Pensées
Pensées — the whole bundle
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
The whole bundle, in the order somebody thought best. There is no other kind.
- Catch rate
- Not found in the wild
- Base research
- 300
- Stat total
- 370
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
Still not a long book, and still unfinished — but whole now, in the sense that everything he left is in your hands rather than only what you carried out of the maze.
The highest Contend of any book in the game that is not Scripture. Pascal is doing apologetics at the level where the argument and the sentence are the same object.
Better than the bound fragments. Read together the pieces defend one another — the wager is much harder to dismiss once you have read the diagnosis it follows.
The most quoted book on the shelf. Four hundred years of people borrowing his sentences without attribution.
Cited for this book
Pascal died in 1662 with this unassembled. The first edition, the Port-Royal of 1670, tidied him — cut what looked heterodox, smoothed the aphorisms, imposed an order. Every serious edition since has been an attempt to undo that and get back to the strips of paper. The Trotter translation this game quotes follows Brunschvicg’s arrangement, which is one guess among several.
Development
A book develops as it is read — the fragment becomes the work, the work becomes the corpus.
Moves learned
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 51 | I Cannot Forgive Descartes | Rationality | Argument | 88 | 100% | 5 |
| 52 | The Eternal Silence | Experience | Argument | 66 | 100% | 20 |
| 53 | Reason Knows Its Limit | Rationality | Argument | 76 | 100% | 15 |
| 54 | The Greatness of Thought | Anthropology | Argument | 60 | 100% | 25 |
| 56 | Not Quiet — Excitement | Anthropology | Argument | 64 | 100% | 20 |
| 58 | Custom Is Our Nature | Anthropology | Argument | 62 | 100% | 20 |
| 60 | What Is a Man in the Infinite? | Natural Theology | Argument | 64 | 100% | 20 |
| 62 | We Never Live | Anthropology | Argument | 68 | 100% | 15 |
| 64 | Cleopatra’s Nose | History | Argument | 68 | 100% | 15 |
| 66 | Centre Everywhere | Natural Theology | Argument | 70 | 100% | 15 |
| 68 | Diversion | Anthropology | Argument | 72 | 100% | 15 |
| 70 | A Remnant of Greatness | Anthropology | Argument | 70 | 100% | 15 |
| 72 | The Fear of Being Mistaken | Rationality | Argument | 70 | 100% | 15 |
| 74 | The Government of Thought | Rationality | Argument | 72 | 100% | 15 |
| 76 | An Infinite Chaos | Rationality | Argument | 70 | 100% | 15 |
| 78 | Neither Angel Nor Brute | Anthropology | Argument | 74 | 100% | 15 |
| 80 | The Three Orders | Spirituality | Argument | 74 | 100% | 10 |
| 82 | God Felt by the Heart | Faith | Argument | 76 | 100% | 10 |
| 84 | Restless Heart | Experience | Argument | 75 | 100% | 10 |
| 86 | Argument from Desire | Natural Theology | Argument | 74 | 100% | 10 |
| 88 | Quietly in One Room | Anthropology | Argument | 85 | 95% | 10 |
| 90 | The Reasons of the Heart | Experience | Argument | 84 | 95% | 10 |
| 92 | A Thinking Reed | Anthropology | Argument | 86 | 95% | 10 |
| 94 | The Wager | Rationality | Argument | 88 | 95% | 5 |