irst.

Does it not seem preposterous on the very face of it to talk of our
opinions being modifiable at will? Can our will either help or hinder
our intellect in its perceptions of truth? Can we, by just willing it,
believe that Abraham Lincoln's existence is a myth, {5} and that the
portraits of him in McClure's Magazine are all of some one else? Can
we, by any effort of our will, or by any strength of wish that it were
true, believe ourselves well and about when we are roaring with
rheumatism in bed, or feel certain that the sum of the two one-dollar
bills in our pocket must be a hundred dollars? We can say any of these
things, but we are absolutely impotent to believe them; and of just
such things is the whole fabric of the truths that we do believe in
made up,--matters of fact, immediate or remote, as Hume said, and
relations between ideas, which are either there or not there for us if
we see them so, and which if not there cannot be put there by any
action of our own.

In Pascal's Thoughts there is a celebrated passage known in literature
as Pascal's wager. In it he tries to force us into Christianity by
reasoning as if our concern with truth resembled our concern with the
stakes in a game of chance. Translated freely his words are these: You
must either believe or not believe that God is--which will you do?
Your human reason cannot say. A game is going on between you and the
nature of things which at the day of judgment will bring out either
heads or tails. Weigh what your gains and your losses would be if you
should stake all you have on heads, or God's existence: if you win in
such case, you gain eternal beatitude; if you lose, you lose nothing at
all. If there were an infinity of chances, and only one for God in
this wager, still you ought to stake your all on God; for though you
surely risk a finite loss by this procedure, any finite loss is
reasonable, even a certain one is reasonable, if there is but the
possibility of {6} infinite gain. Go, then, and take holy water, and
have masses said; belief will come and stupefy your scruples,--_Cela
vous fera croire et vous abetira_. Why should you not? At bottom,
what have you to lose?

You probably feel that when religious faith expresses itself thus, in
the language of the gaming-table, it is put to its last trumps. Surely
Pascal's own personal belief in masses and holy water had far other
springs; and this celebrated page of his is but an argument