Chapter VIII: Pascal

1623-1662.

Pascal's fame is distinctly the fame of a man of genius. He achieved notable things. But it is what he might have done, still more than what he did, that fixes his estimation in the world of mind. Blaise Pascal is one of the chief intellectual glories of France.

Pascal, the boy, had a strong natural bent toward mathematics. The story is that his father, in order to turn his son's whole force on the study of languages, put out of the lad's reach all books treating his favorite subject. Thus shut up to his own resources the masterful little fellow, about his eighth year, drawing charcoal diagrams on the floor, made perceptible progress in working out geometry for himself. At sixteen he produced a treatise on conic sections that excited the wonder and incredulity of Descartes. Later he experimented in barometry, and pursued investigations in mechanics. Later still he made what seemed to be approaches toward Newton's binomial theorem.

Vivid religious convictions meantime deeply affected Pascal's mind. His health, never robust, began to give way. His physicians prescribed mental diversion, and forced him into society. That medicine, taken at first with reluctance, proved dangerously delightful to Pascal's vivacious and susceptible spirit. His pious sister Jacqueline warned her brother that he was going too far. But he was still more effectively warned by an accident, in which he almost miraculously escaped from death. Withdrawing from the world, he adopted a course of ascetic practices, in which he continued till he died--in his thirty-ninth year. He wore about his waist an iron girdle armed with sharp points; and this he would press smartly with his elbow when he detected himself at fault in his spirit.

Notwithstanding what Pascal did or attempted worthy of fame, in science, it was his fortune to become chiefly renowned by literary achievement. His, in fact, would now be a half-forgotten name if he had not written the "Provincial Letters" and the "Thoughts."

The "Provincial Letters" is an abbreviated title. The title in full originally was, "Letters written by Louis de Montalte to a Provincial, one of his friends, and to the Reverend Fathers, the Jesuits, on the subject of the morality and the policy of those Fathers."

Of the "Provincial Letters," several English translations have been made. No one of these that we have been able to find seems entirely satisfactory. There is an elusive quality to Pascal's style, and in losing this you seem to lose something of Pascal's thought. For with Pascal the thought and the style penetrate each other inextricably and almost indistinguishably. You cannot print a smile, an inflection of the voice, a glance of the eye, a French shrug of the shoulders. And such modulations of the thought seem everywhere to lurk in the turns and phrases of Pascal's inimitable French. To translate them is impossible.

Pascal is beyond question the greatest modern master of that indescribably delicate art in expression, which, from its illustrious ancient exemplar, has received the name of the Socratic irony. With this fine weapon, in great part, it was, wielded like a magician's invisible wand, that Pascal did his memorable execution on the Jesuitical system of morals and casuistry, in the "Provincial Letters." In great part, we say; for the flaming moral earnestness of the man could not abide only to play with his adversaries to the end of the famous dispute. His lighter cimeter blade he flung aside before he had done, and, toward the last, brandished a sword that had weight as well as edge and temper. The skill that could halve a feather in the air with the sword of Saladin was proved to be also strength that could cleave a suit of mail with the brand of Richard the Lion-hearted.

It is generally acknowledged that the French language has never in any hands been a more obedient instrument of intellectual power than it was in the hands of Pascal. He is rated the earliest writer to produce what may be called the final French prose. "The creator of French style," Villemain boldly calls him. Pascal's style remains to this day almost perfectly free from adhesions of archaism in diction and in construction. Pascal showed, as it were at once, what the French language was capable of doing in response to the demands of a master. It was the joint achievement of genius, of taste, and of skill, working together in an exquisite balance and harmony.

But let us be entirely frank. The "Provincial Letters" of Pascal are now, to the general reader, not so interesting as from their fame one would seem entitled to expect. You cannot read them intelligently without considerable previous study. You need to have learned, imperfectly, with labor, a thousand things that every contemporary reader of Pascal perfectly knew as if by simply breathing--the necessary knowledge being then, so to speak, abroad in the air. Even thus you cannot possibly derive that vivid delight from perusing in bulk the "Provincial Letters" now, which the successive numbers of the series, appearing at brief irregular intervals, communicated to the eagerly expecting French public, at a time when the topics discussed were topics of a present and pressing practical interest. Still, with whatever disadvantage unavoidably attending, we must give our readers a taste of the quality of Pascal's "Provincial Letters."

We select a passage at the commencement of the "Seventh Letter." We use the translation of Mr. Thomas M'Crie. This succeeds very well in conveying the sense, though it necessarily fails to convey either the vivacity or the eloquence, of the incomparable original. The first occasion of the "Provincial Letters" was a championship proposed to Pascal to be taken up by him on behalf of his beleaguered and endangered friend Arnauld, the Port-Royalist. (Port Royal was a Roman Catholic abbey situated some eight miles to the south-west of Versailles, and therefore not very remote from Paris.) Arnauld was "for substance of doctrine" really a Calvinist, though he quite sincerely disclaimed being such; and it was for his defense of Calvinism (under its ancient form of Augustinianism) that he was threatened, through Jesuit enmity, with condemnation for heretical opinion. The problem was to enlist the sentiment of general society in his favor. The friends in council at Port Royal said to Pascal, "You must do this." Pascal said, "I will try." In a few days the first letter of a series destined to such fame was submitted for judgment to Port Royal, and approved. It was printed--anonymously. The success was instantaneous and brilliant. A second letter followed, and a third. Soon, from strict personal defense of Arnauld, the writer went on to take up a line of offense and aggression. He carried the war into Africa. He attacked the Jesuits as teachers of immoral doctrine.

The plan of these later letters was to have a Paris gentleman write to a friend of his in the country (the "provincial"), detailing interviews held by him with a Jesuit priest of the city. The supposed Parisian gentleman in his interviews with the supposed Jesuit father affects the air of a very simple-hearted seeker after truth. He represents himself as, by his innocent-seeming docility, leading his Jesuit teacher on to make the most astonishingly frank exposures of the secrets of the casuistical system held and taught by his order.

The "Seventh Letter" tells the story of how Jesuit confessors were instructed to manage their penitents in a matter made immortally famous by the wit and genius of Pascal, the matter of "directing the intention." There is nothing in the "Provincial Letters" better suited than this at the same time to interest the general reader, and to display the quality of these renowned productions. (We do not scruple to change our chosen translation a little at points where it seems to us susceptible of some easy improvement.) Remember it is an imaginary Parisian gentleman who now writes to a friend of his in the country. Our extract introduces first the Jesuit father speaking:

"You know," he said, "that the ruling passion of persons in that rank
of life [the rank of gentleman] is 'the point of honor,' which is
perpetually driving them into acts of violence apparently quite at
variance with Christian piety; so that, in fact, they would be almost
all of them excluded from our confessionals, had not our fathers
relaxed a little from the strictness of religion, to accommodate
themselves to the weakness of humanity. Anxious to keep on good terms,
both with the gospel, by doing their duty to God, and with the men of
the world, by showing charity to their neighbor, they needed all the
wisdom they possessed to devise expedients for so nicely adjusting
matters as to permit these gentlemen to adopt the methods usually
resorted to for vindicating their honor without wounding their
consciences, and thus reconcile things apparently so opposite to each
other as piety and the point of honor."...

"I should certainly [so replies M. Montalte, with the most exquisite
irony crouched under a cover of admiring simplicity]--I should
certainly have considered the thing perfectly impracticable, if I had
not known, from what I have seen of your fathers, that they are
capable of doing with ease what is impossible to other men. This led
me to anticipate that they must have discovered some method for
meeting the difficulty--a method which I admire, even before knowing
it, and which I pray you to explain to me."

"Since that is your view of the matter," replied the monk, "I cannot
refuse you. Know, then, that this marvelous principle is our grand
method of _directing the intention_--the importance of which, in our
moral system, is such, that I might almost venture to compare it with
the doctrine of _probability_. You have had some glimpses of it in
passing, from certain maxims which I mentioned to you. For example,
when I was showing you how servants might execute certain troublesome
jobs with a safe conscience, did you not remark that it was simply by
diverting their intention from the evil to which they were accessory,
to the profit which they might reap from the transaction? Now, that is
what we call _directing the intention_. You saw, too, that, were it
not for a similar divergence of _the mind_, those who give money for
benefices might be downright simoniacs. But I will now show you this
grand method in all its glory, as it applies to the subject of
homicide--a crime which it justifies in a thousand instances--in order
that, from this startling result, you may form an idea of all that it
is calculated to effect.

"I foresee already," said I, "that, according to this mode, every
thing will be permitted: it will stick at nothing."

"You always fly from the one extreme to the other," replied the monk;
"prithee, avoid that habit. For just to show you that we are far from
permitting every thing, let me tell you that we never suffer such a
thing as a formal intention to sin, with the sole design of sinning;
and, if any person whatever should persist in having no other end but
evil in the evil that he does, we break with him at once; such conduct
is diabolical. This holds true, without exception of age, sex, or
rank. But when the person is not of such a wretched disposition as
this, we try to put in practice our method of _directing the
intention_, which consists in his proposing to himself, as the end of
his actions, some allowable object. Not that we do not endeavor, as
far as we can, to dissuade men from doing things forbidden; but, when
we cannot prevent the action, we at least purify the motive, and thus
correct the viciousness of the means by the goodness of the end. Such
is the way in which our fathers have contrived to permit those acts of
violence to which men usually resort in vindication of their honor.
They have no more to do than to turn off their intention from the
desire of vengeance, which is criminal, and direct it to a desire to
defend their honor, which, according to us, is quite warrantable. And
in this way our doctors discharge all their duty toward God and
toward man. By permitting the action, they gratify the world and by
purifying the intention, they give satisfaction to the gospel. This is
a secret, sir, which was entirely unknown to the ancients; the world
is indebted for the discovery entirely to our doctors. You understand
it now, I hope?"

"Perfectly," was my reply. "To men you grant the outward material
effect of the action, and to God you give the inward and spiritual
movement of the intention; and, by this equitable partition, you form
an alliance between the laws of God and the laws of men. But, my dear
sir, to be frank with you, I can hardly trust your premises, and I
suspect that your authors will tell another tale."

"You do me injustice," rejoined the monk; "I advance nothing but what
I am ready to prove, and that by such a rich array of passages, that
altogether their number, their authority, and their reasonings, will
fill you with admiration. To show you, for example, the alliance which
our fathers have formed between the maxims of the gospel and those of
the world, by thus regulating the intention, let me refer you to
Reginald. (_In Praxi._, liv. xxi., num. 62, p. 260.) [These, and all
that follow, are verifiable citations from real and undisputed Jesuit
authorities, not to this day repudiated by that order.] 'Private
persons are forbidden to avenge themselves; for St. Paul says to the
Romans (ch. 12th), "Recompense to no man evil for evil;" and
Ecclesiasticus says (ch. 28th), "He that taketh vengeance shall draw
on himself the vengeance of God, and his sins will not be forgotten."
Besides all that is said in the gospel about forgiving offenses, as in
the 6th and 18th chapters of St. Matthew.'"

"Well, father, if after that, he [Reginald] says any thing contrary to
the Scripture, it will, at least, not be from lack of scriptural
knowledge. Pray, how does he conclude?"

"You shall hear," he said. "From all this it appears that a military
man may demand satisfaction on the spot from the person who has
injured him--not, indeed, with the intention of rendering evil for
evil, but with that of preserving his honor--_non ut malum pro malo
reddat, sed ut conservat honorem_. See you how carefully, because the
Scripture condemns it, they guard against the intention of rendering
evil for evil? This is what they will tolerate on no account. Thus
Lessius observes (_De Just._, liv. ii., c. 9, d. 12, n. 79), that, 'If
a man has received a blow on the face, he must on no account have an
intention to avenge himself; but he may lawfully have an intention to
avert infamy, and may, with that view, repel the insult immediately,
even at the point of the sword--_etiam cum gladio_.' So far are we
from permitting any one to cherish the design of taking vengeance on
his enemies, that our fathers will not allow any even to _wish their
death_--by a movement of hatred. 'If your enemy is disposed to injure
you,' says Escobar, 'you have no right to wish his death, by a
movement of hatred; though you may, with a view to save yourself from
harm.' So legitimate, indeed, is this wish, with such an intention,
that our great Hurtado de Mendoza says that 'we may _pray God_ to
visit with speedy death those who are bent on persecuting us, if there
is no other way of escaping from it.'" (In his book, _De Spe_, vol.
ii., d. 15, sec. 4, 48.)

"May it please your reverence," said I, "the Church has forgotten to
insert a petition to that effect among her prayers."

"They have not put every thing into the prayers that one may lawfully
ask of God," answered the monk. "Besides, in the present case, the
thing was impossible, for this same opinion is of more recent standing
than the Breviary. You are not a good chronologist, friend. But, not
to wander from the point, let me request your attention to the
following passage, cited by Diana from Gaspar Hurtado (_De Sub.
Pecc._, diff. 9; Diana, p. 5; tr. 14, r. 99), one of Escobar's
four-and-twenty fathers: 'An incumbent may, without any mortal sin,
desire the decease of a life-renter on his benefice, and a son that of
his father, and rejoice when it happens; provided always it is for the
sake of the profit that is to accrue from the event, and not from
personal aversion.'"

"Good," cried I. "That is certainly a very happy hit, and I can easily
see that the doctrine admits of a wide application. But yet there are
certain cases, the solution of which, though of great importance for
gentlemen, might present still greater difficulties."

"Propose such, if you please, that we may see," said the monk.

"Show me, with all your directing of the intention," returned I, "that
it is allowable to fight a duel."

"Our great Hurtado de Mendoza," said the father, "will satisfy you on
that point in a twinkling. 'If a gentleman,' says he, in a passage
cited by Diana, 'who is challenged to fight a duel, is well known to
have no religion, and if the vices to which he is openly and
unscrupulously addicted are such as would lead people to conclude, in
the event of his refusing to fight, that he is actuated, not by the
fear of God, but by cowardice, and induce them to say of him that he
was a _hen_, and not a man--_gallina, et non vir_; in that case he
may, to save his honor, appear at the appointed spot--not, indeed,
with the express intention of fighting a duel, but merely with that of
defending himself, should the person who challenged him come there
unjustly to attack him. His action in this case, viewed by itself,
will be perfectly indifferent; for what moral evil is there in one's
stepping into a field, taking a stroll in expectation of meeting a
person, and defending one's self in the event of being attacked? And
thus the gentleman is guilty of no sin whatever; for, in fact, it
cannot be called accepting a challenge at all, his intention being
directed to other circumstances, and the acceptance of a challenge
consisting in an express intention to fight, which we are supposing
the gentleman never had.'"

The humorous irony of Pascal, in the "Provincial Letters," plays like the diffusive sheen of an aurora borealis over the whole surface of the composition. It does not often deliver itself startlingly in sudden discharges as of lightning. You need to school your sense somewhat, not to miss a fine effect now and then. Consider the broadness and coarseness in pleasantry, that, before Pascal, had been common, almost universal, in controversy, and you will better understand what a creative touch it was of genius, of feeling, and of taste, that brought into literature the far more than Attic, the ineffable Christian, purity of that wit and humor in the "Provincial Letters" which will make these writings live as long as men anywhere continue to read the productions of past ages. Erasmus, perhaps, came the nearest of all modern predecessors to anticipating the purified pleasantry of Pascal.

It will be interesting and instructive to see Pascal's own statement of his reasons for adopting the bantering style which he did in the "Provincial Letters," as well as of the sense of responsibility to be faithful and fair, under which he wrote. Pascal says:

I have been asked why I employed a pleasant, jocose, and diverting
style. I reply ... I thought it a duty to write so as to be
comprehended by women, and men of the world, that they might know the
danger of their maxims and propositions which were then universally
propagated.... I have been asked, lastly, if I myself read all the
books, which I quoted. I answer, No. If I had done so, I must have
passed a great part of my life in reading very bad books; but I read
Escobar twice through, and I employed some of my friends in reading
the others. But I did not make use of a single passage without having
myself read it in the book from which it is cited, without having
examined the subject of which it treats, and without having read what
went before and followed, so that I might run no risk of quoting an
objection as an answer which would have been blameworthy and unfair.

Of the wit of the "Provincial Letters," their wit and their controversial effectiveness, the specimens given will have afforded readers some approximate idea. We must deny ourselves the gratification of presenting a brief passage, which we had selected and translated for the purpose, to exemplify from the same source Pascal's serious eloquence. It was Voltaire who said of these productions: "Moliere's best comedies do not excel them in wit, nor the compositions of Bossuet in sublimity." Something of Bossuet's sublimity, or of a sublimity perhaps finer than Bossuet's, our readers will discover in citations to follow from the "Thoughts."

Pascal's "Thoughts," the printed book, has a remarkable history. It was a posthumous publication. The author died, leaving behind him a considerable number of detached fragments of composition, first jottings of thought on a subject that had long occupied his mind. These precious manuscripts were almost undecipherable. The writer had used for his purpose any chance scrap of paper--old wrapping, for example, or margin of letter--that, at the critical moment of happy conception, was nearest his hand. Sentences, words even, were often left unfinished. There was no coherence, no sequence, no arrangement. It was, however, among his friends perfectly well understood that Pascal for years had meditated a work on religion designed to demonstrate the truth of Christianity. For this he had been thinking arduously. Fortunately he had even, in a memorable conversation, sketched his project at some length to his Port Royal friends. With so much, scarcely more, in the way of clew, to guide their editorial work, these friends prepared and issued a volume of Pascal's "Thoughts." With the most loyal intentions, the Port-Royalists unwisely edited too much. They pieced out incompletenesses, they provided clauses or sentences of connection, they toned down expressions deemed too bold, they improved Pascal's style! After having suffered such things from his friends, the posthumous Pascal, later, fell into the hands of an enemy. The infidel Condorcet published an edition of the "Thoughts." Whereas the Port-Royalists had suppressed to placate the Jesuits, Condorcet suppressed to please the "philosophers." Between those on the one side and these on the other, Pascal's "Thoughts" had experienced what might well have killed any production of the human mind that could die. It was not till near the middle of the present century that Cousin called the attention of the world to the fact that we had not yet, but that we still might have, a true edition of Pascal's "Thoughts." M. Faugere took the hint, and, consulting the original manuscripts, preserved in the national library at Paris, produced, with infinite editorial labor, almost two hundred years after the thinker's death, the first satisfactory edition of Pascal's "Thoughts." Since Faugere, M. Havet has also published an edition of Pascal's works entire, by him now first adequately annotated and explained. The arrangement of the "Thoughts" varies in order, according to the varying judgment of editors. We use, for our extracts, a current translation, which we modify at our discretion by comparison of the original text as given in M. Havet's elaborate work.

Our first extract is a passage in which the writer supposes a skeptic of the more shallow, trifling sort, to speak. This skeptic represents his own state of mind in the following strain as of soliloquy:

"I do not know who put me into the world, nor what the world is, nor
what I am myself. I am in a frightful ignorance of all things. I do
not know what my body is, what my senses are, what my soul is, and
that very part of me which thinks what I am saying, which reflects
upon every thing and upon itself, and is no better acquainted with
itself than with any thing else. I see these appalling spaces of the
universe which inclose me, and I find myself tethered in one corner of
this immense expansion without knowing why I am stationed in this
place rather than in another, or why this moment of time which is
given me to live is assigned me at this point rather than at another
of the whole eternity that has preceded me, and of that which is to
follow me.

"I see nothing but infinities on every side, which inclose me like an
atom, and like a shadow which endures but for an instant, and returns
no more.

"All that I know is, that I am soon to die; but what I am most
ignorant of is, that very death which I am unable to avoid.

"As I know not whence I came, so I know not whither I go; and I know
only, that in leaving this world I fall forever either into
nothingness or into the hands of an angry God, without knowing which
of these two conditions is to be eternally my lot. Such is my
state--full of misery, of weakness, and of uncertainty.

"And from all this I conclude that I ought to pass all the days of my
life without a thought of trying to learn what is to befall me
hereafter. Perhaps in my doubts I might find some enlightenment; but I
am unwilling to take the trouble, or go a single step in search of it;
and, treating with contempt those who perplex themselves with such
solicitude, my purpose is to go forward without forethought and
without fear to try the great event, and passively to approach death
in uncertainty of the eternity of my future condition."

Who would desire to have for a friend a man who discourses in this
manner? Who would select such a one for the confidant of his affairs?
Who would have recourse to such a one in his afflictions? And, in
fine, for what use of life could such a man be destined?

The central thought on which the projected apologetic of Pascal was to revolve as on a pivot is, the contrasted greatness and wretchedness of man--with Divine Revelation, in its doctrine of a fall on man's part from original nobleness, supplying the needed link, and the only link conceivable, of explanation, to unite the one with the other, the human greatness with the human wretchedness. This contrast of dignity and disgrace should constantly be in the mind of the reader of the "Thoughts" of Pascal. It will often be found to throw a very necessary light upon the meaning of the separate fragments that make up the series.

We now present a brief fragment asserting, with vivid metaphor, at the same time the fragility of man's frame and the majesty of man's nature. This is a very famous "Thought":

Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.
It is not necessary that the entire universe arm itself to crush him.
An exhalation, a drop of water, suffices to kill him. But were the
universe to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which
kills him, because he knows that he is dying, and knows the advantage
that the universe has over him. The universe knows nothing of it.

Our whole dignity consists, then, in thought.

One is reminded of the memorable saying of a celebrated philosopher: "In the universe there is nothing great but man; in man there is nothing great but mind."

What a sudden, almost ludicrous, reduction in scale, the greatness of Caesar, as conqueror, is made to suffer when looked at in the way in which Pascal asks you to look at it in the following "Thought"! (Remember that Caesar, when he began fighting for universal empire, was fifty-one years of age:)

Caesar was too old, it seems to me, to amuse himself with conquering
the world. This amusement was well enough for Augustus or Alexander;
they were young people, whom it is difficult to stop; but Caesar ought
to have been more mature.

That is as if you should reverse the tube of your telescope, with the result of seeing the object observed made smaller instead of larger.

The following sentence might be a "Maxim" of La Rochefoucauld. Pascal was, no doubt, a debtor to him as well as to Montaigne:

I lay it down as a fact, that, if all men knew what others say of them
there would not be four friends in the world.

Here is one of the most current of Pascal's sayings:

Rivers are highways that move on and bear us whither we wish to go.

The following "Thought" condenses the substance of the book proposed into three short sentences:

The knowledge of God without that of our misery produces pride. The
knowledge of our misery without that of God gives despair. The
knowledge of Jesus Christ is intermediate, because therein we find God
and our misery.

The prevalent seeming severity and intellectual coldness of Pascal's "Thoughts" yield to a touch from the heart, and become pathetic, in such utterances as the following, supposed to be addressed by the Saviour to the penitent seeking to be saved:

Console thyself; thou wouldst not seek me if thou hadst not found me.

I thought on thee in my agony; such drops of blood I shed for thee.

It is austerity again, but not unjust austerity, that speaks as follows:

Religion is a thing so great that those who would not take the pains
to seek it if it is obscure, should be deprived of it. What do they
complain of, then, if it is such that they could find it by seeking
it?

But we must take our leave of Pascal. His was a suffering as well as an aspiring spirit. He suffered because he aspired. But, at least, he did not suffer long. He aspired himself quickly away. Toward the last he wrought at a problem in his first favorite study, that of mathematics, and left behind him, as a memorial of his later life, a remarkable result of investigation on the curve called the cycloid. During his final illness he pierced himself through with many sorrows--unnecessary sorrows, sorrows, too, that bore a double edge, hurting not only him, but also his kindred--in practicing, from mistaken religious motives, a hard repression upon his natural instinct to love, and to welcome love. He thought that God should be all, the creature nothing. The thought was half true, but it was half false. God should, indeed, be all. But, in God, the creature also should be something.

In French history--we may say, in the history of the world--if there are few brighter, there also are few purer, fames than the fame of Pascal.