Iltfure this time he had drawn up a table of numbers, which, from the form in which the figures were disposed, be called his ,1 rdhllf (601 I Trio nyle. Ile niight per haps have been an inventor of it, but it is certain that it had been treated of, a century before Pascal's time, by Carlin, and other arith metical writers.
M. Pascal was in the twenty-fourth year of his age, and the highest expectations were fiirmed of the advantages to be attained in science from his labours, he on a sudden renounced the study of matheinatics, and all human learning; devoted himself wholly to a life of mortification and prayer ; and became as great a devotee as almost any age has pro duced. He was not, however, so completely abstracted from the world, as to he w holly indifferent to what was passing in it ; and in the disputes between the Jesuits and the Jan senists, he became a partisan of the latter, and wrote his celebrated Provincial Letters, published in 1650, under the name of Lewis de Montalte, in which he only employed his talents of wit and humour in ridiculing the former. These letters have been translated into almost all the European languages, and probably nothing did more injury to the cause of the Jesuits. The course of life which he prescribed to
himself, proved unthvourable to his health of body and mind. I lis reason became in some measure affected, and in these circumstances, an accident produced on his mind an impres sion which could not be efIlleed. In 1654, while he was crossing the Seine in a coa•h-and-four, the two leading horses became unmanageable at a part of the bridge where the parapet was partly down, and plunged over the side into the river. Their weight fortunately broke the traces, by which means the other horses and the carriage were extri cated on the bank of the precipice. In his then enfeebled state, this frDlit was to much for the unfortunate Pascal ; and so serious were its eGets on him, that he never after wards had the possession of his mental faculties. Ile always imagined that he was on the edge of a vast abyss on the left siie of him. and he would at no time sit down till a chair was placed there, to assure him there was no real danger. After languishing some years in this miserable state, he died at Paris in 16(12, at the age of 39.