36. Gondi, Memoirs, 145.
37. The French word fronde is an odd word, meaning “sling.” During the uprising, the people used slings to bombard the windows of Cardinal Mazarin’s supporters with stones. This uprising began as an attempt by the general populace to be heard, but it soon degenerated into factions and then exploded into an attempted coup d’état. At issue were the tax policies of the dead Cardinal Richelieu.
38. Cailliet and Blankenagel, Great Shorter Works of Pascal, 87.
39. This was a perverted version of the Two Great Commandments in the Gospels: that you should love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole mind, your whole strength; and that you should love your neighbor as yourself. It was perverted because Pascal, following the Augustinian tradition, believed that sin subverted the individual’s love of God. Moreover, the love of self was not the measure by which we come to understand charity. For the Augustinian, one should love the neighbor and hate the self, thus denying the intimate connection between self-love and charity that the Gospels called for.
40. O’Connell, Blaise Pascal, 81.
41. O’Connell, Blaise Pascal, 81–82.
42. Œuvres de Pascal 2:976. Quoted at length in Cole, Pascal. Cole’s rendition of the struggle in the Pascal family is one of the best I’ve ever seen.
43. Œuvres de Pascal 2:749. Quoted in Cole, Pascal, 83.
44. Jacqueline Pascal to Blaise, May 7–9, 1652, in Jacqueline Pascal, “Memoir,” 140.
45. O’Connell, Blaise Pascal, 83.
46. O’Connell, Blaise Pascal, 82.
47. O’Connell, Blaise Pascal, 7.
48. Here is the math: 1–(5/6) 4 ≈ 0.5177 is the probability of rolling one six in four rolls. The probability of getting two sixes in twenty-four rolls is 1–(35/36) 24 ≈ 0.4914, which is slightly lower than the probability of getting one six. The chevalier was correct in his observation, but imprudent in his betting.
49. O’Connell, Blaise Pascal, 89.
50. Œuvres de Pascal 2:1138. Translation taken from Shea, Designing Experiments, 264.
51. Œuvres de Pascal 2:1138. Translation taken from Shea, Designing Experiments, 264.
52. Shea, Designing Experiments, 255–56.
53. The mathematics are far too involved to get into here. Those who are interested in such things should consult William R. Shea’s Designing Experiments and Games of Chance. Shea’s account is lucid and entertaining, and better yet, readable.
54. Shea, Designing Experiments, 284.
55. Œuvres de Pascal, 2:1034–35. Translation quoted from Shea, Designing Experiments, 288.
56. Cailliet and Blankenagel, Great Shorter Works of Pascal, 118.
57. Cailliet and Blankenagel, Great Shorter Works of Pascal, 118.
58. Cailliet and Blankenagel, Great Shorter Works of Pascal, 118.
59. Cailliet and Blankenagel, Great Shorter Works of Pascal, 118.
60. The French version can be found on the Internet at http://www.users.csbsju.edu/~eknuth/pascal.html. An English translation is also provided there, but I present my own here.
61. Conversation with M. de Saci (1655), cited in Popkin, Pascal: Selections, 79. This was not verbatim of the conversation, but a report written later by Père Singlin’s secretary.
62. O’Connell, Blaise Pascal, 105.
63. Cailliet and Blankenagel, Great Shorter Works of Pascal, 122.
64. Popkin, Pascal: Selections, 82.
65. I love these old church documents. Who can come up with words like contumelious?
66. O’Connell, Blaise Pascal, 128.
67. Blaise Pascal, Pensées et provinciales choisies, trans. Stanley Applebaum (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2004).
68. Pascal, Pensées et provinciales choisies, 8.
69. Blaise Pascal, Provincial Letters, trans. Thomas M’Crie (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1997), 16.
70. Blaise Pascal, Provincial Letters, 150.
71. Quoted in O’Connell, Blaise Pascal, 136.
72. O’Connell, Blaise Pascal, 166.
73. Pascal, Pensées and Other Writings, 67.
74. I have translated the argument in full:
Now let’s speak in accordance with our natural understanding.
If there is a God, he would be unfathomable, and infinitely so, since, having neither parts nor boundaries, he would exist in a way that we could not even imagine. Thus, we have no power to know either his nature or his existence. And because this is the case, it is impossible for anyone to solve this problem. Who would dare? Not we mere mortals, who are so disproportionate to him.
Who, then, will complain about Christians when they are unable to rationally account for their beliefs, since in truth no such account can be rendered? In proclaiming the faith to the world, they say it is a folly, a stultitiam (1 Cor. 1:18), and then you complain that they did not prove it! If they had managed to prove it, they wouldn’t be keeping their word, because it’s by lacking a proof that they show their sense.
“Yes,” you say, “but even though this might excuse those who offer this religion as it is, and might free them from the blame of offering it without a rational argument, it doesn’t excuse those who accept it.”
Let’s examine that point, then: let’s say that God does or does not exist. Which side should we choose? Reason is powerless before such an issue. There is an infinite abyss separating us. At the far end of this infinite universe, a coin is tossed—which will turn up, heads or tails? What will you wager? Relying merely on reason, you can’t decide. You can’t rationally bet either way, for you can’t defend either choice.
Thus, don’t call people who have made a choice fools, for you know nothing about it.
“No, but I’ll blame them,” you say, “for making any choice at all, because, even if one man picks heads and the other man picks tails, both are equally at fault, for the right thing is not to bet at all.”
But I say it’s necessary to bet. You cannot avoid it, for you are already launched on the waters. This being the case, which one will you take? How will you decide? Come now, since you must choose, let’s consider which one is of less importance to you. You have two things to lose—the true and the good, and two things to stake—your reason and your will, your knowledge and your bliss, and your nature has two things to shun—error and misery. Since you absolutely must choose [by living, you cannot avoid it], your intelligence will not be offended by one choice any more than by the other. That’s one point settled.
But your bliss? Let’s play the game and weigh the consequences of playing if you take heads—that is, that God exists. Now, let’s evaluate these two cases: if you win, you win everything, and if you lose, you lose nothing; so, consider that you needn’t hesitate. It’s a wonderful situation!
“Yes, I must wager,” you say, “but I don’t want to bet too much.”
Let’s see now, since the chance of winning and the chance of losing are even, then perhaps let’s say that you would win two lives for one, you could still bet, but if there were three to be won, you have to wager (since life forces you to play) and you’d be a fool, being forced to wager, not to risk your one life for three lives when the chances of losing and winning are even.
But there is an eternity of life and happiness at stake. You have one chance of winning, and a finite number of chances of losing and what you are risking is itself finite, but what you could win is infinite. The choice is clear: there can be no excuses for timidity when an infinity of life is to be won in a game where there is a finite number of chances to lose as opposed to a single chance of winning. No cowardice, now—you must give all! And so, in a game like this, where you have to play, you would be irrational to clutch at your life rather than risk it.
Therefore, this argument carries infinite weight, because the possibility of gaining an infinity of goodness is equal to the possibility of the loss of nothingness.
That is conclusive and, if men are capable of truth, this statement is true!
“I admit
it, I confess, but isn’t there any way of ‘peeking at the cards’?” Yes, the scriptures and the rest, etc. “Yes, but my hands are tied in my lips are silenced, I’m being forced to bet and I’m not at liberty, they won’t let me go, and my nature is such that I haven’t the power to believe. What, then, would you have me to do?”
It’s true, but at least wake up to the fact that your inability to believe comes from your passions, since reason induces you to believe but you still can’t. So, don’t strive to persuade yourself by counting up proofs of God’s existence; strive to diminish your passions. You want to find faith, but you don’t know the way. You want to cure yourself of your unbelief and you’re asking for remedies; learn from those who were once tied up like you and are now throwing the dice. They are people who know the path you’d like to follow; they are people cured of a disease from which you’d like to be cured—follow the way they started on.
They acted as if they believed—they took holy water, they had Masses said, and the like. That will make you believe quite naturally, and will make you more pliable to the faith.
“But that’s what I fear.” Why? What do you have to lose?
How will you be harmed by choosing this path? You will be faithful, honest, humble, and grateful; you will be full of good works, and will become a true, good friend to those who know you. What will you lose? Noxious pleasures, vainglory, and riotous times, but these losses will be easily supplanted by other, greater joys.
End of this argument.
75. The French version can be found in Pascal, Pensées et provinciales choisies. This is my own English translation, not that of Stanley Applebaum, who provides the English translation in this dual language edition.
76. By the way, this same argument is currently being used against Evangelical Christians because they believe in hell.
77. Jacqueline Pascal, “Letter to Soeur Angélique on the Crisis of the Signature,” in A Rule for Children and Other Writings, 147–52.
78. Cailliet and Blankenagel, Great Shorter Works of Pascal, 220.
79. O’Connell, Blaise Pascal, 189.
80. O’Connell, Blaise Pascal, 192.
81. Apuleius, The Golden Ass, 4.31.
82. Kavanagh, Dice, Cards, Wheels, 9.
83. Weird is one of the great words, having as one of its roots “spell casting.”
FURTHER READING
Armand Jean du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu and Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. The Political Testament of Cardinal Richelieu. Translated by Henry Bertram Hill. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1961.
Armour, Leslie. “Infini Rien”: Pascal’s Wager and the Human Paradox. Monograph published for the Journal of the History of Philosophy. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1993.
Bennett, Deborah J. Randomness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1998.
Bernstein, Peter L. Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996.
Burger, A. J. The Ethics of Belief: Essays by William Kingdon Clifford, William James, A. J. Burger. Roseville, CA: Dry Bones Press, 1997, 2001.
Cole, John R. Pascal: The Man and His Two Loves. New York: New York Univ. Press, 1995.
Davies, Paul. God and the New Physics. New York: Simon and Schuster / Touchstone, 1983.
Davis, Philip and Reuben Hersh. Descartes’ Dream: The World According to Mathematics. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986.
Devlin, Keith. Goodbye, Descartes: The End of Logic and the Search for a New Cosmology of the Mind. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1997.
Doyle, William. Jansenism: Catholic Resistance to Authority from the Reformation to the French Revolution. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000.
Franklin, James. The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2001.
Gray, Peter. The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1966.
Griffin, Susan. The Book of the Courtesans: A Catalogue of Their Virtues. New York: Broadway Books/Random House, 2001.
Groothius, Douglas. On Pascal. Stamford, CT: Wadsworth Division of Thomson Learning Center, 2003.
Hammond, Nicholas, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Pascal. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003.
Heisenberg, Werner, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1999.
Houston, James M., ed. The Mind on Fire: A Faith for the Skeptical and Indifferent, from the Writings of Blaise Pascal. Vancouver, BC: Regent College Publishing, 1989.
Jordan, Jeff, ed. Gambling on God: Essays on Pascal’s Wager. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994.
Kavanagh, Thomas M. Enlightenment and the Shadows of Chance: The Novel and the Culture of Gambling in Eighteenth-Century France. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1993.
Levi, Anthony. Cardinal Richelieu and the Making of France. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2001.
———. Louis XIV. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2004.
McKee, Elsie Anne, ed. and trans. John Calvin: Writings on Pastoral Piety. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2001.
Montaigne, Michel de. Essays. Translated by J. M. Cohen. London: Penguin Books, 1958.
O’Connell, Marvin R. Blaise Pascal: Reasons of the Heart. Library of Religious Biography. Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1997.
Pascal, Blaise. Pensées. Translated by A. J. Krailsheimer. London: Penguin Books, 1966.
———. The Provincial Letters. Translated by Thomas M’Crie. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1997.
Popkin, Richard H., ed. Pascal: Selections. New York: Macmillan, 1989.
Radner, Ephraim. Spirit and Nature: The Saint-Medard Miracles and 18th-Century Jansenism. New York: Crossroad, 2002.
Shea, William R. Designing Experiments and Games of Chance: The Unconventional Science of Blaise Pascal. Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 2003.
Weaver, Warren. Lady Luck: The Theory of Probability. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books/ Doubleday & Company, 1963.
Wetsel, David. Pascal and Disbelief: Catechesis and Conversion in the Pensées. Washington, DC: Catholic Univ. of America Press, 1994.
About the Author
JAMES A. CONNOR is the author of Kepler’s Witch: An Astronomer’s Discovery of Cosmic Order Amid Religious War, Political Intrigue, and the Heresy Trial of His Mother and Silent Fire: Bringing the Spirituality of Silence to Everyday Life. A former Jesuit priest, Connor is professor of English at Kean University in Union, New Jersey; he has also held teaching posts at St. Louis University and Gonzaga University. He is a director of studies at the Lessing Institute in Prague. He holds degrees in geoscience, philosophy, theology, and creative writing, and a Ph.D. in literature and science. He is a prize-winning essayist published widely in such places as American Book Review, Traditional Home, Willow Springs, The Critic, The Iowa Review, and The Iowa Journal of Literary Studies.
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Copyright
PASCAL’S WAGER: The Man Who Played Dice with God. Copyright © 2006 by James A. Connor. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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