Descartes and Pascal: A Study of Likenesses

Of all the commonplace antitheses of literary history none seems more solidly justified than that which opposes Descartes to Pascal. Critics, depending upon their prejudices, have taken sides with either Pascal or Descartes, with either religion or reason. Pascal, whose total view seems more comprehensive, has received the lion's share of favorable comment. To many, his wider awareness, allowing for reason and more-than-reason, makes Descartes appear insufficient and incomplete. The little religion in Descartes is seen chiefly as an excrescence, or a strategic back-tracking: Descartes, seeing the dangerous implications of his rationalism, attempts the always unhappy marriage of Faith and Reason, one he regards as at best a mariage de convenance. Pascal, on the other hand, with his divorce of Faith and Reason, is on “le véritable chemin.” In short, Descartes pays the lip-service to Religion which Pascal pays to Reason.

What Mental Tests Shall We Use?

This is the first of a series of articles upon mental tests suitable for use with the blind. Interest inventories have considerable value for the educational and vocational guidance of the seeing and a considerable number are listed with favorable comment in the Mental Measurements Yearbooks published by Buros. But when the items are studied from the point of view of the blind many of the most popular and scientific tests have to be rejected. One inventory, the Kuder Preference Record, can be recommended, and has already proved its worth in trial with blind adolescents and adults. The Dunlap Academic Preference Blank, may be favorably recommended for the educational guidance of junior high school pupils, and the Ohio Interest Inventory for intermediate grades gives promise of valuable assistance in the elementary school. All of these tests may be given orally, without the use of braille, by having the subjects record their responses on dot sheets, which Perkins Institution is prepared to furnish on order.

International Law in Turkey

An editorial on the Turkish Institute of International Law by Professor Philip Marshall Brown, President of the American Peace Society, appeared in the October 1943 issue of this JOURNAL. I had the pleasure of publishing in the ULUS newspaper on the 23rd of February, 1944, a translation of this editorial, which contained the expression of many good wishes for our Institute no less than for Turkey itself and I was rewarded by seeing that it aroused great interest and profound gratification in learned and political circles in Turkey. Needless to say, this favorable comment on its inauguration and work, written by an authority in the most progressive country in the world, was recorded with deep gratitude and pride by our Institute.

Ralph's Case of Authors: Its Influence on Goldsmith and Isaac D'Israeli

In 1758, after thirty years of hack writing, James Ralph published The Case of Authors by Profession, a short pamphlet which vigorously defended professional writers and severely arraigned their principal employers, the booksellers, theatre managers, and politicians. The essay received favorable comment in the Monthly Review and the Critical Review as a just appraisal of the difficulties of authorship. It has additional interest because Oliver Goldsmith may very well have received from it certain ideas which appeared in his Essay on the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe, and because from it Isaac D'Israeli quoted, without acknowledgement, extensive passages which appeared in his Calamities of Authors.