From Descartes I come to Pascal, never to be mentioned without a tribute to the early genius which, though removed from life at the age of thirty-nine, left an ineffaceable trace upon the religion, science, and literature of his time. The Law of Progress received from him its earliest and most distinct statement as a rule of philosophy applicable to all the sciences depending upon experience and reason. This is to be found in that posthumous work of eloquent piety and sentiment, _Les Pensées_, first published by his companions of Port Royal, in 1669, some time after his death; and it is not a little curious, as an illustration of the prejudices this truth has encountered, that the chapter where it is set forth, entitled _Of Authority in Matters of Philosophy_, was in this early edition suppressed. Not until the next century was the testimony of Pascal disclosed to the world. "By a special prerogative of the human race," says he, "not only each man advances day by day in the sciences, but all men together make continual progress therein, as the universe grows old; because the same thing happens in the succession of men which takes place in the different ages of an individual. So that the whole succession of men in the course of so many ages may be regarded as _one man who lives always and who learns continually_. From this we see with what injustice we respect Antiquity in its philosophers; for, since old age is the period most distant from infancy, who does not see that the old age of this _universal man_ must not be sought in the times nearest his birth, but in those which are the most remote? They whom we call the Ancients were indeed new in all things, and properly formed the infancy of mankind; and since to their knowledge we have joined the experience of the ages which have followed, it is in ourselves that is to be found that Antiquity which we revere in the others."[251] We cannot admire too much this splendid inspiration, where the expression is in harmony with the thought. When it was said that mankind may be regarded "as one man who lives always and who learns continually," there was indeed a new discovery, as great as if a new continent or a new planet had been disclosed. [251] Pascal, Pensées, Part. I. Art. 1, _De l'Autorité en Matière de Philosophie_: OEuvres (ed. Bossut, 1779), Tom. II.