Note 60 — CABINET CYCLOPÆDIA. (continued 5)

The following is Pascal's address to Atheists:—

"I will not certainly make use, to convince you, of the faith by which we ascertain the existence of God, nor of all the other proofs which we possess, since you will not receive them. I will act by your own principles, and I undertake to show you, by the manner in which you daily reason on matters of less consequence, the way in which you ought to reason on this, and the part you ought to take in deciding the important question of the existence of God. You say we are incapable of knowing whether there be a God. Yet either God is, or God is not—there is no medium: towards which side, then, shall we lean? Reason, you say, cannot decide. An infinite gulph separates us. Stake, toss up at this distance; heads or tails—on which will you bet? Your reason does not affirm, nor can your reason deny one or the other.

"Do not blame the falsehood of those who have chosen—you cannot tell whether they are mistaken: No, you say I do not blame the choice they have made, but that they choose at all; he who chooses heads and he who chooses tails are both in the wrong—the right thing is not to make the wager.

"Yes; but the wager must be made. You have no choice—you are embarked; and not to bet that God does exist, is the same as betting that he does not. Which side will you be on? Weigh the gain and loss of taking that, that there is a God. If you win, you win all: if you lose, you lose nothing. Bet then that he doe's, without hesitation. Yes, you must wager. But perhaps I wager too much. Let us see. Since there is equal risk of gain or loss, even if it were only that you gain two lives for one, it were worth betting; and if you had ten to win, you would be imprudent not to risk your life to gain ten, at a game in which there is so much to be lost or won. But here there is an infinite number of lives to gain, with equal risk of losing or winning, and what you stake is so little and of so short duration that it is folly to fear hazarding it on this occasion."

Pascal reasons better in the following article:—

"We must not deceive ourselves, we are as much body as soul, and thus it is that persuasion does not use demonstration only as its instrument. How few things are proved? Proofs only convince the understanding. Habit renders our proofs strong; that persuades the senses, and gains the understanding without an exertion of its own. Who has demonstrated that there will be a to-morrow, or that we shall die? and yet what is more universally believed. Habit, then, persuades us. Habit makes so many Turks and Pagans: it makes trades, soldiers, &c. We ought not, indeed, to begin finding the truth through habit—but we ought to have recourse to it, when once the understanding has discerned the truth, so to imbibe it, and imbue ourselves with a belief which perpetually escapes from us—for to be for ever calling the proofs to mind would be too burdensome. We must acquire an easy belief—which is that of habit; which, without violence, art, or argument, causes us to believe, and inclines all our faculties to faith, so that our soul naturally falls into it. It is not sufficient to believe by force of conviction, if our senses incline us to believe the contrary. We must cause both parts to agree: the understanding through the reason that it has once acknowledged: and the senses, through habit, by not allowing them to incline the other way.

"Those to whom God has given religion as a feeling of the heart are happy and entirely convinced. We can only desire it for those, who have not this by reason, until God impresses it on the heart."