On Love

by Alain de Botton

From a religious point of view, the value of truth had of course been placed into question many centuries before. The philosopher Pascal (1623–62; hunchback Jansenist author of the Pensées) had talked of a choice facing every Christian in a world unevenly divided between the horror of a universe without God and the blissful—but infinitely more remote—alternative that God did exist. Even though the odds were in favor of God’s not existing, Pascal argued that religious faith could still be justified because the joys of the slimmer probability so far outweighed the abomination of the larger one. And so it should perhaps be with love. Lovers cannot remain philosophers for long; they should give way to the religious impulse, which is to believe and have faith, as opposed to the philosophic impulse, which is to doubt and inquire. They should prefer the risk of being wrong and in love to being in doubt and without love.