ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the true greatness of Blaise Pascal as a social philosopher, it is necessary to bear in mind two facts: first, that he was a physicist; and second, that he was a Jansenian. The sociologist has a less promising material before his eyes: social facts are difficult to grasp, they are elusive, and they are always changing: the mind finds no firm point on which it can rest. Calvinism has helped to create the atmosphere in which science has flourished like the green bay tree, but it has obscured the fact that we are able to work out our own salvation by developing the great virtues of social life. Pascal's solution is ingenious: it is an anticipation of the principles of the most vital school of modern sociological thought; men like Cooley and Sumner, to whom we owe so much, have only elaborated what he has laid down in a score or so of disconnected fragments.
