Blaise Pascal/New Fragment of the Treatise on Vacuum
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?
This is not all; if they have in themselves a principle of motion to shun a vacuum, have they arms, legs, muscles, nerves?