Pascal merely echoed the original Hobbesian argument. In the face of a majority backed up by an organised monopoly of the means of violence, staffed by fulltime professionals, cowardice is wisdom and the defeated submit to the winners, thereby authorising them to do what they want. The citizens make themselves the symbolic rulers of the State by allowing themselves to be convinced that the majority rules because they want it to rule. According to the neo-Stoic Hobbesian logic, in so convincing themselves they merely follow the dictate of reason which tells every person that it is if not altogether pointless then at least all too risky to oppose the powers that be