Blaise Pascal (1623–1662). Minor Works. The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.
New Fragment of the Treatise on Vacuum
WHAT is there more absurd than to say that inanimate bodies have passions, fears, horrors; that insensible bodies, without life, and even incapable of it, may have passions which presuppose a soul at least sensitive to experience them? Besides, if the object of this horror were a vacuum, what is there in a vacuum that could make them afraid? What is there meaner and more ridiculous?
