Chapter VI: The ‘pensées.’ (2)

“The error in both is, in not seeing that the present state of man
differs from that in which he was created. The one, observing only
the traces of his primitive grandeur, and ignoring his corruption,
has treated human nature as if it were whole, without any need of a
Redeemer—this leads to the height of pride; the other, sensible of
man’s present misery, and ignorant of his original dignity, treats
human nature as necessarily weak and irreparable, and thus, in
despair of attaining any true good, plunges it into a depth of
baseness.” {185}

These two states, Pascal goes on to argue, must be taken together before the truth can be reached. Apart, they give a false picture of man; and generate on the one hand pride, on the other hand immorality. It is only the Gospel which unites them, in a right manner, “by a divine art.” It brings together the opposites, and explains, by a wondrous, truly heavenly way, how they may coexist, not as attributes of the same subject, as systems of human philosophy have made them, but as different endowments—the one of nature, the other of grace. “Behold the new and surprising union which God alone could teach and alone accomplish, and which is only an image and an effect of the ineffable union of two natures in the one person of the God-man.”

In these latter sentences—which we have been obliged, for the sake of brevity, to compress—we have the suggestion of Pascal’s philosophy both of human nature and of Divine revelation. He recurs over and over again to the same idea, that man is great and yet weak, full of capacity and yet miserable, and that the Gospel alone holds the key to this enigma of human nature. This, more than any other, is the pervading thought round which all the others gather.

“This twofoldness (_duplicité_),” he says, “is so visible, that some
have conceived that man must have two souls—a simple subject
appearing to them incapable of such and so sudden variations; an
immeasurable presumption on the one hand, a horrible abasement on the
other. In spite of all the miseries which cleave to us, and hold us,
as it were, by the throat (_nous tiennent à la gorge_), there is
within us an irrepressible instinct which exalts us. The greatness
of man is so visible that it may be deduced from his very misery.
His very miseries prove his greatness. They are the miseries of a
great lord, of a dethroned sovereign. The greatness of man consists
in his knowledge of his misery. A tree does not know itself to be
miserable. . . . He is miserable—the fact is beyond question; but he
is great in knowing it.” {186}

Again, reverting to the very same line of thought, as in the conversation with De Saci—

“Philosophers have propounded sentiments not at all adapted to the
twofold condition of man. They have sought to inspire emotions of
pure greatness; but this is not man’s condition. They have sought on
the other hand to inspire sentiments of mere baseness; but neither is
this man’s condition. Man needs abasement, not of nature, however,
but of penitence; not that he remain degraded, but that he may rise
to greatness. He needs to feel within him the emotion of
greatness,—not of merit, however, but of grace. . . . Two sects have
sprung out of this conflict between reason and sense in man. The
one, in renouncing passion, has aspired to divinity; the other, in
renouncing reason, has sunk to mere brutality. . . . The principles
of the respective philosophies are so far true—Pyrrhonism, Stoicism,
Atheism even. But the conclusions are false, because the opposite
principles are equally true. . . . We labour under an incapacity of
demonstrating all things invincible to Dogmatism. We have an innate
idea of truth invincible to all Pyrrhonism. . . . Nature confounds
the Pyrrhonist, and reason the Dogmatist;”—

or, as the passage was originally written,—

“We cannot be Pyrrhonists without violating nature; we cannot be
Dogmatists without renouncing nature.” {187}

These and other passages sufficiently show Pascal’s relation to philosophy, and to Pyrrhonism in particular. He is no enemy of philosophy, but he certainly does not believe it capable of explaining the riddle of human nature. He is so far from being a Pyrrhonist in the sense of resting on Pyrrhonism, that he seeks to mount on its shoulders to a higher truth. Nay, he clearly recognises that man has an inborn faculty for truth which not all the contradictions of his experience can belie. We may and must doubt as to many things; but there are principles lying at the root of human life which are invincible to all doubt. We can demonstrate many things; but there are natural realities beyond our power of demonstration. On the side of sense, all things seem to fluctuate and waver in uncertainty; on the side of mere intellect we soon cross the limit of our powers. But Humanity is more than either sense or intellect. There is, as he believes, a primitive endowment of spiritual instinct in man, which looks forth upon a higher world of reality. Repeatedly, and in various applications, he recurs to these three radical sides or elements of Humanity; “the sensible—the intellectual, or the exercise of reason left to itself—and the spiritual or divine.” Pascal despairs of a philosophy which is either a mere generalisation of sensible experience, or which aims at demonstrating everything from a purely rational point of view; but he is so far from resting in mere intellectual doubt, that he tries to find a ground for human certitude in a deeper stratum of Humanity than either sense or what he calls “reason.” Neander and others have vindicated for him a supreme position as a philosopher on this very account. With them he is not only no sceptic, but he stands forth among the men who have specially vindicated the claims of Humanity as endowed with the divine attributes of “spirit” and “will”—the men of “full mental healthiness” who have recognised in man a free spiritual life no less than a life of sense and intellect. This may or may not be. But the mere fact that Pascal has aimed at a deeper ground of certitude, whether he has made it clear or not, and whether or not he has spoken with undue depreciation of other sources of knowledge, should be enough to vindicate him from the charge of even philosophical scepticism. In the following passage he has explained his views more fully. More than any other, perhaps, it may be taken as the text of his philosophy.

“We discover truth,” he says, “not only by reasoning, but by feeling
(_le cœur_); and it is in this latter manner that we discover first
principles—and in vain does reasoning, which has no share in their
production, try to combat these principles. The Pyrrhonists, who
attempt this, labour in vain. We know that we are not deceived,
however incapable we may be of proving so by any power of reasoning.
This incapacity only demonstrates the weakness of our reasoning
faculty, and not the incertitude of all our knowledge, as they
pretend. Nay, our knowledge of first principles, such as the ideas
of _space_, _time_, _motion_, _number_, is as certain as any obtained
by reasoning. It is, in fact, upon such conclusions of feeling and
instinct that Reason must ultimately rest and base all its arguments.
We _feel_ that there are three dimensions in space, and that numbers
are infinite; and reason hence demonstrates that there are no two
square numbers the one of which is double the other. Principles are
felt, propositions deduced, and both with certitude, although in
different ways. And it is as absurd for the ‘reason’ to demand of
the ‘heart’ proofs of its first principles before asserting them, as
it would be for the ‘heart’ to demand of the ‘reason’ a _feeling_ of
all propositions that she demonstrates before accepting them. This
weakness, therefore, should only serve to humble reason in its desire
to make itself judge of everything, but by no means to moderate the
certitude of our conviction, as if reason were alone capable of
instructing us.” {189}

There may be something to object to in Pascal’s mode of expression in the above passage. Cousin has made the most of his confusion of “reason” and “reasoning”—“la raison” and “le raisonnement.” The expression “le cœur,” by which he designates the higher faculty of intuition, may be inadequate and misleading—complex and disturbing in its association. But withal, his attitude in favour of a ground of certainty in human knowledge is unmistakable. So far he is not only not with Montaigne, but he is clearly against him. The rights of nature, as he says, rise up against the Pyrrhonist. They make themselves good. And however strongly Pascal may draw the picture of human weakness, and all the contrarieties which our nature encloses, he does not mean by this to strike at the roots of all knowledge, and leave man a prey to helpless doubt. He means merely to shake the throne of rational security, and to show that no conclusions of mere philosophy can reach all the exigencies of man’s condition. His analysis of human nature is the analysis of a moralist, and not of a psychologist or rational philosopher. He looks at man always as a spiritual being. It is his spiritual capacity which alone makes him great, and yet intensifies all the lower contradictions of his nature. It is “thought alone which makes man’s greatness.” A man can be conceived “without hands or feet or head, but not without thought.”

“The possession of the earth would not add to my greatness. As to
space, the universe encloses and absorbs me as a mere point, but by
thought I embrace it. . . . Man is but a reed, the feeblest of
created things—but one possessing thought (_un roseau pensant_). It
needs not that the universe should arm itself to crush him. A
breath, a drop of water, suffices for his destruction. But were the
whole universe to rise against him, man is yet greater than the
universe, since man _knows_ that he dies. He knows the universe
prevails against him. The universe knows nothing of its power.”
{190}

It is hardly possible to speak more eloquently of the dignity of human nature. And if it is the same voice which speaks in such pathetic or it may be harsh tones of human weakness and misery, and the disproportions of our natural life, it is the very consciousness of greatness that inspires the consciousness of misery. Looking from such a height of human dignity, he sees all the depths of human baseness. It is this higher spirit which consecrates Pascal as a moralist. Has he rebuked the presumptions of humanity? has he called upon proud reason to humble itself? has he gibed human philosophy, and even gloried for a moment in the contradictions of empiricism? It is never that he may laugh at man, or that he may rest in the mere contemplation of his follies or extravagances, but because he himself profoundly realised the height and the depth of his being—the grandeur to which he could rise, or to which God could raise him, and the baseness and miseries to which he could sink. Doubtless, as with all concentrated and meditative natures, Pascal delights to dwell on the weaker and gloomier side of humanity. This was partly the result of his Jansenist leanings, but mainly it came from his own intense reality of feeling. It was bred of his austere sadness of heart, and is found to run as a note of profound constitutional melancholy through all his letters, and all his life, as well as his Thoughts. In the view of eternity, and of the awful issues involved in religion, the common life and pursuits of man seemed to him not only frivolous, but criminal. He looked forth, therefore, on this common life with eyes not only of tears, but of displeasure. He seemed even at times to derive something of stern satisfaction from its very follies and absurdities. But this is only the temporary mood of the profound moralist touched to his heart by pangs that he cannot resist. His true view of life is never cynical,—but always grave, if bitter—and hopeful, if stern.

Pascal’s supposed philosophical scepticism admits of something of the same explanation. He has not only no wish to disturb the fundamental verities of human thought, but he endeavours to fix them in an ineradicable instinct or universal “sense,” against which all the assaults of Pyrrhonism must break. But the while he is himself deeply moved by the perplexities of human reason. Although no Pyrrhonist in thought, he knows too well in experience the depths of Pyrrhonism. His mind is one of those to be met with in all ages, which, while it clings to faith, and is even strong in the assertion of faith’s claims, is yet in certain moments utterly distracted by doubt. Constantly searching the foundations of human knowledge,—sifting them as with lighted glance,—they seemed to him at times to crumble away before him. Nothing remained fixed to his piercing look. As few minds have experienced, he felt the awful darkness which encloses all mortal aspiration, and the keenest audacities of human speculation. The incapacities of human reason at such times overwhelmed him, and left him hopeless, or, still worse, in a half-derisive mood. And these moods, as well as his clearer and more elaborate thoughts, hastily transferred to paper, are found amongst his notes. It is quite impossible to vindicate his consistency, and it is not in the least necessary to do this, as already explained; while we feel bound to maintain that his higher mood is his true mood, and that the Pascal of the ‘Pensées’—the veritable Pascal—is to be judged, not by his weakness but by his strength; by his moments of clear mental sanity and insight, and not by his moments of despair or of derisive mockery of all human philosophy.

This seems to us the true light in which to regard the famous wager-essay on the existence of God, which has been a scandal even to some of his greatest admirers. It is impossible to defend this essay on any principle of sound philosophy. Either there is a God or there is not. Which side of the question shall we take? “Reason,” he says, “cannot decide.” The fact, he means, cannot be demonstrated according to his customary use of the word reason. But if it cannot, there must yet be a balance of reason, and proof on one side or the other. And the only fair and manly issue of such a question must be, On which side lies this balance? A valid theistic conclusion can be found in no other way, and least of all in any calculation of chances, or balance of self-interest. And yet it is this last which Pascal has put forward with such prominence in this famous essay. “Wager,” he says. “If you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that God exists. . . . On one side is an eternity of life, of infinite blessedness to be gained, and what you stake is finite. . . . Our proposition is, that the finite is to be vested in a wager, in which there is an equal chance of gain and loss, and _infinitude to gain_.” The play was hardly worthy of Pascal, and the ‘mystery of the game’ could certainly never be unravelled in any such way. But not a few minds like Pascal’s—with deep spiritual intuitions and yet a craving for scientific certainty constantly mocking these intuitions—have felt in a similar manner the hazard of the great question, and may have said to themselves, “We must take our stand, and this is the side which weighs in the balance. We can lose nothing; we may gain everything.” The mood is not a lofty one, and it is no higher in Pascal than in any one else; but there are moments of terrible doubt, when the soul is so borne away on the surge of the sceptical wave that rises from the depth of all human speculation, that it can only cling to the Divine by an effort of will, and with something of the gamester’s thought that this is the winning side! The thought may be shallow and poor in itself, but in such cases it comes not out of the shallows but out of the depths of a mind torn by distracting doubts in the face of the dreadful problems of life.

Out of the same depth of spiritual experience and trenchant moral analysis comes all that is true and valuable in his so-called ‘Apology.’ That the ‘Pensées’ were more or less designed to form such an Apology—to be woven into the plan of a treatise in defence of the Christian religion—seems beyond doubt. He had himself, according to the statement of his nephew, unfolded such a plan to his friends, in a lengthened conversation about the year 1657 or 1659. They were charmed with the loftiness of his design, and listened to his exposition of it for two or three hours with unabated interest. He was to commence with an analysis of human nature, and to advance from the contemplation of its mysteries, obscurities, and perplexities, to the consideration of the various methods, philosophical and religious, by which reason had endeavoured to meet the difficulties of thought and life. After explaining the inconclusiveness and absurdities of these methods—represented by the diverse philosophies and religions of the world—he was to call attention to the Jewish religion, and the superiority which it presents to all others, both in the extraordinary circumstances of its history, and in the revelation which it gives of one God, Creator and Governor of the world, and of the origin of man—his primitive innocence and fall. The idea of the fall, which was a central one in all Pascal’s thoughts, was to be fully expounded, in its own character and as “the source not only of whatever is most inexplicable in man’s nature, but also of a multitude of things, external to him, of which he knows not the causes.” From the fall he was to pass to the hopes of deliverance revealed in the Old Testament, and especially the lofty conception which it gives of God as a God of love, a feature peculiar to it, and “which he deemed the essence of true religion.”

From such general considerations—of the nature of prolegomena or “preparation” for the reader’s mind—he proceeded to furnish a brief view of “the positive proofs of the truths he wanted to establish,—proofs derived from the authenticity of the books of Moses, especially the miracles they record, the figures and types they embody.” He then went on more at length to prove the truth of religion from prophecy, which he is represented as having studied deeply, and certain views of which, “of a nature wholly original,” he explained with great clearness. Finally, “after going through the books of the Old Testament,” he advanced to those of the New, “and deduced from them his crowning proofs of the truths of the Gospel.” He began with Christ, whose divine mission he already supposed to be established by the argument from prophecy, and added additional force of evidence from His resurrection, His miracles, His doctrines, and the tenor of His life; then from the character and mission of the apostles; and lastly, from the style and manner of the New Testament books, and especially of the Gospels, “the multitude of miracles, martyrs, and the saints,”—in a word, from all “by which the Christian religion is so triumphantly established.”

It is needless to say how imperfectly this design was ever accomplished; and no ingenuity of restoration can make of Pascal’s apologetic plan anything but a mass of imperfect fragments. Yet he has left us a definite series of Thoughts on the Jewish religion, on Miracles, Figures, and Prophecy, and also on Jesus Christ and the general character of the Christian religion. In these Thoughts, it must be admitted, there is but little to reward our study in comparison with those of a more introductory and philosophical nature. Pascal’s genius was in no degree historical, and but slightly critical—not to mention that the very idea of historical criticism had not emerged in his time, nor long afterwards. While realising so profoundly the perplexities of human experience, he has no conception of the difficulties that beset historical tradition; nor do his habits of scientific investigation, and the natural severity and logical rigour of his mind, seem to have suggested to him any misgivings as to the prevalence of miraculous agency in the world. The perfect faith with which he accepted the “miracle” of the Holy Thorn is a sufficient indication of his state of mind in this respect, and how ready he was to accept evidence the very idea of which merely excites a smile of wonder in the modern mind.

It cannot be said, therefore, to be any matter of regret that Pascal did not live to complete the historical portion of his projected work,—what he seems himself, from the report of his friends, to have considered the main structure of the defence he intended to rear on behalf of the religion so dear to him. He expended his real strength on the portico to the designed temple. His genius fitted him to deal with this, and with this alone, in any adequate manner. His moral analysis, at once keen and veracious, enabled him not only to lay bare all the “disproportions” of humanity, but, moreover, to unfold the adaptation of Christianity as a spiritual system to meet and remedy these disproportions. This is the real “apologetic” work of the ‘Pensées,’ and the only one for which Pascal’s mind pre-eminently fitted him. He sees in the Gospel a Divine Power which is capable of ministering to man’s higher wants—a power of infinite compassion towards human weakness and misery, of infinite help for the one and remedy for the other. The Christian religion, according to him, alone “understands at once man’s greatness and degradation, and the reason of both the one and the other.” “It is equally important for man to know his capacity of being like God and his unworthiness of Him. To know of God without knowing his misery, or to know his misery without knowing the Redeemer, who alone can deliver him from it, is alike dangerous. The one knowledge constitutes the pride of the philosopher, the other the despair of the atheist. Man must therefore have the double experience, and so it has pleased God to reveal it. This the Christian religion does; in this it consists.” Again: “Christ is the centre in which alone we find at once God and our misery. In Him alone we have a God whom we must approach without pride, and before whom we may yet bow without despair.” In another and more lengthened passage he brings the two ideas of human corruption and divine redemption closely together, the one as supplementary of the other, and expressly emphasises the perfection with which Christianity fits so to speak, into all the wards of the human enigma,—in comparison with every system of human philosophy.

“Without divine knowledge,” he says, “what have men been able to do
save to exalt themselves in the consciousness of their original
greatness, or abase themselves in the view of their present weakness?
Unable to see the whole truth, they have never attained to perfect
virtue. One class considering nature as incorrupt, another as
irreparable, they have been alternately the victims of pride or
sensuality—the two sources of all vice. . . . If, in one case, they
recognised man’s excellence, they ignored his corruption; and so, in
escaping indulgence, they lost themselves in pride. In the other
case, in acknowledging his weakness they ignored his dignity, and,
while escaping vanity, plunged into despair. Hence the diverse sects
of Stoics and Epicureans, of Dogmatists and Academicians, etc. The
Christian religion alone can reconcile these discrepancies and cure
both evils, not by expelling the one by the other, according to the
wisdom of this world, but by expelling both the one and the other by
the simplicity of the Gospel. For it teaches the just that while it
elevates them even to be partakers of the divine nature, they still
carry with them in this lofty state the source of all their
corruption, making them during life subjects of error, misery, death,
and sin. At the same time, it proclaims to the most impious that
they are capable of becoming partakers of a Redeemer’s grace. By
thus warning those whom it justifies, and consoling those whom it
condemns, it tempers with just measure fear and hope, through the
twofold capacity in all of grace and sin; so that it abases
infinitely more than reason, yet without producing despair, and
exalts infinitely more than natural pride, yet without puffing
up,—plainly showing that it alone is exempt from all error and wrong,
and possesses the power at once of instructing and correcting men.
Who, then, can withhold his belief in this revelation, or refuse to
adore its celestial light? For is it not more clear than day that we
feel in ourselves the ineffaceable traces of divine excellence? And
it is equally clear that we experience every hour the effects of our
fall and ruin. What, then, comes to us from all this chaos and wild
confusion, in a voice of irresistible conviction, but the
irrefragable truth of both those sides of humanity?” {199}

This passage conveys very clearly at once the gist of Pascal’s philosophy and the chief merit of his line of Christian apology. The two cannot be separated. They run constantly into one another. He was a Christian apologist in so far as he was a Christian philosopher; and those who reject his line of Christian defence, will also reject his whole mode of thought. To him the only solution of human perplexity in thought and life is Christ. He is the “object and centre of all things, in whom alone all contradictions are reconciled.” This is the conclusion of his intelligence, and not of his despair. Whatever may be the traces of scepticism in his intellectual nature, it is doing him great injustice to represent his acceptance of Christianity as a mere refuge from uncertainty. He is a totally different man from Huet, with whom Cousin has ventured to compare him in this respect. He never dallies on the surface; mere traditionalism has but a slight hold of him. He is a Christian not because he has been taught Christianity, or because the Church as a divine institution claims his allegiance. All these influences may have affected him, and given a turn to his mind; but they do not touch the essence of his thoughts. Anything he does say of the external claims of Christianity has but little weight. It is out of the depths of his own spiritual experience that his faith is born. It is a voice within him, a conflicting cry of weakness and aspiration going up everywhere from humanity, that find their answer in Christ. There is the enigma of man on the one side, to him otherwise hopeless, and Christ on the other, holding the keys of the enigma in His hand. The solution appeared to him perfect, according to his study and analysis of the problem—the twofoldness that he found in man, of divine dignity on the one hand, and frivolous, sensual degradation on the other. Both facts, he says, are equally clear and certain. Man’s fall from a state of divine innocence alone explains them; and the Gospel alone recognises the one side as well as the other of human nature, and provides a Power capable of restoring its true balance and rectifying all its disorder. He felt in himself the might of this power healing all the wounds of his own heart, and binding up the shreds of his Christian efforts “to do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with God.” Whether we agree with all his analyses, or recognise all the adaptations which he describes, it is impossible not to feel that they were living to him, and that he saw in Christianity not merely a refuge for the disappointed heart, but a true philosophy of life—the only “sure and sound philosophy,” as Justin Martyr had found long before him.

It is in the same spirit that he writes in many of his later ‘Pensées.’ Some of the passages already quoted are in fact taken from the chapter “On the Christian Religion,” which appears to have been intended to form one of the concluding chapters of his Apology. But he repeats over and over again the same strain—that the present condition of man is only intelligible in the light of the Christian revelation, and that this revelation alone answers to all man’s necessities. Christ has not only proclaimed a higher truth to man, which man is bound to accept under penalties of default. This tone is also found sometimes, but comparatively seldom. The prevailing note is, that there is an admirable fitness between the two—the mysteries of human nature witnessing to the divine veracity of the Gospel, and the Gospel again holding the only key to these mysteries, and the only power of unravelling them and restoring them to their divine original. “Jesus Christ,” he says, “is for all men; Moses for one people.” “The knowledge of God without a knowledge of our misery produces pride; that of our misery without God leads to despair. The knowledge of Jesus is the means by which we at once find God and our misery.” “Without Jesus Christ man is sunk in vice and misery. . . . In Him is all our virtue and felicity.”

Of the more directly apologetic ‘Pensées’ of Pascal there are many of great significance and interest, slight as may be the value of his general historical argument, so far as this can be traced. Wherever he trusts to his own clear judgment and profound penetration, he throws out sentences weighty with meaning, and capable of being expanded into trains of argument. Our shortening space warns us that our quotations must come to an end; but the reader may thank us for drawing his attention to the following:—

“Even when Epictetus had discovered the right way, he could only say
to man, ‘You follow a wrong one.’ He shows that there is another,
but he does not lead to it. . . . Jesus Christ alone leads to
it—_via_, _veritas_.

“Jesus Christ has spoken great things so simply that they seem to
have cost Him little thought—and yet so fitly that we see well what
His thought was.” [This combination of clearness and _naïveté_ is
admirable.]

“The apostles were either deceived or deceivers; either supposition
is full of difficulty.

“What right have they to say, ‘It is impossible that we should rise
again’? Which is the more difficult to be—to be born, or to be
raised from the dead? Is it less difficult to come into being than
to return to being? Custom (experience) renders the one easy to us;
the want of custom makes the other seem impossible. But _this is a
popular way of judging_.

“Who taught the evangelists the qualities of a truly heroic soul,
that they should paint it to such perfection in Jesus Christ? Why
have they made Him weak in His agony? Did they not know how to
describe a death of fortitude? Assuredly; for it is the same St Luke
paints St Stephen’s death as so much braver than that of Jesus
Christ. They have made Him capable of fear before the necessity of
death had come, then entirely calm and brave. But when they show Him
in trouble, the trouble comes from Himself; in the face of men He
remains unmoved.

“The highest achievement of reason is to recognise that there is an
infinity of things which surpass its powers.

“If we submit everything to reason, our religion would have nothing
mysterious or supernatural. If we violate the principles of reason,
our religion will be absurd and ridiculous.

“There are two extremes—to exclude reason, and to admit only reason.

“It is your own consent, and the steady voice of your own reason, and
not that of others, which must make you believe.

“If antiquity was the rule of faith, the ancients were without a
rule.

“Let them say what they will, it must be confessed that the Christian
religion is something astonishing. ‘That is because you were born in
it,’ they say. So far from this, I am on my guard against it on this
very account, lest this incline me unduly to it. But though I was
born in it, the facts are not the less as I find them.”

True to his whole conception of religion as the free choice of the heart and will, Pascal does not find any special difficulty in the fact of so many rejecting Christianity. It is of its very nature that it cannot be forced on any mind. The God of the Gospel can only be reached by faith. To all without faith, or the inner eye to see Him, He is a _Deus absconditus_, “a God who hides himself.” In one of his letters to Mademoiselle de Roannez, he dwells upon this idea, which also continually recurs in his Thoughts:—

“If God continually revealed Himself to man, faith would have no
value; we could not help believing. If He did not reveal Himself,
there could be no such thing as faith. While hiding Himself, He yet
reveals Himself to those who are willing to be His servants. . . .
All things hide a mystery. All are a veil which conceal God. The
Christian must recognise Him in all. . . . There is light enough for
those who wish to see, but darkness enough for those who are of an
opposite disposition. . . . For God would rather move the will than
the intellect. Perfect clearness would cure the one, but injure the
other.”

And so this great mind comes round once more to its central thought, that religion is born not of science, but of love and faith. Christianity appeared to Pascal divine—as the only true interpreter of human experience; and where this experience bore no witness to it, and found no blessing in it, the fault and the misery were its own. The divine light was not gone because men did not see it, when they were not willing to see it. This may seem a hard saying,—a paradox of faith rejoicing in its own illumination, rather than an utterance of reason challenging the world. But can a divine appeal ever go further? Christian apology has its own sphere, no less than science; and the evidence which the one desiderates is not the supreme life and power of the other. It may not on this account be the less satisfactory or the less rational when the whole life of humanity is looked at.

If we ask ourselves, in conclusion, what is the chief charm of the ‘Pensées,’ we feel inclined to answer,—their touching reality. They are the utterances of one who thought not only deeply but passionately. A strange thrill of personal emotion runs through them all, animating them with vitality, even when one-sided or extravagant. One of his own countrymen {204} has said of Pascal that it was his mission to do for theology what Socrates did for philosophy—to bring it down from heaven to earth. And certainly there is the breathing movement as of a human heart through his whole writings. More than anything else, it is this vitality combined with his exquisite literary art which sets him above all his friends and contemporaries—Arnauld, De Saci, Le Maitre, Nicole, or Fontaine. Still, when we read the ‘Provincial Letters’ or the ‘Pensées,’ we feel ourselves in communion with a living writer who knew how to light up with an immortal touch both the follies of ecclesiasticism and the struggles of a solitary spirit after truth. The tenderness of a genuine insight mingles with all the sublimity and severe reserve of the thought, and so we get close to a true soul, distant as Pascal himself in some respects remains to us. The play of human feeling which we miss in the man moves in his writings, and touches our hearts with an ineffable sympathy, even when we remain unconvinced or unenlightened.

END OF PASCAL.

NOTES.

{3} Lettres, Opuscules, et Mémoires de Madame Périer et de Jacqueline, Sœurs de Pascal, et de Marguerite Périer, sa nièce; publiés sur les Manuscrits originaux, par M. P. Faugère. Paris, 1845.

{4a} Jacqueline Pascal, par M. Victor Cousin. Troisième éd. 1856. Lélut, L’Amulette de Pascal. Paris, 1846.

{4b} Sainte-Beuve. Port Royal. Tom. ii. iii. Mr Beard, in his two volumes on Port Royal, gives an excellent sketch of Blaise and Jacqueline Pascal, in which he has made a diligent use of all the recent French authorities on the subject.

{4c} British Quarterly Review, August 1850.

{5} The Provincial Parliaments in France before the Revolution discharged within a definite area the same judicial and administrative functions as the Parliament of Paris; but they were always regarded as offshoots of the latter, and subordinate to its supreme direction. They possessed no lawful political powers. Lalanne, Dictionnaire Historique, Art. “Parl.,” p. 1421. The “Court of Aides,” according to the same authority, p. 32, decided in the last resort civil and criminal processes relating to subsidies, assessments, and taxes in general, and superintended the collection of the royal revenues.

{6a} Gilberte Pascal—Madame Périer—says, in her life of her brother, 1626. Marguerite Périer, her daughter, Pascal’s niece, says 1628. Cousin (B. Pascal), App. I. 315. Faugère, Lettres, Opuscules, etc., p. 419.

{6b} Cousin, Jacqueline Pascal, p. 23.

{7} Memoir by Marguerite Périer, her daughter, quoted by Cousin, ibid., p. 24. “Do not think,” adds Cousin, “that this portrait is embellished: the austere Marguerite flatters no one; and if she, a Jansenist, says that her mother was beautiful, we may be sure that she was very much so.”

{10} “The exterior angle of a triangle is equal to the two interior and opposite angles; and the three interior angles are together equal to two right angles.”

{11} Baillet, Vie de Descartes, liv. V. c. v. p. 39.

{12}

“Ne vous étonnez pas, incomparable Armand,
Si j’ai mal contenté vos yeux et vos oreilles;
Mon esprit agité de frayeurs sans pareilles
Interdit à mon corps et voix et mouvement.
Mais pour me rendre ici capable de vous plaire,
Rappelez de l’exil mon misérable père.”

{13} Cousin, Jacqueline Pascal, pp. 72–75.

{15} The Intendant was a special Royal Commissioner, sent into the provinces to watch over the administration of justice and the finances.

{16} See Cousin, Jacqueline Pascal, pp. 78–80.

{17} M. Lélut’s volume (already referred to) deserves special attention in its bearing on Pascal’s health, and the character of his sufferings. He lays great stress on Pascal’s highly-strung nervous constitution, in connection both with the precocity of his genius, his physical sufferings, his religious susceptibility, and the profound melancholy which affected his later years. The study is very interesting in some respects, but is overstrained in its physiological details and imaginary analysis.

{18} Madame Périer, Vie de Pascal.

{20} A disciple and friend of François de Sales, who had been bishop of Bellay or Belley, but had at this time demitted his bishopric for the Abbey of Aulney-Havet.

{21} The documents containing these details are found among the Pascal MSS. in the National Library at Paris, having been given by Marguerite Périer to one of the Guerrier family, by whose care so many interesting memorials of Pascal have been preserved. See Faugère, Int. to Ed. of Pensées, xlvi.-ix.

{23a} Cousin, app. 392.

{23b} Faugère, Lettres, Opuscules, etc., p. 452. It is difficult to make out the exact chronological sequence of some of the facts mentioned by Pascal’s sister and niece. But a special accession of ill-health, according to both, seems to have followed his conversion at Rouen, and to have been amongst the causes of his removal to Paris in 1647.

{23c} Pp. 134–137.

{26a} Jacqueline Pascal, p. 73.

{26b} Œuvres de Blaise Pascal, t. 4. Paris, 1819.

{28a} North British Review, August 1844, p. 296.

{28b} I owe this information to the kindness of my friend, Professor Tait of Edinburgh. He further informs me that “of late years the calculating machine of M. Scheutz has been employed in the production of many valuable tables almost hopelessly beyond the power of mere mental calculation;” and that a very simple and ingenious machine, known as the Arithmomètre of M. Thomas, is to be found in the office of almost every engineer and actuary.

{29a} Letter to M. Ribeyre, Œuvres, t. iv.

{29b} The illustrious Italian was then advanced in years. He died in January 1642.

{31} Œuvres, t. iv. pp. 160,161.

{33} Sir D. Brewster, in an article on Pascal’s Writings and Discoveries in North Brit. Rev., Aug. 1844. Sir David’s account is almost literally translated from M. Périer’s letter to Pascal, of date September 22, 1648, and embodied in Pascal’s “Récit de la grande Expérience de l’Équilibre des Liqueurs,” first published in 1648.

{39a} Cousin, Jacqueline Pascal, p. 94.

{39b} “Evidently,” says Cousin, “M. Habert de Montmor, the Mæcenas of the _savants_ of the time.”

{41} Blaise Pascal. Préface de la nouvelle éd., P. 46. Œuvres, t. i. 1849.

{42a} Jus mihi esset hoc ipsum ab ipso potius quam a te expectare, ideo quod ego ipsi, jam biennium effluxit, auctor fuerim ejus experimenti faciendi, eumque certum reddiderim, nec de successu non dubitare, quamquam id experimentum nunquam fecerim. Verum quoniam D. R. amicitia junctus est qui mihi ultro adversatus . . . non sine ratione credendum est eum sequi passiones amici sui.—Descartes, Epist. Amstelodami, 1683.

{42b} Discours sur la Vie et les Ouvrages de Pascal, p. xviii.

{43a} Any reader curious as to how far Descartes had advanced in this matter may consult Montucla, Histoire des Mathématiques, vol. vi. p. 205. Montucla, no less than Baillet, writes with a clear bias in Descartes’s favour.

{43b} Récit de la grande Expérience de l’Équilibre des Liqueurs. Œuvres, t. iv. p. 301—“Je méditai des lors l’expérience dont je fais voir ici le Récit.”

{44} Intererat mea id rescire, ipse enim petii ab illo, jam exacto biennio, ut id faceret, eumque pulchri successus certum reddidi, quod esset omnino conforme meis Principiis, absque quo nunquam de eo cogitasset, eo quod contrariâ tenebatur sententiâ.—Ep. lxix., ibid.

{45a} Professor Tait, article “Vacuum,” Chambers’s Encyclopedia.

{45b} These further researches are expounded in two treatises, ‘De l’Équilibre des Liqueurs,’ and ‘De la Pesanteur de l’Air,’ supposed to have been written in 1653, but not published till 1663, after the author’s death.

{46a} North British Review, August 1844. Sir David in the main translates from M. Bossut’s “Discours.”

{46b} Œuvres, t. iv. p. 187.

{50} Faugère, Lettres, etc., p. 80.

{51} Vie de Pascal.

{54a} Cousin, Vie de Jacqueline, p. 43.

{54b} Ibid., p. 101.

{55} B. Pascal, app. vii. p. 491.

{58} Vie de Jacqueline.

{59} Cousin’s Jacqueline, p. 189.

{60} Cousin’s Jacqueline, p. 161.

{61} Relation de la Sœur Jacqueline de Sainte-Euphémie Pascal à Port Royal, 10 Juin 1653—a long narrative, extending to about 50 pages of Cousin’s volume. See also Lettres, Opuscules, etc., ed. by Faugère, pp. 177–222.

{63a} Relation de la Sœur Jacqueline, etc., p. 182.

{63b} Ibid., p. 187.

{63c} Ibid., p. 194.

{63d} Mémoire, Faugère, p. 453.

{64} Jacqueline Pascal, pp. 237, 244.

{65a} Marguerite Périer says that Pascal had always a room at the Duc de Roannez’s, and that he stayed there frequently, although he had a house of his own in Paris.

{65b} Lélut, p. 234. Women throughout this time took the lead, and were never so active, even in French politics. “Beautiful, witty, and dissolute, they brought into public affairs their frivolous ideas, and sacrificed to their vanity their honour and that of their houses.”—La Vallée, Hist. des Français, t. iii. p. 195, quoted in Kitchin’s Hist. of France, vol. iii. p. 114.

{66} Lélut, p. 238.

{67a} Pensées, éd. de M. Faugère, t. i p. 197.

{67b} Ibid., t. ii p. 91.

{67c} Faugère, Introduction.

{67d} Blaise Pascal, App. No. 7.

{68a} Blaise Pascal, App. No. 7.

{68b} Introd. to Ed. of Pensées.

{71} Il prit la résolution de suivre le train commun du monde, c’est-à-dire de prendre une charge et se marier.—Faugère, p. 453.

{76} “D’horribles attaches”—an expression already alluded to, which has given rise to a good deal of speculation.—Jacqueline Pascal, Cousin, p. 237.

{77} Cousin, Jacqueline Pascal, pp. 236–241.

{87} Fontaine, vol. i. p. 354.

{89} See Beard’s Port Royal, vol. i. pp. 207, 208.

{90} Recueil d’Utrecht, quoted by Maynard, vol. i. p. 78.

{91}

L’an de grâce 1654.
Lundi 23 novémbre, jour de St Clément, pape et martyr, et autres au
martyrologe.
Veille de St Chrysogone, martyr et autres.
Depuis environ dix heures et demie du soir jusques environ minuit et
demi.
Feu.
Dieu d’Abraham, Dieu d’Isaac, Dieu de Jacob,
Non des philosophes et de savants.
Certitude. Certitude. Sentiment. Joie. Paix. {92}
Dieu de Jésus-Christ
Deum meum et Deum vestrum.
Ton Dieu sera mon Dieu—
Oubli du monde et de tout hormis Dieu.
Il ne se trouve que par les voies enseignées dans l’Evangile.
Grandeur de l’âme humaine.
Père juste, le monde ne t’a point connu, mais je t’ai connu.
Joie, joie, joie, pleurs de joie.
Je m’en suis séparé—
Dereliquerunt me fontem aquæ vivæ.
Mon Dieu me quitterez-vous?—
Que je n’en sois pas séparé éternellement!
Cette est la vie éternelle qu’ils te connaissent seul
vrai Dieu et celui que tu as envoyé, J.-C.
Jésus Christ—
Jésus Christ—
Je m’en suis séparé; je l’ai fui, renoncé, crucifié.
Que je n’en sois jamais séparé!
Il ne se conserve que par les voies enseignées dans l’Evangile.
Renonciation totale et douce,
etc.

{92} In the parchment copy, “Certitude, joie, certitude, sentiment, vue, joie.”

{94} The evidence of an anonymous MS. in the collection of P. Guerrier, grandnephew of Pascal, in which the story is told on the authority of two friends of the Pascal family, M. Arnoul de St Victor and M. le Pierre de Barillon. The evidence for the story of the abyss is not even contemporaneous. It comes from an Abbé Boileau, unconnected with the poet of that name, who first told it in a volume of letters published in 1737.

{95} Leibnitziana, quoted by Sainte-Beuve, t. iii. p. 286.

{97} Pensées, t. ii. p 76, 2d ed., Havet.

{101} Recueil d’Utrecht, Maynard, vol. i. p. 555.

{102} The most authentic portrait of Pascal is probably that prefixed by M. Faugère to his edition of the ‘Pensées.’ The sketch, in red chalk, was found amongst the papers of M. Domat, an eminent advocate, and one of Pascal’s well-known friends. It bears below an inscription by Domat’s son—“Portrait de M. Pascal fait par mon père”—and is supposed to represent him in his earlier years, when he studied natural philosophy along with his friend.

{105} The following genealogy, from a Jesuit source, represents not unfairly the origin of Jansenism and Port Royalism as a theological system: “Paulus genuit Augustinum; Augustinus Calvinum; Calvinus Jansenium; Jansenius Sancyranum; Sancyranus Arnaldum et fratres ejus.” The sequel will show how earnestly Pascal disclaims Calvinism.

{106} “Attrition” is a scholastic term for the first acute emotions of the grace of repentance. “Contrition” denotes the grace in a more advanced stage of development.

{107} The full title is, “Cornelii Jansenii Episcopi Iprensis Augustinus: seu doctrina S. Augustini de humanæ naturæ sanitate, ægritudine, medicinâ, adversus Pelagianos et Massilienses.”

{108} Beard’s Port Royal, vol. i. p. 243.

{116a} Recueil d’Utrecht, p. 271. See also Sainte-Beuve, vol. iii. p. 536.

{116b} _Curieux_ in the sense, says Sainte-Beuve, of _bel-esprit_, _amateur_.

{120} A name applied to the Jesuits after Louis Molina, a Spanish Jesuit (1535–1600), whose “Scientia Media,” akin to the Arminian doctrine of Divine foreknowledge, was very famous in its day.

{132} Beard’s Port Royal, vol. i. p. 271. Founded on Recueil d’Utrecht, p. 278, and Sainte-Beuve, t. ii. p. 555.

{133} M. Sainte-Beuve connects only the two concluding Letters with the first two, but the sixteenth Letter also, upon the whole, as a direct defence of Jansen and Port Royal, may be said to connect itself with these rather than with the intervening series assailing the Jesuits. There were eighteen Letters in all published by Pascal, but there is a brief fragment of a nineteenth Letter supposed to be also from his pen, and a farther Letter from the pen of M. le Maitre on the Inquisition, commonly printed along with the others.

{138} After the Edict of Nantes (1598), the Protestants were permitted to assemble for worship at Charenton, a small town about four miles from Paris.

{144a} Letter V.

{144b} “The grand project of our Society,” Pascal makes his Jesuit informant say (Letter VI.), “is for the good of religion, never to repulse any one, let him be what he may, and so avoid driving people to despair.”

{147} Letter IV.

{148} Letter IV.

{150a} Letter X.

{150b} “Who is Escobar?” Pascal represents himself as inquiring in the fifth Letter. “Not know Escobar?” cries the monk; “the member of the Society who compiled a Moral Theology from twenty-four of our fathers.” This book, which Pascal says he “read twice through,” was the great repository from which he gathered the details of Jesuit doctrine which he exposes with such minuteness. Escobar, like so many of the chief Jesuit writers, was a Spaniard, born at Valladolid in 1589. His name became a sort of proverb in connection with their casuistical system, and “escobarder” came to signify “to palter in a double sense.”

{151a} Letter XI.

{151b} Ibid.

{152} Letter XV.

{153} This is Sainte-Beuve’s statement (t. iii. p. 138), repeated by Mr Beard, and founded apparently on Nicole.

{156} Nicole’s translation into Latin of the ‘Provincial Letters,’ in preparation for which he is said to have read repeatedly over all the plays of Terence, appeared at Cologne in 1658, about a year after their completion.

{164} These lectures will be found, translated by the writer of the present volume, in Kitto’s Journal of Sacred Literature, April-October, 1849.

{165} In his Mémoires de Littérature et d’Histoire.

{166} Faugère, i. pp. 123–129.

{168} Faugère, i. pp. 149–152.

{171} See p. 66.

{174} Chiefly from Pensées Diverses.—Faugère’s ed., vol. i. pp. 177–242.

{176} The following passage from Fontaine’s Memoirs, quoted by Cousin (B. Pascal, p. 132), gives an interesting and lively glimpse of the philosophical discourses at Port Royal. It may not be without some application to the modern no less than the original Cartesian doctrine. “How many little agitations raised themselves in this desert touching the human science of philosophy and the new opinions of M. Descartes! As M. Arnauld in his hours of relaxation conversed on these subjects with his more intimate friends, the excitement spread on every side, and the solitude, in the hours of social intercourse, resounded with these discussions. There was hardly a solitary who did not talk of ‘automata.’ To beat a dog was no longer a matter of any moment. The stick was laid on with the utmost indifference, and a great fool was made of those who pitied the animals, _as if they had any feeling_. They said they were only clockwork, and that the cries they uttered when they were beaten were no more than the noise of some little spring that had been moved, and that all this involved no sensation. They nailed the poor animals upon boards by the fore-paws, in order to dissect them while still alive, and to see the circulation of the blood, which was a great subject of discussion. The chateau of the Duc de Luynes was the source of all these curious inquiries, and a source that was inexhaustible. There they talked incessantly, and with admiration, of the new system of the world according to M. Descartes.”

{177} Fragment sur la Philosophie de Descartes.

{185} Havet, i. pp. cxxiv-cxxxiii

{186} Faugère, ii. pp. 81, 82.

{187} Faugère, ii. pp. 91, 92, 99, 104.

{189} Faugère, p. 108.

{190} Faugère, p. 84.

{199} Faugère, ii. pp. 136, 137.

{204} The lamented Prévost Paradol, Études sur les Moralistes Français.