people. Physics studies, however, only temporarily distracted him from philosophical questions. Immersed in painful thoughts over the great problem of human existence, he found nothing that could heal the melancholy of his dissatisfied soul.

Once, however, a ray of light illuminated the dark mystical depths of P.’s tormented soul and aroused in him hope for happiness. We do not know who the person was who awakened the necessary feeling in the soul of the young philosopher; one can only guess that she stood very high on the social ladder and did not want to step over the social abyss that separated them. The feeling she inspired in P. was a respectful, timid and completely ideal feeling. This is proven by a small work dating back to this time: “Discours sur les passions de l’Amour,” which one critic called a poetic rhapsody dictated by P. with the songs of Petrarch and Raphael. P. contrasts Descartes' innate ideas of reason with innate feelings, of which the strongest is love. According to P., we came into the world to love and enjoy; it does not require any proof, because it is felt by a person. Of course, P. does not understand the word pleasure in the vulgar sense of sensual pleasure; on the contrary, the greatest happiness available to man - love - must rest on ideal principles and serve as the source of everything sublime and noble. In 1651, P. lost his beloved father; his love was not crowned with success; to top it all off, his fall from the carriage on the Negli Bridge shocked his entire nervous system so much that he began to suffer from hallucinations. A depressed mood led him to the Jansenist community of Port-Royal, where many broken hearts sought reassurance. The position of the hermits of Port-Royal was at that moment most critical. Their bitter enemies, the Jesuits, reached the point that the council of French bishops and the pope himself condemned the five main theses of Jansenist teaching; as a result of this condemnation, the Men's and Women's Schools that existed at Port-Royal were closed; All that remained was for the Sorbonne to pronounce its condemnation - and then the authorities could close Port-Royal itself. At this fateful moment for the Jansenists, when all of France was impatiently awaiting the verdict of the Sorbonne, the famous “Letters to the Provinciales” appeared. Looking around the battlefield, P. realized that the Jansenists would probably lose the case both at the Sorbonne and in front of public opinion if they fought on the basis of theological subtleties that were little understood by society. As a result, P. transferred the issue to the basis of moral principles and submitted the dispute between the Jansenists and the Jesuits to the court of public conscience. He exposed the casuistry of the Jesuits, brought to shame their flexible and dishonest morality, which justified all means, including murder, to achieve their goal. According to P., the struggle between the Jansenists and the Jesuits was a struggle between truth and violence, freedom against despotism, moral principles against egoism. The impression made by this philippic was enormous. Despite the condemnation of the Jansenists by the pope himself, all that was best in French society took the side of the persecuted; from then on, the name of the Jesuit became synonymous with hypocrisy, self-interest and lies. The Jesuits decided to polemicize with P., but the “Apologie des Casuistes” they published in their defense fell on their heads; Under pressure from public opinion, the clergy themselves rebelled against this book and petitioned the pope to have it banned. P.'s triumph was complete, but he was so morally upset that he could not fully enjoy it. Having retired forever to Port-Royal solitude, he cast aside all vain thoughts of literary fame, devoted himself to prayer and religious meditation, and soon became a real ascetic. He wore a belt studded with nails on his body; whenever it seemed to him that his rebellious spirit was agitated by doubt or pride, he struck his belt with his hand and the nails pierced his body. After P.'s death, several bundles or bundles of various passages of religious and philosophical content, written on scraps of paper and folded haphazardly, were found in his room in Port-Royal. In the city these passages were put into some order and published under the name “Pensees”. This edition, which served as the basis for all subsequent ones, was extremely faulty. When in 1842 Victor Cousin, who compared it with authentic manuscripts, reported this to the Academy, the latter commissioned Gava to make a new, critical edition of “Pensees,” which was published in 1852. Only from this time could it be argued that we have hands the original text of P. Thoughts The poems represent excerpts from a large essay he conceived in defense of religion. In the last years of P.'s life, one thought completely filled his tormented soul - the thought of what will happen to us after death? Vera answered this question, but only for him personally; he knew that there were many skeptics and unbelievers in the world; he wanted to open the eyes of those who do not see, to convince those who doubt, to shame those who are proud of their intelligence. It is clear from everything that P. wanted to apply to Christianity the very method that he followed to prove scientific problems, that is, to expose a number of facts the existence of which our reason cannot. doubt, and then prove that these facts can only be explained with the help of the Christian religion. According to P., a person, full of contradictions in his moral and physical nature, is a riddle that can only be solved through the Christian religion. First of all, P. is surprised at the indifference of a person in front of this riddle, towards the resolution of which all his efforts should be directed, for, in fact, what is a person if not a combination of the most insoluble contradictions? At the same time he is the greatest and the most insignificant of creatures; he comprehends with his mind the greatest secrets of nature - and a gust of wind is enough to extinguish the light of his life forever. Everything he conceives proves at the same time both the strength of his thought and its weakness; at every step his mind encounters obstacles before which, willy-nilly, he must bow. He does not know how to use the insignificant period of time assigned to his life properly, to deal with the only need; on the contrary, he tries to forget himself, tries to turn his thoughts away from the most important questions of his existence, amuses himself with games, hunting, politics, and thus kills time until it, in turn, kills him. This is how a person’s whole life goes. Meanwhile, despite all the weaknesses in the human soul, the instincts of the great and divine never completely fade away. The man is unhappy and weak, the man suffers, but he knows that he suffers - and this is his greatness; The whole dignity of man lies in his ability to think. So, on the one hand - greatness, on the other - insignificance and weakness: these are the two extreme points to which the incomprehensible nature of man reaches every hour. Citing various attempts to explain this riddle in the philosophy of the Stoics, skeptics, etc., P. masterfully shows their one-sidedness and comes to the conclusion that only Christianity, understood in the sense of the Jansenist doctrine, can reconcile these insoluble contradictions. Christianity teaches that before the Fall, man was in a state of innocence and perfection, traces of which are still preserved in his tireless pursuit of a moral ideal. After the Fall, man’s mind became darkened, lost clarity, his will became so weakened that he could not, without the help of divine grace, strive for perfection. This is why man exhibits so many contradictions in his nature; that is why he is both great and insignificant at the same time. For a religion to be true, it must take into account this fundamental contradiction of human nature - and what religion is more clearly aware of this contradiction than the Christian religion? Thus, Christianity is the only hypothesis that can provide the key to human existence, and therefore it is the only true religion.

In addition to proving the truth of the Christian religion, Thoughts The poems contain a lot of deep observations about life and people, expressed in such a simple and elegant form and in such a lapidary style that, once you read them, you will certainly remember them. Trying to determine the essence of human nature, P. involuntarily had to become a psychologist and moralist, and the thoughts he expressed about man, his position in society, literature, etc. are striking in their depth and originality. Thoughts P. translated into Russian by Pervov (St. Petersburg, 1892).

Further reading on Pascal

m-me Perier (sister P.), “Vie de Pascal”, usually prefixed to all editions of “Pensees”; Dufosse, "Memoires pour servir a l'histoire de Port-Royal" (1876-79); Sainte-Beuve, "Histoire du Port-Royal" (vols. II and III); his, “Causeries du Lundi” (vol. V); Reuchlin, “Pascal’s Leben” (Stuttg., 1840); Havet, “Etude sur Pascal,” which preceded his publication of P.’s works; Maynard, “Pascal, sa vie, son caractere” (P., 1850); Vinet, “Etudes sur Pascal” (P., 1856); Prevost-Paradol, “Les Moralistes Franç ais” (P., 1865); Seche, “Les dormers Jansenistes” (P., 1891-1892); "Blaise P., Pensees, Lettres et Fragments, publiees pour la premiere fois par Pros" per Fengire" (P., 1897); Brunetiere, "Eludes Critiques" (4th volume); Leslie Stephen, "Pascal" ( "Fortnightly Review", 1897, July).

H. Storozhenko

"Pascal as a mathematician"

At the age of 16, Pascal was already able to write a remarkable work on conic sections, from which a small extract was published (“Essai pour les coniques”, P., 1640. Information about this work was preserved for posterity by Leibniz, who examined it during his stay in Paris in the manuscript. The author based the work on the remarkable theorem he discovered about the mystical hexagon, which consists in expressing the property of a hexagon inscribed in a conic section to always have three points of intersection of its opposite sides on one straight line. In the above-mentioned extract from this work P. . speaks of himself as a follower of Desargues. P. boldly took the path that, leading to the creation of a new synthetic geometry, freed geometry from the need to develop on arithmetic-algebraic soil alien to it. Another outstanding work of P. in the field of geometry was research. related to the cycloid. P. solved questions about determining: 1) the area and center of gravity of a segment formed by a line parallel to the base of the cycloid and drawn from any of its points to the intersection with the axis; 2) volumes and centers of gravity of bodies resulting from the rotation of the same segment both near its base and around the axis of the cycloid, and 3) centers of gravity of four bodies resulting from the intersection of the two previous planes passing respectively through their axes of rotation.

Before publishing the solution he found, P., according to a very widespread custom in his time, turned to modern geometers in June 1658 with an anonymous circular announcement of an appointment for delivering fully explained and clearly proven solutions to all these questions no later than October 1 of the same year, bonuses of 40 pistoles for the first of those who delivered these solutions and 20 for the second. The two works presented, one by Laluvera and the other by Wallis, did not prove worthy of prizes. "It was published in October" Histoire de la Roulette"P. himself, which contained, in addition to the history of previous works on the study of the cycloid, the methods he had previously invented for finding quadratures, cubatures, rectifications and centers of gravity of bodies, flat and curved surfaces and curved lines. By application to the cycloid, P. tested and actually justified the complete the suitability of his methods, developed by maintaining the principle of the method of indivisible Cavaliers. By bringing this method in connection with the summation of series, P. was the first to take the path that Wallis followed with such success a little later with his “. Arithmetica Infinitorum"and Newton before the discovery of the fluxion method. In addition, from Leibniz’s confession it is known that P.’s works were also useful to him on the path to the discovery of differential and integral calculus. Continuation " Histoire de la Roulette", directed mainly against Laluver, was also published in 1658 and, finally, in January 1659, an essay containing the general title " Letters a Mr. Carcavi" - solutions to the issues proposed for the prize and contained in a letter from Dettonville (pseudonym P.) to Karkavi in ​​five treatises: “Proprietes des sommes simples triangulaires et pyramidales”, “Traité des trilignes rectangles et de leursonglets”, “Traité des sinus du quart de cercle”, “Traité des arcs de cercles”, “Petit traité des solide s circulaires”. In addition to those already mentioned, the following works by P., published in 1658, were devoted to the cycloids: “Problemata de cycloide proposita mense junii”, “Reflexions sur la condition des prix attaches a la solution des problemes de la cycloide” and its continuation "Annotata in quasdam solutions problematum de cyclide" and, written in 1659 and after "Traité general de la roulette ou Problemes proposes publiquement et resolus par Amos Dettonville" And "Dimensions des lignes courbes de toutes les roulettes". In terms of geometry, it remains to add to the above: "Tactiones sphericae", "Tactiones etiam conicae", "Loci solidi", "Loci plani", "Perspectivae methodus", "De l'escalier circulaire, des triangles cylindriques et de la spirale autour du c ône", "Propri etes du cercle, de la spirale et de la parabole" and a passage on the method of conducting geometric proofs. In this passage one cannot help but see one of the first valuable experiments in the creation of elements of the philosophy of mathematics belonging to the new time.

The beginning of Pascal's work in the field of the science of numbers was the invention he made at the age of 19 calculating machine for four arithmetic operations. The imperfection of the mechanical technology of the era did not allow the Parisian mechanics to accurately implement the inventor's ideas. A description of the car appeared in the city “ Avis necessaire a tous ceux qui auront la curiosite de voir la machine arithmetique et de s’en servir" It was not later that the arithmetic triangle (a group of numbers arranged in horizontal lines in the form of a triangle) was invented, but its complexity is not described here. Among the numerous applications of the arithmetic triangle, one can point out that it provides arithmetic series of ascending order to find combination numbers in it.

P.’s work “Traité du triangle arithmetique” was written in 1654, but was published only in the city. In it, in the proof of one of the propositions (Consequence XII) relating to the arithmetic triangle, the found P. first became known and then received widespread attention. the spread in science of the method of complete induction or, in other words, the method of proof from n To n+1, consisting in a conclusion from the justice of the truth being proven in one case to its justice in the next. By solving the problems proposed in the city by the Chevalier de Mere, P. was led to the creation of the theory of probability, but did not, however, leave any writings on the newly created science. The scientific world could become acquainted with these works partly through the “treatise” on the arithmetic triangle, both containing some of the relevant applications of the latter, mainly from the correspondence of Pascalas Fermat. In the field of number theory, P. left two works: "De numerorum continuorum productis" And "De numeris multiplicibusex sola characterum numericorum additione agnoscendis". "The product of continuous numbers of the genus k" in the first of these works P. names the product of natural numbers from a before a + k - 1; The subject of the second is the conditions for the divisibility of numbers, deduced from the knowledge of the sums of their digits. Number theory and partly algebra include; “De numer icarum potestatum ambitibus”, “Traité sur les nombres multiples”, “De numeris. magicomagicis", "Traité des ordres numeriques" (1665), "De numericorum ordinum compositione", "De numericorum ordinum resolutione", "De numericorum ordinum summa", "Producta con tinuorum resolvere", "Numericarum potestatum generalis resolutio", "Combinationes ", "Potestatum numericarum summa".

During the period 1647-53. P., in addition to his other works, was also engaged in physical research on the issue of air pressure and the equilibrium of liquids. Having learned about Torricelli's discovery of the barometer, P. repeated the experiments of its inventor with mercury, water, red wine, etc., but in the essay “Experiences nouvelles touchant le vuide” (P., 1647) he still based their explanation on the ancient fear of emptiness ( horror vacuum). When Torricelli’s explanation finally became known to him, he began with even greater enthusiasm the experiments that ended with the determination of the simultaneous heights of barometers on the top of Mount Puy de Dome near Clermont and at its base, carried out on behalf of P., his son-in-law Perrier. A brochure by P. was published in the city: “Recit de la grande experience de l’equilibre des liqueurs.” Further observations of the barometer in -51. allowed P. to explain the suction phenomena by air pressure, discovered the possibility of measuring heights using a barometer, pointed out the decrease in the density of air layers as they move away from the earth's surface, and revealed the existence of a connection between barometer fluctuations and changes in weather. In an essay completed back in the city, but which appeared in print only in the city. "Traité de l'equilibre des liqueurs el de la pesanteur de la masse de Pair"(P.) P. also dealt with the equilibrium of liquids in general, and, like Galileo, he was based on the principle of possible velocities, using it to derive a number of important proposals.

The first complete works of Pascal

The first complete collection of P.'s works was published by Boss under the title: “Oeuvres de V. Pascal” (5 volumes, The Hague and P., 1779; 6 volumes, P., 1819); latest ed. 1872 (P.).

Biography of Pascal

Of the biographies of P., the more significant is Dreydorff: “Pascal, sein Leben und seine Kämpfe” (Lpts., 1870).

Name: Blaise Pascal

Years of life: June 19, 1623 – August 19, 1662

State: France

Field of activity: Mathematics, philosophy, literature

Greatest Achievement: Creation of the first calculating equipment, writing works on hydrostatics

France in the 17th century was distinguished by the presence of great minds who made enormous contributions to the development of science. Moreover, in a variety of fields – from technical to humanitarian. During this period, the state patronizes discoveries and their creators, thus making a contribution to world science. One of the most prominent representatives of that time is the outstanding mathematician Blaise Pascal.

The Life of Blaise Pascal

French scientist Blaise Pascal was born on June 19, 1623. The family was quite prosperous - the father, Etienne Pascal, was involved in collecting taxes and debts. Mother, Antoinette, ran the household - she had a house and three children on her shoulders - Blaise himself and his 2 sisters - Jacqueline (the youngest) and Gilberte (the eldest). When the baby was 3 years old, his mother died. And the father began to raise the children himself. But doing this in the town of Clermont-Ferrand, where the future mathematician was born, is unprofitable and inconvenient. The capital would provide more opportunities for children, and in 1631 the entire Pascal family moved to Paris.

Etienne took care of his son's education himself - he himself had, as they say, good brains and a thirst for knowledge. Moreover, the child grew up smart and grasped everything the first time. My father adhered to the principle that every subject should be studied at a certain age, so that there would be no gaps in education and there would be no need to strain the child too much on a subject that is not appropriate for his age. For example, learning languages ​​- from 12 years old, mathematics - from 15.

At the age of 11, Blaise surprised his parents with his knowledge of physics. And it happened like this. One day the family was having dinner at the table, and one of the children hit a faience dish with a cutlery. There was a sound and vibration on the table throughout the dining room. And Blaise noticed that when you touch the dish, the sound and vibration disappear. After this discovery, he wrote a short note about it and showed it to his father. Etienne, acquainted with many scientists and mathematicians, takes his son to meet them, and from the age of 14, Blaise will spend time every week on Thursdays with the outstanding minds of France in the monastic cell, discussing the development of technical sciences.

In 1638, clouds gathered over the family - the father did not agree with the financial policy of the cardinal, for which he was removed from office and was forced to flee Paris. The children had to be left with a neighbor. After some time, the cardinal changed his anger to mercy and returned Pascal Sr. to work as a collector, but not in Paris, but in Rouen. The family moved again.

Blaise Pascal's summing machine

In 1640, the Pascals arrived at their father's new place of work. It was during this period that Blaise's health began to deteriorate. He himself had never enjoyed good health, but here in Rouen it became even worse. But nevertheless, he did not give up his studies in science.

My father was getting older and could no longer make mental calculations so quickly. The son saw this torment and decided to help his parent. He wanted to make such an amazing device that would do all the computing work for them. In 1642, Blaise began developing the world's first calculating machine. It was quite easy to use - a medium-sized box with gears inside. Using revolutions, amounts were entered and added (or subtracted). Pascal calls the machine "Pascalina".

This machine was truly revolutionary in those days, but did not bring much money to its creator, since it was quite expensive to use and too bulky. However, Blaise does not lose heart and over the next nine years he organizes mass production of the machine, constantly improving it.

Genius of mathematics and physics

Despite his youth, Blaise also did not ignore mathematics. Pascal develops the theory of probability. This discovery was due to the fact that card players could not solve the problem of ending the game early and fairly dividing the winnings in half.

Blaise also posed a unique challenge to the mathematicians and physicists of antiquity, in particular to Aristotle. Once upon a time, the great Greek argued that everything has a material nature. Pascal proves through experiments that in any matter there is necessarily a vacuum. He carried out his main experiment using a Toricelli tube. An Italian scientist lowered a tube into mercury and saw that a void was forming inside the tube. Pascal proved that there are no substances on the surface of the tube. He published his observations in a book dedicated to this experience.

Blaise, in addition to technical sciences, towards the end of his life became interested in philosophy and religion. This was facilitated by his father’s injury on ice in 1646 and his joining the circle of Jansenists - followers of religious teachings based on the predestination of man’s earthly path, from the very beginning of the corrupted nature of man as a result of original sin. Pascal himself became an ardent religious person after the death of Etienne Pascal in 1657 and the departure of his younger sister, Jacqueline, who had been his friend and support all his life, into a monastery. During this period, Blaise created his scandalous work “Provincial Notes”, where he criticized the policies of the church and it itself in particular. King Louis XIV and the Pope unanimously condemned Pascal for this work.

Since 1659, Pascal has been experiencing constant headaches (since childhood he had problems with the nervous system). In 1647 he suffered a paralytic attack, which further deteriorated his health. Jacqueline died in 1661, and this event was the final blow for Blaise. He fell ill and never got out of bed, and died on August 19, 1662. He was only 39 years old.

Quotes

Pascal was distinguished by his extraordinary attention and wit. His quotes are filled with deep life meaning. Basically, he spoke about human nature and love, for example, that silence in it is much more valuable than any words, that only a true lover of truth can find it in a huge stream of deception. All his life he strictly adhered to the statements that he himself created.