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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Pascal, by John Tulloch, Edited by Mrs.
+Oliphant
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Pascal
+
+
+Author: John Tulloch
+
+Editor: Mrs. Oliphant
+
+Release Date: September 29, 2008  [eBook #26726]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PASCAL***
+
+
+This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler.
+
+
+
+
+
+PASCAL
+
+
+                                    BY
+                            PRINCIPAL TULLOCH
+
+                        WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
+                           EDINBURGH AND LONDON
+                           1878.—REPRINT, 1882
+
+                          _All Rights reserved_
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE.
+
+
+The translations in this volume are chiefly my own; but I have also taken
+expressions and sentences freely from others—and especially from Dr
+M’Crie, in his translation of the ‘Provincial Letters’—when they seemed
+to convey well the sense of the original.  It would be impossible to
+distinguish in all cases between what is my own and what I have borrowed.
+The ‘Provincial Letters’ have been translated at least four times into
+English.  The translation of Dr M’Crie, published in 1846, is the most
+spirited.  The ‘Pensées’ were translated by the Rev. Edward Craig, A.M.
+Oxon., in 1825, following the French edition of 1819, which again
+followed that of Bossut in 1779.  A new translation, both of the
+‘Letters’ and ‘Pensées,’ by George Pearce, Esq.—the latter after the
+restored text of M. Faugère—appeared in 1849 and 1850.
+
+                                                                     J. T.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+      CHAP.                                                           PAGE
+
+             INTRODUCTION                                                1
+
+         I.  PASCAL’S FAMILY AND YOUTH                                   5
+
+        II.  PASCAL’S SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES                            25
+
+       III.  PASCAL IN THE WORLD                                        52
+
+        IV.  PORT ROYAL AND PASCAL’S LATER YEARS                        74
+
+         V.  THE ‘PROVINCIAL LETTERS’                                  103
+
+        VI.  THE ‘PENSÉES’                                             157
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+There are few names which have become more classical in modern literature
+than that of Blaise Pascal.  There is hardly any name more famous at once
+in literature, science, and religion.  Cut off at the early age of
+thirty-nine—the fatal age of genius—he had long before attained
+pre-eminent distinction as a geometer and discoverer in physical science;
+while the rumour of his genius as the author of the ‘Provincial Letters,’
+and as one of the chiefs of a notable school of religious thought, had
+spread far and wide.  His writings continue to be studied for the
+perfection of their style and the vitality of their substance.  As a
+writer, he belongs to no school, and is admired simply for his greatness
+by Encyclopedist and Romanticist, by Catholic and Protestant alike,—by
+men like Voltaire and Condorcet and Sainte-Beuve, no less than by men
+like Bossuet, Vinet, and Neander.  His ‘Pensées’ have been carefully
+restored, and re-edited with minute and loving faithfulness in our time
+by editors of such opposite tastes and tendencies as M. Prosper Faugère,
+M. Havet, and M. Victor Rochet.  Cousin considered it one of the glories
+of his long intellectual career that he had first led the way to the
+remarkable restoration of Pascal’s remains.  Of all the illustrious names
+which group themselves around Port Royal, it is Pascal alone, and
+Racine—who was more its pupil, but less its representative—whose genius
+can be said to survive, and to invest it with an undying lustre.
+
+Pascal’s early death, the reserve of his friends under the assaults which
+the ‘Provincial Letters’ provoked, and his very fame, as a writer, have
+served in some degree to obscure his personality.  To many a modern
+reader he is little else than a great name.  The man is hidden away
+behind the author of the ‘Pensées,’ or the defender of Port Royal.  Some
+might even say that his writings are now more admired than studied.  They
+have been so long the subject of eulogy that their classical character is
+taken for granted, and the reader of the present day is content to look
+at them from a respectful distance rather than spontaneously study them
+for himself.  There may be some truth in this view.  Pascal is certainly,
+like many other great writers, far more widely known than he is
+understood or appreciated.  The old, which are still the common, editions
+of the ‘Pensées,’ have also given a certain commonplace to his
+reputation.  It were certainly a worthy task to set him more clearly
+before our age both as a man and as a writer.
+
+It is no easy task, however, to do this; and to tell the full story of
+Pascal’s life is no longer possible.  Its records, numerous as they are,
+are incomplete; all fail more or less at an interesting point of his
+career.  They leave much unexplained; and the most familiar confidences
+of his sisters and niece, who have preserved many interesting details
+regarding him, have not entirely removed the veil from certain aspects of
+his character.  The well-known life by Madame Périer, his elder sister,
+is of course the chief authentic source of his biography.  It was written
+shortly after his death, although not published for some time later; and
+nothing can be more lively, graphic, and yet dignified, than its
+portraiture of his youthful precocity, and, again, of the devotions and
+austerities of his later years.  But it leaves many gaps unsupplied.
+Like other memoirs of the kind, it is written from a somewhat
+conventional point of view.  No one, as M. Havet says, was nearer to him
+in all senses of the expression, or could have given a more true and
+complete account of all the incidents in his life; but she was not only
+his sister, but his enthusiastic friend and admirer, in whose eyes he was
+at once a genius and a saint—a man of God, called to a great mission.  It
+was from a consciousness of this mission, and the full glory of his
+religious fame, that she looked back upon all his life; and the lines in
+which she draws it are coloured, in consequence, too gravely and
+monotonously.  Certain particulars she drops out of sight altogether.
+These are to be found scattered here and there, sometimes in his own
+letters, more frequently in the letters of his younger sister,
+Jacqueline, and in a supplementary memoir, written by his niece,
+Marguerite Périer, all of which have been carefully published in our
+time, and made accessible to any reader. {3}  The researches of M.
+Cousin, M. Faugère, and M. Havet, the curious and interesting monograph
+of M. Lélut, {4a} have thrown light on various points; while the copious
+portraiture of Sainte-Beuve {4b} has given to the whole an animation and
+a desultory charm which no English pen need strive to imitate.
+
+My only hope, as my aim, will be in this little volume to set before the
+English reader perhaps a more full and connected account of the life and
+writings of Pascal than has yet appeared in our language, freely availing
+myself of all the sources I have indicated.  And if long and loving
+familiarity with a subject—an intimacy often renewed both with the
+‘Provincial Letters’ and the ‘Pensées’—form any qualification for such a
+task, I may be allowed to possess it.  It is now nearly thirty years
+since the study of Neander first drew me to the study of Pascal; and I
+ventured, with the confidence of youth, to draw from the ‘Pensées,’ which
+had then recently appeared in the new and admirable edition of M.
+Faugère, the outlines of a Christian Philosophy. {4c}  I shall venture on
+no such ambition within the bounds of this volume; but I trust I may be
+able to bring together the story of Pascal’s life, controversy, and
+thought in such a manner as to lead others to the study of a writer truly
+great in the imperishable grandeur and elevation of his ideas, no less
+than in the exquisite finish and graces of his style.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+PASCAL’S FAMILY AND YOUTH.
+
+
+Blaise Pascal was born at Clermont-Ferrand on the 19th June 1623.  He
+belonged to an old Auvergne family, Louis XI. having ennobled one of its
+members for administrative services as early as 1478, although no use was
+made of the title, at least in the seventeenth century.  The family
+cherished with more pride its ancient connection with the legal or
+‘Parliamentary’ institutions of their country. {5}  Pascal’s grandfather,
+Martin Pascal, was treasurer of France; and his father, Étienne, after
+completing his legal studies in Paris, acquired the position of Second
+President of the Court of Aides at Clermont.  In the year 1618 he married
+Antoinette Begon, who became the mother of four children, of whom three
+survived and became distinguished.  Madame Pascal died in 1626 or 1628;
+{6a} and two years afterwards (in 1630) Étienne Pascal abandoned his
+professional duties, and came to Paris, in order that he might devote
+himself to the education of his children.
+
+Soon after the Pascal family settled in Paris, their character and
+endowments seem to have attracted a widespread interest.  If not superior
+to the Arnaulds, they were no less remarkable.  They did not escape the
+penetrating eye of Richelieu, who, as he looked upon the father with his
+son, then fifteen years of age, and his two daughters, was so struck by
+their beauty that he exclaimed, without waiting for their formal
+introduction to him, that he _would like to make something great of
+them_. {6b}  Étienne Pascal was a man not only of official capacity, but
+of keen intellectual instincts and aspirations.  He shared eagerly in the
+scientific enthusiasm of his time.  A letter by him addressed to the
+Jesuit Noël shows that the vein of satire, half pleasant, half severe,
+which reached such perfection in the famous ‘Letters’ of his son, was not
+unknown to the father.  The careful and systematic education which he
+gave to his son would alone have stamped him as a man of remarkable
+intelligence.
+
+Gilberte, Pascal’s elder sister and biographer, exerted an influence upon
+his character only second to that of his father.  She married her cousin,
+M. Périer, also of a Parliamentary family, and Counsellor of the Court of
+Aides at Clermont.  She was alike beautiful and accomplished, a student
+of mathematics, philosophy, and history. {7}  For a time she shared in
+the enjoyments of the world, like other persons of her age and condition;
+but the same impulses of religious enthusiasm which animated the rest of
+her family led to her practical abandonment of the world while still
+young.  The memoirs which she composed, both of her brother and sister,
+and her letters, all indicate a high intelligence and a mingled dignity,
+sweetness, and restraint of character, which made her their best
+counsellor and friend.
+
+The younger sister, Jacqueline, has been made a special study by M.
+Cousin amongst the ‘Illustrious Women of the Seventeenth Century.’  She
+was beautiful as her sister, and a child of genius like her brother.  She
+began to compose verses at the age of eight, and in her eleventh year
+assisted in the composition and the acting of a comedy in five acts,
+which was a subject of universal talk in Paris.  Her powers, both as an
+actor and a verse-maker, made a wonderful reputation at the time, which,
+as we shall see, was highly serviceable to her after.  Her verses, it
+must be confessed, are somewhat artificial and hollow; but her letters,
+and, more remarkable than either her verses or her letters, her
+‘Thoughts’ on the ‘Mystery of the Death of Christ,’ are in some respects
+very fine, and might even claim a place beside some of those of her
+brother.  They are equally elevated in tone, and pervaded by the same
+subtle, penetrating, radiant mysticism, the same rapture of
+self-sacrificing aspiration, though lacking the glow of inward fire and
+exquisite charm of style which marked the author of the ‘Pensées.’
+Noble-minded and full of genius, she was yet without his depth and power
+of feeling, or his skill and finish as an author.  In 1646 she came,
+along with her brother, and greatly through his influence, strongly under
+the power of religion; and in 1652, after her father’s death, she
+renounced the world, and became one of the Sisters of Port Royal.  She
+died amidst the persecution of the Sisters in 1661, a year before her
+brother.
+
+In Paris the elder Pascal became a centre of men of congenial
+intellectual tastes with himself, and his house a sort of rendezvous for
+the mathematicians and the physicists of the time.  Among them were
+Descartes, Gassendi, Mersenne, Roberval, Carcavi, and Le Pailleur; and
+from the frequent reunion of these men is said to have sprung the Academy
+of Sciences founded in 1666.  It is interesting to notice that it was
+into this same society that Hobbes was introduced on his first and second
+visits to France, when he accompanied the future Duke of Devonshire there
+as tutor.  With Father Mersenne and Gassendi especially he formed a warm
+friendship, which sheds an interest over his life.  Possibly in some of
+these reunions the author of the ‘Leviathan’ may have encountered the
+young Pascal, and joined in the half admiration and half incredulity
+which his wonderful powers had begun to excite.
+
+There never certainly was a more singular story of youthful precocity
+than that which Madame Périer has given of her brother, accustomed as we
+have become to such stories in the lives of eminent men.  Detecting the
+remarkable powers of the boy, his father had formed very definite
+resolutions as to his education.  His chief maxim, Madame Périer says,
+was always “to keep the boy above his work.”  And for this reason he did
+not wish him to learn Latin till he was twelve years of age, when he
+might easily acquire it.  In the meantime, he sought to give him a
+general idea of grammar—of its rules, and the exceptions to which these
+rules are liable—and so to fit him to take up the study of any language
+with intelligence and facility.  He endeavoured further to direct his
+son’s attention to the more marked phenomena of nature, and such
+explanations as he could give of them.  But here the son’s perception
+outstripped the father’s power of explanation.  He wished “to know the
+reason of everything;” and when his father’s statements did not appear to
+him to give the reason, he was far from satisfied.
+
+    “For he had always an admirable perspicacity in discerning what was
+    false; and it may be said that in everything and always truth was the
+    sole object of his mind.  From his childhood he could only yield to
+    what seemed to him evidently true; and when others spoke of good
+    reasons, he tried to find them for himself.  He never quitted a
+    subject until he had found some explanation which satisfied him.”
+
+Once, among other occasions, he was so interested in the fact that the
+sound emitted by a plate lying on a table when struck, suddenly ceased on
+the plate being touched by the hand, that he made an inquiry into sound
+in general, and drew so many conclusions that he embodied them in a
+“well-reasoned” treatise.  At this time he was only twelve years of age.
+
+At the same age he gave still more astonishing evidence of his precocious
+scientific capacities.  His father, perceiving his strong scientific
+bent, and desirous that he should first of all acquaint himself with
+languages before the absorption of the severer, but more engrossing,
+study seized him, had withdrawn from his sight all mathematical books,
+and carefully avoided the subject in the presence of his son when his
+friends were present.  This, as might be expected, only quickened the
+curiosity of the boy, who frequently begged his father to teach him
+mathematics, and the father promised to do so as a reward when he knew
+Latin and Greek, which he was then learning.  Piqued by this resistance,
+the boy asked one day, “What mathematical science was, and of what it
+treated?”  He was told that its aim was to make figures correctly, and to
+find their right relations or proportions to one another.  He began, says
+his sister, to meditate during his play-hours on the information thus
+communicated to him.
+
+    “And being alone in a room where he was accustomed to amuse himself,
+    he took a piece of charcoal and drew figures upon the boards, trying,
+    for example, to make a circle perfectly round, a triangle of which
+    the sides and angles were equal, and similar figures.  He succeeded
+    in his task, and then endeavoured to determine the proportion of the
+    figures, although so careful had his father been in hiding from him
+    all knowledge of the kind, that he did not even know the names of the
+    figures.  He made names for himself, then definitions, then axioms,
+    and finally demonstrations; and in this way had pushed his researches
+    as far as the thirty-second proposition of the first book of Euclid.”
+    {10}
+
+At this point a ‘surprise’ visit of his father arrested him in his task,
+although so absorbed was he in it, that he did not at first recognise his
+father’s presence.  The older Pascal, having satisfied himself of the
+astonishing achievement which the youthful mathematician had worked out
+for himself in solitude, ran with tears of joy to communicate the fact to
+his friend M. le Pailleur.  It was agreed betwixt them that such an
+aptitude for science should no longer be balked, and the lad was
+furnished with the means of pursuing his mathematical studies.  Before he
+had completed his sixteenth year he had written the famous treatise on
+Conic Sections which excited the “mingled incredulity and astonishment”
+of Descartes. {11}
+
+The happiness of Pascal’s home was suddenly interrupted by an unforeseen
+calamity.  On coming to Paris, his father had invested his savings in
+bonds upon the Hotel de Ville.  The Government, impoverished by wars and
+extravagance, reduced the value of these revenues, with the result of
+creating discontent and calling forth expostulation from the disappointed
+annuitants.  Some of them met together, and, among others, Étienne
+Pascal, and gave such vent to their feelings as to alarm the Government.
+Richelieu took summary means of asserting his authority and silencing the
+disturbers.  The meeting was denounced as seditious, and a warrant issued
+to arrest the offenders and throw them into the Bastille.  Étienne
+Pascal, having become apprised of the hostile designs of the Cardinal,
+contrived to conceal himself at first in Paris, and afterwards took
+refuge in the solitude of his native district.  His children were left
+without his care, and plunged in the greatest sorrow.  At intervals,
+indeed, he contrived to see them in secret, and is said even to have
+nursed Jacqueline through a severe attack of the smallpox, which impaired
+her hitherto remarkable beauty.  But all the pleasant companionship which
+he had enjoyed as their instructor, and the centre of a group of
+intellectual friends, was at an end.  He could only visit his home by
+stealth.
+
+At this crisis (February 1639) Richelieu took a fancy to have Scudéry’s
+tragi-comedy of “L’Amour Tyrannique” acted before him by young girls.
+The Court lady who undertook the management of the piece appealed to
+Jacqueline Pascal, whose accomplishments as a girl-actor were well known,
+to assist in its performance.  She was then thirteen years of age.  The
+elder sister, who, in the enforced absence of the father, was acting as
+the head of the family, replied, with feeling, that “they did not owe any
+favour to M. le Cardinal, who had not acted kindly towards them.”  The
+request, however, was pressed, in the hope that some good might come out
+of the affair to the family, and Jacqueline was allowed to appear.  The
+result was all that could be anticipated.  The Cardinal, charmed by the
+grace and accomplishment of her acting, received her cordially when she
+ventured to approach him with a petition on behalf of her father, thrown
+into a form of verses similar to many which she had already composed.
+The verses have been preserved with her other pieces, and have been thus
+rendered:—{12}
+
+    “O marvel not, Armand, the great, the wise,
+    If I have failed to please thine ear, thine eyes;
+    My sorrowing spirit, torn by countless fears,
+    Each sound forbiddeth save the voice of tears.
+    With power to please thee wouldst thou me inspire?—
+    Recall from exile now my hapless sire.”
+
+She has herself described, in an interesting letter to her father, {13}
+the whole incident, and the result of her intercession.  Having told how
+the Cardinal had been previously well prepared, and had the true state of
+the case explained in reference to her father, who appears to have been
+in no degree to blame in the agitation which called forth the displeasure
+of the Government, she says that—
+
+    “M. le Cardinal appeared to take great pleasure in the
+    representation, especially when I spoke.  He laughed very much, as
+    did the whole company.  When the comedy was finished, I descended
+    from the theatre with the design of speaking to Madame d’Aiguillon
+    [the same lady who had already interested herself in the business].
+    But as the Cardinal seemed about to leave, I approached him directly,
+    and recited to him the verses I send you.  He received them with
+    extraordinary affection and caresses more than you can imagine; for
+    at first, when I approached, he cried, ‘Voilà la petite Pascal!’
+    Then he embraced me and kissed me, and while I said my verses he
+    continued to hold me in his arms, and kissed me each moment with
+    great satisfaction.  And then when I was done he said, ‘Yes; I grant
+    to you all that you ask; write to your father that he may return with
+    safety.’  Thereupon Madame d’Aiguillon approached, and addressed the
+    Cardinal.  ‘It is truly well, sir, that you do something for this
+    man.  I have heard him spoken of as a thoroughly honest and learned
+    man, and it is a pity he should remain unemployed.  Then he has a son
+    who is very learned in mathematics, although as yet only fifteen
+    years of age.’  The Cardinal assured me once more that I might tell
+    you to return in all safety; and as he seemed in such good humour, I
+    asked him further that you might be allowed yourself to pay your
+    thanks and respects to his Eminence.  He said you would be welcome;
+    and then, with other discourse, repeated, ‘Tell your father, when he
+    returns, to come and see me.’  This he said three or four times.
+    After this, as Madame d’Aiguillon was going away, my sister went
+    forward to salute her.  She received her with many caresses, and
+    inquired for our brother, whom she said she wished to see.  It was
+    this that led to his introduction to the Duchess, who paid him many
+    compliments on his scientific attainments.  We were then conducted to
+    a room, where we had a magnificent collation of dried sweetmeats,
+    fruits, lemonade, and such things.  Here the Duchess renewed her
+    caresses in a manner you will hardly believe.  In short, I cannot
+    tell how much honour I received, for I am obliged to write as
+    succinctly as possible.  I am greatly obliged to M. de Moudroy for
+    all the trouble he has taken, and I beg you will be so good as write
+    to him by the first post to thank him, for he well deserves it.  As
+    for me, I esteem myself extremely happy to have in any way assisted
+    in a result which must give you satisfaction.”
+
+This letter was written from Paris on the 4th April 1639, when Jacqueline
+Pascal was therefore only fourteen years of age.  It is in all respects a
+remarkable and interesting production, both for the glimpse it gives of
+the great Cardinal in his hours of ease, and its revelation of
+Jacqueline’s own character,—her dramatic cleverness, her firmness and
+wisdom in assailing the Cardinal with her prepared verses at the right
+moment, her self-conscious importance as the chief actor of such a scene,
+and all the same, her girlish enjoyment of the sweetmeats provided for
+her.  It is a pleasant enough picture; and it deserves especially to be
+noticed how prominently the scientific reputation of her brother, only
+two years older than herself, is already recognised.
+
+The sequel was all that could have been desired.  The father hastened, at
+the summons of his daughter, to pay his respects to Richelieu, who gave
+him a welcome reception.  “I know all your merit,” he said.  “I restore
+you to your children, and commend them to you.  I desire to do something
+considerable for you.”  Within two years Étienne Pascal was, in
+consequence, appointed Intendant of Rouen, where he settled with his
+family in 1641.  Disturbances had arisen in Normandy at this time in
+connection with the payment of taxes, and the Government, believing that
+the Parliament at Rouen had not acted with sufficient vigour, took the
+matter into their own hands, and sent their officers to collect the
+revenues of the province. {15}  Étienne Pascal’s character and previous
+labours in this capacity, no less than his restoration to the Cardinal’s
+favour, pointed him out as a man specially fitted for this work, which in
+the circumstances was not unattended with danger.  The work in itself was
+also harassing and troublesome; and the youthful Pascal, anxious to
+assist his father, had busied himself in the invention of a machine for
+performing arithmetical calculations, which made a great sensation at the
+time.  Ingenious as the machine was, it came to little, as we shall see
+in the next chapter, which will be devoted to a brief account of Pascal’s
+scientific discoveries.  In the meantime it will be better to confine
+ourselves to the thread of his personal history up to the important epoch
+which is known as his first conversion.
+
+Settled at Rouen, he pursued his studies with unremitting devotion, and
+with only too little regard for his health.  His elder sister, who might
+have won him occasionally to lighter pursuits, was married to her cousin
+M. Périer in 1641, and two years afterwards went with him to Clermont,
+where her husband was appointed a Counsellor in the Court of Aides.
+Jacqueline was absorbed in her own poetical studies, which received a
+special impetus from the friendship of Corneille, who had returned at
+this time to his native town.  The illustrious dramatist speedily sought
+out the Pascal family, and became one of their most intimate associates.
+A prize being given every year for the best copy of verses on the
+“Conception of the Virgin,” it was awarded to certain verses of
+Jacqueline’s for the year 1640.  When the announcement of the result was
+made she was absent, but a friend of the family rose and returned thanks
+in verse in the name of the youthful poetess—_Pour une jeune muse
+absente_.  The friend was Corneille, whose impromptu lines on the
+occasion, along with those of Jacqueline, are still preserved. {16}
+Neither have much poetic merit, but they recall an interesting incident.
+
+A bright atmosphere of intellectual emulation and cheerful prospects
+surrounds the family at this time.  But all the while it is evident, from
+Madame Périer’s account, that her brother was injuring his health greatly
+in his undue assiduity in his scientific pursuits.  The attempts to
+perfect the construction of his arithmetical machine seem especially to
+have worn out his delicate frame, and to have laid the foundation of the
+nervous prostration from which he more or less suffered all his life
+afterwards.  “From the age of eighteen,” she says in a significant
+passage that her brother “hardly ever passed a day without pain.  In the
+intermissions of his sufferings, however, his spirit was such that he was
+constantly bent on some new discovery.” {17}
+
+In the beginning of 1646 an accident happened which had important
+consequences both to Pascal and his sisters.  Étienne Pascal fell upon
+the ice and severely sprained his foot.  During his confinement he was
+attended by two brothers who had acquired repute in the treatment of such
+injuries.  They were gentlemen of family in the neighbourhood, who had
+devoted themselves to medicine and anatomy from benevolent instincts and
+the love of these studies.  Both were disciples of a clergyman at
+Rouville, who was an enthusiastic pietist and friend of St Cyran.  Crowds
+flocked to hear Pastor Guillebert whenever he preached, and many were
+stirred by his eloquence to devote themselves to pious and
+philanthropical labours.  One of the brothers under this inspiring
+guidance built a hospital at the end of his park, and gave his children
+to the service of the Church in various capacities.  The other brother,
+who had no children, provided beds in the hospital and attended the sick
+poor.
+
+The character and conversation of these men made a deep impression upon
+the Pascal family.  Hitherto esteemed pious, they had not yet made
+religion an anxious concern in their lives.  Madame Périer says expressly
+of her brother that he had been “preserved by the special protection of
+God from all youthful vices, and, what was still more remarkable in the
+case of a mind of such strength and pride, he had never yielded to any
+libertinism of thought, but had always limited his curiosity to natural
+inquiries.”  He attributed, according to her statement, this religious
+sobriety of mind to the instructions and example of his father, who had a
+great respect for religion, and who had impressed upon him from his
+infancy the maxim, “that whatever is the object of faith cannot be the
+object of reason, and still less the subject of it.”  He had seen, in his
+father, the combination of scientific attainment with a strong reasoning
+power, and the maxim therefore fell with weight from his lips.  And so,
+when he listened to the discourses of free-thinkers, young as he was—
+
+    “He remained unmoved by them, and simply looked upon them as men who
+    had adopted the false principle that the human reason is above
+    everything, and who know nothing of the real nature of faith; so that
+    this spirit, so great and inquisitive, which searched so carefully
+    for the reason of everything, was at the same time submissive as a
+    child to all the truths of religion, and this submissive simplicity
+    predominated in him through his whole life.” {18}
+
+This is a significant extract in more ways than one.  In the meantime we
+quote it as indicating the religious atmosphere of Pascal’s home, and the
+pious temper which marked him from the first.  But as yet religion had
+not taken hold of him with an absorbing enthusiasm.  It had its place in
+his thoughts, and this a deeply respectful place; but now, about his
+twenty-third year, in communication with the two friends we have
+mentioned, and under the same influence which had moved them so deeply,
+it began to lay hold of him more powerfully.  He and his father and
+sisters read eagerly the books of St Cyran, and of Jansen, the Bishop of
+Ypres, whose name became so conspicuous in connection with Port Royal.  A
+discourse by the latter on “The Reformation of the Inward Man,” and also
+Arnauld’s “Manual on Frequent Communion,” are supposed to have specially
+impressed him.  In the language of his sister—
+
+    “Providence led him to the study of such pious writings while he was
+    not yet twenty-four years of age; and God so enlightened him by this
+    course of reading, that he came to realise that the Christian
+    religion obliges us to live only for God, and to have no other object
+    besides Him.  So clear and necessary appeared this truth to him, that
+    he gave up for a time all his researches, renounced all other
+    knowledge, and applied himself alone to the ‘one thing needful’
+    spoken of by our Lord.”
+
+This event is spoken of by Pascal’s biographers as his “first
+conversion,” and it appears to have been attended not only with a zealous
+consecration of his own powers to the service of religion, but moreover,
+as often happens in the case of youthful enthusiasm, with a warm
+determination against all who seemed to him to be acting at variance with
+the true faith.  “Although,” as his sister says, “he had made no special
+study of scholastic theology, he was not ignorant of the judgments of the
+Church against the heresies invented by human subtlety.  All indications
+of heretical opinion excited his indignation, and God gave him at this
+time an opportunity of testifying his zeal on behalf of religion.”  She
+then adds in illustration the following story:—
+
+    “There was at Rouen at this time a man who taught a new philosophy
+    which attracted the curious.  My brother, pressed by two of his young
+    friends, accompanied them to hear this man; but they were greatly
+    surprised when they found, in conversation with him, that he drew
+    consequences from his philosophy at variance with the decisions of
+    the Church.  He sought to prove by his arguments that the body of
+    Jesus Christ was not formed of the blood of the Holy Virgin, but of
+    some other matter specially created, and several other like subjects.
+    They pointed out to him his error, but he remained firm in his
+    opinions.  Thereupon, taking into consideration how dangerous it was
+    to leave the instruction of youth in the hands of a man with such
+    erroneous opinions, they resolved, after previously informing him of
+    their intention, to denounce him if he continued in his errors.  So
+    it happened; for he despised their advice, and in such a manner, as
+    to leave them no alternative but to denounce him to M. du Bellay,
+    {20} who was then discharging episcopal functions in the diocese of
+    Rouen for the Archbishop.  M. du Bellay sent for the man, and having
+    interrogated him, was deceived by an equivocal confession of faith
+    which he wrote and subscribed.  Otherwise he made little account of
+    the affair as reported by the three young men.  However, when they
+    saw the confession of faith, they at once recognised its defects, and
+    entered into communication with the Archbishop himself, who, having
+    examined into the matter, saw its gravity, and sent in writing a
+    special order to M. du Bellay to make the man retract all the points
+    of which he was accused, and to receive nothing from him except by
+    communication of his accusers.  The order was carried out, and the
+    result was that he appeared in the council of the Archbishop and
+    renounced all his errors—it may be said sincerely, for he never
+    showed any anger towards those who had engaged in the affair, so as
+    to lead one to suppose that he had been himself deceived by the false
+    conclusions which he had drawn from false principles.  It was made
+    plain that his accusers had no design of injuring him, but only of
+    undeceiving him, and so preventing him from seducing the young, who
+    were incapable of distinguishing the true from the false in such
+    subtle questions.”
+
+This story reflects somewhat doubtfully on Pascal’s fairness and good
+sense, even as told by Madame Périer.  But it has not been left in the
+vagueness in which it stands in her narrative.  M. Cousin published for
+the first time full details regarding it in the volume by which he may be
+said to have initiated the new researches into the life and writings of
+Pascal.  These details, which fill more than forty pages of appendix to
+M. Cousin’s volume, {21} are no longer of any interest in themselves; but
+they enable us to understand more clearly the conduct of Pascal and his
+two friends.  Unhappily they deepen rather than lighten the shade which
+the story throws upon Pascal’s intemperate zeal.  The name of the accused
+teacher was Jacques Forton, a Capucin monk, known as the Père St Ange.
+He taught no new philosophy; but he had communicated to Pascal or his
+friends, in private conversation specially desired by them, certain
+theological opinions which he had espoused.  These, as given in the
+statement of the case signed by Pascal and his two friends, mainly
+concern such abstruse subjects as the relation of reason and faith, and
+the possibility of demonstrating the doctrine of the Trinity as the
+source of all other knowledge.  The curious question as to the
+constitution of the body of Jesus occupies only a subordinate place.  The
+monk, as shown in the whole proceedings, was evidently more of a
+speculative dreamer than a heretic—a man fond of disputation about
+matters beyond his comprehension.  It is mentioned by the three youthful
+zealots, in the _récit_ bearing their signature, that as they were about
+to part with him, “after the accustomed civilities,” he was careful to
+let them know that he advanced the points in dispute, not as dogmas, but
+merely as propositions or thoughts for discussion, the fruit of his own
+reasonings.
+
+There is no reason to doubt that Pascal’s conduct on this occasion arose
+entirely from honest zeal.  He thought religion compromised by the
+strange reasonings which he had heard.  There is as little doubt,
+however, that his zeal outran his discretion.  He showed a determination
+to pursue the matter amounting to persecution.  The worthy priest had
+evidently no intention of promulgating heresy; for he is glad, when
+called upon, of an opportunity of proving his orthodoxy.  With this view
+he produced, side by side with the articles of accusation, passages from
+a former volume of his which had been printed with official sanction.
+Pascal still demurred, even with this evidence before him.  A second
+declaration was obtained from the priest, and the bishop refused to go
+further.  The sympathies of the community were evidently against the
+youthful zealots; and finally Pascal’s father, convinced that enough had
+been done to vindicate the truth, successfully interposed as mediator.
+{23a}
+
+Pascal’s health about this period appears to have undergone a change for
+the worse.  He suffered from excessive headache and great internal heat
+and pain.  A singular characteristic of his malady was his inability to
+swallow water unless it was heated, and even then only drop by drop.  He
+was the subject, also, of a remarkable paralytic seizure thus described
+by his niece:—
+
+    “He fell,” she says, “into a very extraordinary state, as the result
+    of his great application to his scientific studies; for the senses
+    (_les esprits_) having mounted strongly to the brain, he became in a
+    manner paralysed from the waist downwards.  His legs and feet grew
+    cold as marble; and they were obliged every day to put on socks
+    soaked in brandy in order to try and restore heat in his feet.  At
+    the same time the physician interdicted him from all study.” {23b}
+
+M. Lélut {23c} explains at length this attack of Pascal’s as a well-known
+form of dynamical paralysis, of a similar nature with hypochondria and
+hysteria, proceeding from a disordered state of the nervous affections,
+the result of overwork acting upon a delicate organisation.  The result
+is temporary, as distinguished from the paralysis arising from organic
+lesion, but indicates a highly susceptible constitution, the ready prey
+of melancholy and imaginative exaggeration, to which, in M. Lélut’s
+opinion, Pascal was more or less liable during the remaining years of his
+life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+PASCAL’S SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES.
+
+
+Pascal’s scientific studies may be said to have begun with the remarkable
+incident of his youth already related, when he elaborated for himself, in
+a solitary chamber without books, thirty-two propositions of the first
+book of Euclid.  On the other hand, these studies may be said to have
+extended to his closing years, when (in 1658 and 1659) he reverted to the
+abstruser mathematics, and made the _cycloid_ a subject of special
+thought.  But his scientific labours were in the main concentrated in the
+eight or ten years of his life which followed the removal of the family
+to Rouen.  It will be convenient, therefore, to notice these labours and
+discoveries in a single chapter here, which will, at the same time, carry
+on the main history of his life during these years.  All that can be
+expected from the present writer is a slight sketch of this part of the
+subject, which indeed is all that would be interesting to the general
+reader.
+
+At the age of sixteen Pascal had already acquired a scientific
+reputation.  He is spoken of by the Duchess d’Aiguillon, in the interview
+with Richelieu in which she pleaded the cause of the exiled father, as
+“very learned in mathematics;” and when his sister presented him after
+the dramatic representation on that occasion, the Duchess gave him “great
+commendation for his scientific attainments.” {26a}  When allowed by his
+father to pursue the natural bent of his genius, he made extraordinary
+progress.  He was still only twelve years of age, but Euclid’s Elements,
+as soon as put into his hands, were mastered by him without any
+explanation.  By-and-by he began to take an active part in the scientific
+discussions which took place at his father’s house; and his achievement
+in Conic Sections has been already narrated.
+
+Descartes’s incredulity was not without reason; but there is no room to
+doubt the fact.  The little treatise, ‘Pour les Coniques,’ still
+survives.  It bears the date of 1640, and occupies only six pages. {26b}
+After a very clear statement of his subject, the writer modestly
+concludes:—
+
+    “We have several other problems and theorems, and several
+    consequences deducible from the preceding; but the mistrust which I
+    have of my slight experience and capacity does not permit me to
+    advance more till my present effort has passed the examination of
+    able men who may oblige me by looking at it.  Afterwards, if they
+    think it has sufficient merit to be continued, we shall endeavour to
+    push our studies as far as God will give the power to conduct them.”
+
+It is interesting to notice the beginning of relations betwixt Descartes
+and Pascal, considering the jealousy that afterwards arose betwixt them.
+There is something of this feeling from the first in the older
+philosopher, who was now in the forty-fourth year of his age, and in the
+full zenith of his great reputation.  He appears to have been greatly
+fascinated by Pascal’s peculiar powers; but the men were of too marked
+individuality of character, and too divergent in intellectual sympathy
+and personal aspiration, to appreciate each other fully.
+
+Pascal’s next achievement was the invention of an arithmetical machine,
+chiefly prompted by a desire to assist his father in his official duties
+at Rouen.  He has given us no description of this machine from his own
+pen.  In the “Avis” addressed to all whose curiosity was excited by it,
+he excuses himself from this task by the natural remark that such a
+description would be useless without entering into a number of technical
+details unintelligible to the general reader; and that an actual
+inspection of it, combined with a brief _vivâ voce_ explanation, would be
+far more satisfactory than any lengthened account in writing.  There is
+an elaborate description, however, of the machine, by Diderot, in the
+first volume of the ‘Encyclopédie,’ which is reprinted in the collection
+of Pascal’s scientific works.  Pascal’s main difficulties occurred, not
+in connection with the invention itself, which he seems to have very soon
+perfected according to his own conception, but with the construction of
+the instrument after he had mentally worked it out in all its details.
+These difficulties proved so great, and so many imperfect specimens of
+the instrument were made, that, in order to secure both his reputation
+and his interest, he acquired in 1649 a special “privilége du Roi,” which
+confined the manufacture of the machine to himself, and such workmen as
+he should employ and sanction.  All others, “of whatever quality and
+condition,” were prohibited from “making it, or causing it to be made, or
+selling it.”  But neither these precautions nor the merits of the
+invention itself, which were admitted by all competent judges, were of
+avail to make the instrument a practical success.  Many men of
+mathematical and mechanical genius in different countries have applied
+themselves to the same task.  The celebrated Leibnitz is said to have
+constructed a machine excelling Pascal’s in ingenuity and power.  In our
+own time, Mr Babbage’s wonderful achievement in the same direction
+attracted wide attention, and has been lavishly eulogised by Sir David
+Brewster and others:—
+
+    “While all previous contrivances,” says Sir David, {28a} “performed
+    only particular arithmetical operations, under a sort of copartnery
+    between the man and the machine, the extraordinary invention of Mr
+    Babbage actually substitutes mechanism in the place of man.  A
+    problem is given to the machine, and it solves it by computing a long
+    series of numbers following some given law.  In this manner it
+    calculates astronomical, logarithmic, and navigation tables, as well
+    as tables of the powers and products of numbers.  It can integrate,
+    too, innumerable equations of finite differences; and, in addition to
+    these functions, it does its work cheaply and quickly; _it corrects
+    whatever errors are accidentally committed_, _and it prints all its
+    calculations_.”
+
+Notwithstanding this brilliant picture, the great expense and the
+complications involved in the construction of such an instrument have
+seriously interfered with its success.  It is said that Mr Babbage’s
+machine, much more his marvellous analytic engine, have never yet been
+properly constructed. {28b}
+
+Pascal fortunately turned his thoughts into a new and more fruitful
+channel.  We have now to contemplate him as one of an illustrious band
+associated in a great discovery in physical science.  Before his time
+considerable progress had been made towards a knowledge of atmospheric
+pressure.  Galileo and his pupil Torricelli had both been busy with the
+subject.  To Pascal, however, remains the glory of carrying successfully
+to a conclusion the suggestion of Torricelli, and of verifying the
+results which he had indicated.  Here, as in almost all such discoveries,
+it is found that different minds have been actively pursuing the same or
+similar lines of thought and observation, and controversy has arisen as
+to the exact merits of each; but Pascal has himself so candidly explained
+{29a} how far he was indebted to his great Italian predecessors, and how
+far he made original experiments of his own, that both his relation to
+them and his own work stand clearly apparent.
+
+It had been found by the engineers engaged in the construction of
+fountains for Cosmo dei Medici in Florence that they could not raise
+water in an ordinary pump more than thirty-two feet above the reservoir.
+The water, having reached this height, would rise no higher.  Galileo was
+appealed to for a solution of the difficulty. {29b}  Imbued with the
+ancient notion that Nature abhors a vacuum, and that this was, as then
+prevalently believed, the explanation of the water following the
+elevation of the piston in the pump, the philosopher replied in effect
+that there were limits to the action of this principle, and that Nature’s
+abhorrence of a vacuum did not extend beyond thirty-two feet.  He was
+himself, it need hardly be said, dissatisfied with such a reply, and
+accordingly he invited his pupil, Torricelli, to investigate the subject.
+The latter very soon found that the weight of the water was concerned in
+the result.  He made experiments with a heavier fluid—mercury—and
+ascertained that a column of mercury enclosed in a tube three feet in
+length hermetically sealed at the lower end, and closed with the finger
+at the top, on being inserted in a basin of the same liquid and the
+finger withdrawn, stood at a height of about 28 inches in the basin.  As
+the specific gravities of water and mercury were in the ratio of 32 feet
+and 28 inches, he was led to the conclusion that the water in the pump
+and the mercury in the tube at these respective heights exerted the same
+pressure on the same base, and that both were of course counterbalanced
+by a determinate force.  But what was this force?  He had learned from
+Galileo that the air was a heavy fluid, and he was carried, therefore,
+directly to the further conclusion that the weight of the atmosphere was
+the counteracting cause in both cases; in the one, pressing upon the
+reservoir from which the water was drawn—and in the other, on the
+surrounding mercury in the basin.  He published his experiments and
+researches in 1645, but dying soon afterwards, his conclusions remained
+unverified.
+
+The fame of Torricelli’s experiments had reached Paris as early as 1644,
+before their formal publication.  Some one, Pascal says, had communicated
+them to Father Mersenne—both a religious and scientific intimate, as we
+have already seen, of the Pascal family.  Mersenne had tried the
+experiments for himself, at first without success, but soon with better
+fortune, after he had been to Rome and had learned more fully about them.
+“The news of these having reached Rouen in 1646, where I then was,” says
+Pascal, {31} “I made the Italian experiment, founding on Mersenne’s
+account, with great success.  I repeated it several times, and in this
+manner satisfying myself of its accuracy, I drew certain conclusions from
+it, for the proof of which I made new and very different experiments in
+presence of four or five hundred people of all sorts, and amongst others,
+five or six Jesuit fathers of the College of Rouen.”  When his
+experiments became known in Paris, he adds, they were confounded with
+those which had been made in Italy, and the result was that some
+attributed to him a credit which was not his due, while others, “by a
+contrary injustice,” were disposed to take away the credit of what he had
+really done.
+
+It was with the view of placing the matter in a clear light, and
+vindicating his own share in the train of experiments which had been
+made, that he published in 1647 his “Nouvelles Expériences touchant le
+Vide,” the first of his hydrostatical treatises.  He was at pains to
+explain the distinction betwixt his own experiments and those which had
+been made in Italy; and not content with this, he added in express words,
+in an “avis au lecteur,” that he “was not the inventor of the original
+experiment, but that it had been made in Italy four years before.”  So
+little, indeed, did Pascal borrow directly from Torricelli, or seek to
+appropriate the fruits of his researches, that he was as yet ignorant of
+the explanation which the Italian had suggested of the phenomenon so
+fully established.  He saw, of course, that the old maxim of Nature
+abhorring a vacuum had no solid foundation; but he tried to account for
+the vacuum above the water and the mercury by such a supposition as the
+following:—
+
+    “That it contained no portion of either of these fluids, or of any
+    matter appreciable by the senses; that all bodies have a repugnance
+    to separate from a state of continuity, and admit a vacuum between
+    them; that this repugnance is not greater for a large vacuum than a
+    small one; that its measure is a column of water about 32 feet in
+    height, and that beyond this limit a great or small vacuum is formed
+    above the water with the same facility, provided that no foreign
+    obstacle interfere to prevent it.”
+
+Pascal’s treatise, while still retaining so much of the old traditional
+physics, was made an object of lively attack by the Jesuit Rector of the
+College of Paris, Stephen Noël.  Pascal replied to him at first directly;
+and then in answer to a second attack—and so far also in answer to a
+treatise by the Jesuit, entitled “Le Plein du Vide,” published in 1648—he
+made a more elaborate statement in a letter addressed to M. le Pailleur,
+and in a further letter addressed to Father Noël in the same year.  There
+can hardly be any doubt that this was the commencement of Pascal’s
+hostile relations with the Jesuits.  On their part, they failed not to
+remember in after years, and in a more serious struggle, that he was an
+old enemy; whilst he on his part probably drew something of the
+contemptuous scorn which he poured upon them from the recollection of
+their obstinate ignorance in matters of science.
+
+Meanwhile, in defending himself from the attacks of ignorance, Pascal did
+not fail to open his own mind to fuller scientific light.  As soon as the
+explanation of Torricelli was communicated to him, he accepted it without
+hesitation, and resolved to carry out a further series of experiments
+with the view of verifying this explanation, and of banishing for ever
+the scholastic nonsense of Nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum.  If the
+weight of the air was really the cause which sustained the height of the
+mercury in the Torricellian tube, he saw at once that this height would
+vary at different elevations, according to the varying degree of
+atmospheric pressure at these elevations.  He proceeded accordingly to
+test the result; but the higher levels around Rouen were too
+insignificant to enable him to draw any decisive inference.  Accordingly,
+he communicated with his brother-in-law in Auvergne with the view of
+having an adequate experiment made during an ascent of the Puy de Dôme,
+which rises in the neighbourhood of Clermont to a height of about 3000
+feet.  The state of his own health prevented him from conducting the
+experiment personally, and M. Périer was detained by professional
+avocations from undertaking it immediately.  But at length, in September
+1648, the experiment was carried out successfully, and the results
+communicated to Pascal.  I cannot do better than quote the account of
+this important event as rendered by an eminent scientific authority, {33}
+from M. Périer’s own recital of the facts in his letter to Pascal:—
+
+    “On the morning of Saturday, the 19th September, the day fixed for
+    the interesting observation, the weather was unsettled; but about
+    five o’clock the summit of the Puy de Dôme began to appear through
+    the clouds, and Périer resolved to proceed with the experiment.  The
+    leading characters in Clermont, whether ecclesiastics or laymen, had
+    taken a deep interest in the subject, and had requested Périer to
+    give them notice of his plans.  He accordingly summoned his friends,
+    and at eight in the morning there assembled in the garden of the
+    Pères Minimes, about a league below the town, M. Bannier, of the
+    Pères Minimes; M. Mosnier, canon of the cathedral church; along with
+    MM. la Ville and Begon, counsellors of the Court of Aides, and M. la
+    Porte, doctor and professor of medicine in Clermont.  These five
+    individuals were not only distinguished in their respective
+    professions, but also by their scientific acquirements; and M. Périer
+    expresses his delight at having been on this occasion associated with
+    them.  M. Périer began the experiment by pouring into a vessel 16 lb.
+    of quicksilver, which he had rectified during the three preceding
+    days.  He then took two glass tubes, four feet long, of the same
+    bore, and hermetically sealed at one end and open at the other; and
+    making the ordinary experiment of a vacuum with both, he found that
+    the mercury stood in each of them at the same level and at the height
+    of 26 inches 3½ lines.  This experiment was repeated twice, with the
+    same result.  One of these glass tubes, with the mercury standing in
+    it, was left under the care of M. Chastin, one of the Religious of
+    the House, who undertook to observe and mark any changes in it that
+    might take place during the day; and the party already named set out
+    with the other tube for the summit of the Puy de Dôme, about 500
+    toises (a toise is about six feet in length) above their first
+    station.  Before arriving there, they found that the mercury stood at
+    the height of 23 inches and 2 lines—no less than 3 inches and 1½ line
+    lower than it stood at the Minimes.  The party were ‘struck with
+    admiration and astonishment at this result;’ and ‘so great was their
+    surprise that they resolved to repeat the experiment under various
+    forms.’  The glass tube, or the barometer, as we may call it, was
+    placed in various positions on the summit of ‘the mountain’—sometimes
+    in the small chapel which is there; sometimes in an exposed and
+    sometimes in a sheltered position; sometimes when the wind blew, and
+    sometimes when it was calm; sometimes in rain, and sometimes in a
+    fog: and under all these various influences, which fortunately took
+    place during the same day, the quicksilver stood at the same height
+    of 23 inches 2 lines.  During their descent of the mountain they
+    repeated the experiment at _Lafon-de-l’Arbre_, an intermediate
+    station, nearer the Minimes than the summit of the Puy, ‘and they
+    found the mercury to stand at the height of 25 inches—a result with
+    which the party was greatly pleased,’ as indicating the relation
+    between the height of the mercury and the height of the station.
+    Upon reaching the Minimes, they found that the mercury had not
+    changed its height, notwithstanding the inconstancy of the weather,
+    which had been alternately clear, windy, rainy, and foggy.  M. Périer
+    repeated the experiments with both the glass tubes, and found the
+    height of the mercury to be still 26 inches 3½ lines.  On the
+    following morning M. de la Marc, priest of the Oratory, to whom M.
+    Périer had mentioned the preceding results, proposed to have the
+    experiment repeated at the top and bottom of the towers of Notre Dame
+    in Clermont.  He accordingly yielded to his request, and found the
+    difference to be 2 lines.  Upon comparing these observations, M.
+    Périer obtained the following results, showing the changes in the
+    altitude of the mercurial column corresponding to certain differences
+    of altitude of position:—
+
+    Difference of altitude.        Changes in the height of the mercury.
+
+    Toises.                        Lines.
+
+    500                            37½
+
+    150                            15½
+
+    27                             2½
+
+    7                              ½
+
+    When Pascal received these results, all the difficulties were
+    removed; and perceiving from the two last observations in the
+    preceding table that 20 toises, or about 120 feet, produce a change
+    of 2 lines, and 7 toises, or 42 feet, a change of ½ a line, he made
+    the observation at the top and bottom of the tower of St Jacques de
+    la Boucherie, which was about 24 or 25 toises, or about 150 feet
+    high, and he found a difference of more than 2 lines in the mercurial
+    column; and in a private house 90 steps high he found a difference of
+    ½ a line. . . .  After this important experiment was made, Pascal
+    intimated to M. Périer that different states of the weather would
+    occasion differences in the barometer, according as it was cold, hot,
+    dry, or moist; and in order to put this opinion to the test of
+    experiment, M. Périer instituted a series of observations, which he
+    continued from the beginning of 1649 till March 1651.  Corresponding
+    observations were made at the same time at Paris and at Stockholm by
+    the French ambassador, M. Chanut, and Descartes; and from these it
+    appeared that the mercury rises in weather which is cold, cloudy, and
+    damp, and falls when the weather is hot and dry, and during rain and
+    snow, but still with such irregularities that no general rule could
+    be established.  At Clermont the difference between the highest and
+    the lowest state of the mercury was 1 inch 3½ lines; at Paris the
+    same; and at Stockholm 2 inches 2½ lines.”
+
+From the account here presented of these researches, there is no
+difficulty in determining the exact credit due to Pascal on the one hand,
+and his Italian predecessors on the other.  He completed what they had
+begun, and verified what they had indicated.  As the Abbé Bossut has
+expressed it, Galileo proved that air was a heavy fluid; Torricelli
+conceived that its weight was the cause of the suspension of the water in
+a pump and the mercury in a tube.  Pascal demonstrated that this was the
+fact.  No one was more anxious than Pascal himself that Torricelli should
+be acknowledged as the real discoverer of the principle which it was left
+to him to establish by the test of experiment.  He claimed, however, his
+own definite share in the discovery, both as having carried on a series
+of independent experiments, and as having converted what he himself calls
+the “conjecture” of Torricelli into an established fact.  It was painful
+to him, therefore, to have this share denied, and even open accusations
+made against him that he had appropriated, without acknowledgment, the
+results of Torricelli’s researches.  This accusation was made in certain
+theses of philosophy maintained in the Jesuit College of Montferrand in
+1651, and dedicated to Pascal’s own friend, M. de Ribeyre, first
+president at the Court of Aides at Clermont.  Pascal’s name was not
+indeed mentioned in these theses; but there could be no doubt of the
+allusion made to “certain persons loving novelty” who claimed to be the
+inventors of a definite experiment of which Torricelli was the real
+author.  It was this accusation which drew from Pascal his letter to M.
+Ribeyre, bearing the date of 12th July of the same year, in which he has
+described, with admirable lucidity and temper, his relations to the whole
+subject.  In this letter he distinctly says that the Italian experiments
+were known in France from the year 1644; that they were repeated in
+France by several persons in several places during 1646; that he himself
+had made, as we have already seen, definite experiments in 1647, and
+published the results in the same year; and that he had then not
+mentioned the name of Torricelli, because, while he knew that the
+experiments were made in Italy four years before, he did not then know
+that the experimenter was Torricelli; but that so soon as he learned this
+fact—which he and his friends were so eager to know, that they sent a
+special letter of inquiry to Rome—he was “ravished with the idea that the
+experimenter was so illustrious a genius, whose mathematical writings,
+already well known, surpassed those of all antiquity.”  He says, in
+conclusion, that it was only in the same year (1647), after the
+publication of his own researches, that he learned “the very fine
+thought” of Torricelli concerning the cause of all the effects which had
+been attributed to the horror of a vacuum.  But “as this was only a
+conjecture as yet unverified,” he then, with the view of ascertaining the
+truth or falsehood of it, conceived the plan of the experiments carried
+out by M. Périer at the top and the foot of the Puy de Dôme.  “It is
+true, sir,” he adds, “and I say it boldly, that this series of
+experiments was my own invention; and therefore I may say that the new
+knowledge thus acquired is entirely due to me.”
+
+To this letter M. Ribeyre made a satisfactory and touching reply.  He
+expresses disapproval of the allusion of the Jesuit father, but as the
+discourse was otherwise free from offence, he was willing to attribute it
+to a “pardonable emulation among _savants_,” rather than to any intention
+of assailing Pascal.  He makes, in short, the best excuse he can for the
+Jesuit, and hastens to assure Pascal that his reputation needed no
+justification:—
+
+    “Your candour and your sincerity are too well known to admit any
+    belief that you could do anything inconsistent with the virtuous
+    profession apparent in all your actions and manner.  I honour and
+    revere your virtue more than your science; and as in both the one and
+    the other you equal the most famous of the age, do not think it
+    strange if, adding to the common esteem which all have of you, a
+    friendship contracted many years ago with your father, I subscribe
+    myself yours,” etc.
+
+But Pascal had to sustain suspicion and attack in a quarter more
+formidable than that of the Jesuit fathers at Montferrand.  We have
+already spoken of the rather unhappy commencement of relations between
+him and Descartes.  Farther on we get a more pleasant glimpse of these
+relations, in a letter from Jacqueline Pascal to Madame Périer, dated
+25th September 1647, and apparently shortly after Pascal had retired to
+Paris, along with his younger sister, leaving their father for some time
+still at Rouen.  This letter is so interesting, both in its bearing on
+the question which arose between Descartes and Pascal, and in itself, as
+giving the only account we have of personal intercourse between these two
+illustrious men, that we present it almost entire:—
+
+    “I have delayed writing to you,” Jacqueline says, addressing her
+    sister, {39a} “because I wished to tell to you at length of the
+    interview of M. Descartes and my brother, and I had no leisure
+    yesterday to say that on the evening of Sunday last M. Habert {39b}
+    came, accompanied by M. de Montigny, a gentleman of Brittany, with
+    the view of letting me know, in the absence of my brother, who was at
+    church, that M. Descartes, his compatriot and good friend, had
+    expressed a strong desire to see my brother, for the sake of the
+    great esteem in which both he and my father were everywhere held, and
+    that he begged to be allowed to wait upon him next day at nine
+    o’clock in the morning, if this would not inconvenience him, whom he
+    knew to be an invalid.  When M. de Montigny proposed this, I felt
+    hindered from giving a definite answer, because I knew that my
+    brother was reluctant to force himself to conversation, especially in
+    the morning.  Nevertheless, I did not think it right to refuse, so we
+    arranged that he should come at half-past ten next day.  Along with
+    M. Habert and M. de Montigny there were also a young man in the dress
+    of a priest, whom I did not know, M. de Montigny’s son, and two or
+    three other young people.  M. de Roberval, whom my brother had
+    informed of the intended visit, was also present.  After some
+    civilities, talk fell upon the instrument [probably that which Pascal
+    had used in the experiments], which was very much admired, while M.
+    de Roberval showed it.  Then they spoke of the idea of a vacuum; and
+    M. Descartes, on hearing of the experiments, and being asked what he
+    thought was within the tube (_dans la seringue_), said with great
+    seriousness that it was some subtle matter, to which my brother
+    replied what he could.  M. Roberval, believing that my brother had
+    difficulty in speaking, took up the reply to M. Descartes with some
+    heat, yet with perfect civility.  M. Descartes answered with some
+    harshness that he would talk to my brother as much as he wished,
+    because he spoke with reason, but not to any one who spoke with
+    prejudice.  Thereupon, finding from his watch it was mid-day, he
+    rose, being engaged to dine at the Faubourg Saint Germain.  M.
+    Roberval also rose, in such a way that M. Descartes conducted him to
+    a carriage, where the two were alone, and battled at one another more
+    strongly than playfully, as M. Roberval, who returned here after
+    dinner, told us. . . .  I have forgotten to tell you that M.
+    Descartes, annoyed at seeing so little of my brother, promised to
+    return next day at eight o’clock. . . .  He desired this, partly to
+    consult regarding my brother’s illness, as to which, however, he did
+    not communicate anything of importance, only he counselled him to
+    remain in bed every day as long as he could till he was tired, and to
+    take plenty of soup.  They spoke of many other things, for he was
+    here till eleven o’clock, but I cannot tell you more particularly
+    what they said, as I was not present on this occasion.  We were
+    prevented during the whole day from making him take his early bath.
+    He had found it give him a little headache, but that was because he
+    had taken it too late; and I believe the bleeding at the foot on
+    Sunday had done him good, for on Monday he conversed freely and
+    strongly all day—in the morning with M. Descartes, and after dinner
+    with M. de Roberval, with whom he argued for a long time on many
+    things, both belonging to theology and physics, and yet he took no
+    further harm than perspiring much, and slept rather sound during the
+    night.”
+
+The revelations of this letter are very curious.  The respectful desire
+of Descartes, already so distinguished, to make Pascal’s acquaintance,
+and to enter into conversation with him; his resentment of Roberval’s
+interference, and their earnest altercation, prolonged in the carriage
+after leaving Pascal’s house; the evidently serious character of Pascal’s
+maladies, and the watchful attention of his sister.  It is clear through
+all that Descartes had been busily occupied with the same physical
+problems as Pascal, and that he was somewhat jealous of the results
+towards which Pascal and his friends were tending.  Evidently there was a
+certain measure of unfriendliness between Roberval and Descartes.  I am
+unable, however, to see any traces of a coterie surrounding Pascal and
+inimical to Descartes, as M. Cousin suggests. {41}  If such a coterie
+existed at this time in Paris, of which the “hasty and jealous Roberval”
+was the centre, and which delighted in “abusing Descartes, and attacking
+him on all sides,” Jacqueline’s frank and lively letter seems enough to
+show that while Roberval was Pascal’s friend and Descartes’s disputant,
+there was nothing in the meantime between Descartes and Pascal but
+courteous friendliness and a cordial feeling of mutual respect.
+
+Descartes, however, in his retirement at Stockholm, plainly cherished the
+impression that Roberval’s intimacy with Pascal prevented the latter from
+doing full justice to his scientific position and suggestions; and having
+as yet heard nothing, in June 1649, of the special results of Pascal’s
+experiments on the Puy de Dôme in the preceding year, he wrote to his
+friend Carcavi to let him know about these.
+
+    “I pray you, let me know of the success of an experiment which Pascal
+    is said to have made on the mountains of Auvergne. . . .  I had the
+    right to expect this of him rather than of you, because it was I who
+    advised him two years ago to make the experiment, and who assured him
+    that, although I had not made it, I had no doubt of its success.  But
+    _as he is the friend of M. Roberval_, _who professes not to be mine_,
+    _I have some reason to think he follows the passions of his friend_.”
+    {42a}
+
+That letter was immediately communicated to Pascal by Carcavi, who was
+his intimate associate no less than Roberval.  But it seems to have
+elicited no reply.  Bossut {42b} says that he despised it.  On the other
+hand, Descartes’s biographer and eulogist, Baillet, blames Pascal for
+having carefully kept out of view Descartes’s name in all the accounts of
+his discoveries; and produces an array of passages from Descartes’s
+letters, showing plainly that his mind was in the line of discovery
+finally verified by the experiments in Auvergne. {43a}  It may be granted
+beyond doubt this was the case.  It would ill become any admirer of
+Pascal to detract from the glory of Descartes.  But it must be held no
+less firmly, that in the personal question raised by Descartes’s letter,
+the balance of evidence is all in favour of Pascal.  There are no
+indications that the two men ever met save on the occasion so frankly
+described by his sister Jacqueline.  Before this Pascal had not only been
+busy with the subject, but says distinctly that he had meditated the
+experiment finally made on the Puy de Dôme from the time that he
+published his first researches. {43b}  It was not, indeed, till about six
+weeks after Descartes’s visit, or on the 15th December 1647, that he
+communicated with M. Périer regarding these experiments, and his earnest
+desire that they should be made; and it was not till the following
+September, or about a year after Descartes’s visit, that they were
+actually made.  But it is incredible that Pascal could have written as he
+did if he had really, for the first time, been indebted to Descartes for
+the suggestion.  Descartes’s name is not mentioned in his correspondence
+with M. Périer, nor in any of his writings on the subject; and the delay
+in making the experiments is sufficiently explained by the facts stated
+by himself, that they could only be made effectually at some place of
+greater elevation than he could command—such as “Clermont, at the foot of
+the Puy de Dôme”—and by some person, such as M. Périer, on whose
+knowledge and accuracy he could rely.  If we add to this the force of the
+statement already quoted from his letter to M. Ribeyre, four years
+afterwards, or in 1651, that he claimed the experiments as entirely “his
+own invention,” and that he did so “boldly,” the case seems put beyond
+all doubt—unless we are to suppose the author of the ‘Provincial Letters’
+and the ‘Thoughts’ capable of wilful suppression of the truth.  On the
+other hand, it is unnecessary to attribute to Descartes anything beyond a
+mistaken opinion of the value of certain statements which he had no doubt
+made to Pascal, and possibly some confusion of memory.  And that this is
+not an unwarranted view appears from what he says in a subsequent letter
+to M. Carcavi, on the 17th August of the same year, 1649—that he was
+greatly interested in hearing of the success of the experiments, having
+two years before besought Pascal to make them, and assured him of
+success—because the supposed explanation was one, he adds, “entirely
+consistent with the principles of my philosophy, apart from which he
+[Pascal], would not have thought of it, his own opinion being quite
+contrary.” {44}  This may or may not be true.  Pascal certainly held as
+long as he could to the old maxim of “Nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum.”
+“I do not think it allowable,” he says in his letter to M. Périer, “to
+depart lightly from maxims handed down to us by antiquity, unless
+compelled by invincible proofs.”  But the notions of Descartes on the
+subject of a vacuum were at least as confused as those originally held by
+Pascal. {45a}  It is absurd, therefore, to suppose that the latter could
+have been indebted to the principles of the Cartesian philosophy—not to
+say that this is a very different suggestion from that of the former
+letter, that Descartes himself had advised the experiment to be made.
+Evidently the older philosopher wrote under vague and somewhat inflated
+ideas of the value of his labours and his conversation with Pascal; while
+the latter, again, absorbed in his own thoughts on the subject, and
+unconscious that he had received any special impulse from Descartes or
+his philosophy, naturally made no mention of his name.  His silence when
+Descartes’s accusation was communicated to him indicates the same
+somewhat lofty reserve and confidence in the independence of his own
+researches, rather than any contempt.  He felt too sure of his position
+to think of defending himself, or of repelling what he no doubt regarded
+as not so much a deliberate assault on the value of his own work, as an
+exaggerated estimate by the other of his share in that work.
+
+Pascal’s researches regarding atmospheric pressure conducted him
+gradually to the examination of the general laws of the equilibrium of
+fluids. {45b}  It had been already determined that the pressure of a
+fluid on its base is as the product of the base multiplied by the height
+of the fluid, and that all fluids press equally on all sides of the
+vessels enclosing them.  But it still remained to determine exactly the
+measure of the pressure, in order to deduce the general conditions of
+equilibrium.  With the view of ascertaining this, Pascal made two unequal
+apertures in a vessel filled with fluid, and enclosed on all sides.  He
+then applied two pistons to these apertures, pressed by forces
+proportional to the respective apertures, and the fluid remained _in
+equilibrio_.  “Having established this truth by two methods equally
+ingenious and satisfactory, he deduced from it the different cases of the
+equilibrium of fluids, and particularly with solid bodies, compressible
+and incompressible, when either partly or wholly immersed in them.”
+
+    “But the most remarkable part of his treatise on the ‘Equilibrium of
+    Fluids,’” continues Sir David Brewster, from whose exposition we
+    quote, {46a} “and one which of itself would have immortalised him, is
+    his application of the general principle to the construction of what
+    he calls the ‘mechanical machine for multiplying forces,’ {46b}—an
+    effect which, he says, may be produced to any extent we choose, as
+    one may by means of this machine raise a weight of any magnitude.
+    This new machine is the _Hydrostatic Press_, first introduced by our
+    celebrated countryman, Mr Bramah.
+
+    “Pascal’s treatise on the weight of the whole mass of air forms the
+    basis of the modern science of Pneumatics.  In order to prove that
+    the mass of air presses by its weight on all the bodies which it
+    surrounds, and also that it is elastic and compressible, a balloon
+    half filled with air was carried to the top of the Puy de Dôme.  It
+    gradually inflated itself as it ascended, and when it reached the
+    summit it was quite full and swollen, as if fresh air had been blown
+    into it; or what is the same thing, it swelled in proportion as the
+    weight of the column of air which pressed upon it diminished.  When
+    again brought down, it became more and more flaccid, and, when it
+    reached the bottom, it resumed its original condition.  In the nine
+    chapters of which the treatise consists, he shows that all the
+    phenomena or effects hitherto ascribed to the horror of a vacuum,
+    arise from the weight of the mass of air; and after explaining the
+    variable pressure of the atmosphere in different localities, and in
+    its different states, and the rise of the water in pumps, he
+    calculates that the whole mass of air round our globe weighs
+    8,983,889,440,000,000,000 French pounds.
+
+    “Having thus completed his researches respecting elastic and
+    incompressible fluids, Pascal seems to have resumed with a fatal
+    enthusiasm his mathematical studies: but, unfortunately for science,
+    several of the works which he composed have been lost.  Others,
+    however, have been preserved, which entitle him to a high rank
+    amongst the greatest mathematicians of the age.  Of these, his
+    ‘Traité du Triangle Arithmétique,’ his ‘Tractatus de Numericis
+    Ordinibus,’ and his ‘Problemata de Cycloide,’ are the chief.  By
+    means of the _Arithmetical Triangle_, an invention equally ingenious
+    and original, he succeeded in solving a number of theorems which it
+    would have been difficult to demonstrate in any other way, and in
+    finding the coefficients of different terms of a binomial raised to
+    an even and positive power.  The same principles enabled him to lay
+    the foundation of the doctrine of probabilities, an important branch
+    of mathematical science, which Huyghens, a few years afterwards,
+    improved, and which the Marquis la Place and M. Poisson have so
+    greatly extended.  These treatises, with the exception of that on the
+    Cycloid, were composed and printed in the year 1654, but were not
+    published till 1668, after the death of the author.”
+
+Pascal’s discoveries as to the cycloid belong to a later period of his
+life, after he had long forsaken the scientific studies which engrossed
+him at this time, and had become an inmate of Port Royal.  But, as we
+have already said, it is well to complete our view of his scientific
+labours in a single chapter.
+
+During an access of severe toothache which, in 1658, deprived him of
+sleep, his thoughts fastened on certain problems connected with the
+cycloid.  Fermat, Roberval, and Torricelli had all been occupied with the
+subject, and made some definite progress in ascertaining its properties.
+But much still remained to be done, and especially to resolve the
+problems connected with it in a “general and uniform manner.”  “Pascal,”
+says Bossut, “devised within eight days, and in the midst of cruel
+sufferings, a method which embraced all the problems—a method founded
+upon the summation of certain series, of which he had given the elements
+in his writings accompanying his ‘Traité du Triangle Arithmétique.’  From
+this discovery there was only a step to that of the Differential and
+Integral Calculus; and it may be confidently presumed that, if Pascal had
+proceeded with his mathematical studies, he would have anticipated
+Leibnitz and Newton in the glory of their great invention.”
+
+Having communicated the result of his geometrical meditation to the Duc
+de Roannez and some of his other religious friends, they conceived the
+design of making it subservient to the triumph of religion.  Pascal
+himself was an illustrious example that the highest mathematical genius
+and the humblest Christian piety might be united; but in order to give
+_éclat_ to such an example, his friends proposed to propound publicly the
+questions solved by the great Port Royalist in his moments of suffering,
+and to offer prizes for the best solutions given of them.  This they did
+in June 1658.  A programme was published making the offer of prizes of
+forty and twenty pistoles, for the best determination of the area and the
+centre of gravity of any segment of the cycloid, and the dimensions and
+centres of gravity of solids and half and quarter solids which the same
+curve would generate by revolving round an abscissa and an ordinate.  The
+programme was put forth in the name of Amos Dettonville, the anagram of
+Pascal’s assumed name as the writer of the ‘Provincial Letters.’
+Huyghens, Sluzsius, a canon of the Cathedral of Liège, and Wren, the
+architect of St Paul’s, sent in partial solutions of the problems—those
+of Wren especially attracting the interest of both Fermat and Roberval.
+But Wallis, of Oxford, and Lallouère, a Jesuit of Toulouse, were the only
+two competitors who treated all the problems proposed.  It was held that
+they had not completely succeeded in solving them; and Dettonville
+published his own solution in an elaborate letter addressed to M.
+Carcavi, and in a treatise on the subject.  Carcavi was an old friend of
+Pascal’s father as well as of himself; and being a lawyer as well as a
+mathematician, the arrangement of the affair seems to have been intrusted
+to him.  This did not save him, however, from attacks by the disappointed
+candidates, who accused him of unfairness; and Leibnitz has given his
+decision that both Wallis and Lallouère, in the treatises which they
+published,—which did not, however, appear till after Pascal’s,—had
+succeeded in solving the problems.  Upon such a point we cannot pretend
+to judge; but it may be safely said that the design of the Duc de Roannez
+was hardly realised in the issue.  It was sufficiently proved, indeed,
+that Pascal, in the midst of all his austerities and devotional
+exercises, was the same Pascal who had held his own both with Descartes
+and with the Jesuits.  But the life of thought which survived in him no
+sooner touched the outer world of intellectual ambition, than it flamed
+forth into something of the passion of controversy which his pen had
+already kindled in another direction.  Religion is best vindicated, not
+in the strifes of science, but by the beauty of its own activities.
+
+Pascal’s labours on the cycloid may be said to bring to a close his
+scientific career.  There is still one invention, however, of a very
+practical kind, associated with the very last months of his life.
+Amongst the letters of Madame Périer, there is one of date March 24,
+1662, addressed to M. Arnauld de Pompone {50}—a nephew of the great
+Arnauld—in which she gives a lively description of the success of an
+experiment “dans l’affaire des carrosses.”  The affair was nothing less
+than the trial on certain routes in Paris of what is now known as an
+“omnibus;” and the idea of such conveyances for the public—“carrosses à
+cinq sols,” as they were called—is attributed to Pascal.  It is certain
+that the privilege of running “carrosses à cinq sols” was granted to
+Pascal’s friend, the Duc de Roannez, and to other noblemen, by royal
+patent, in January 1662,—and that the experiment, as described by Madame
+Périer, was made with great success in the following March, and that
+Pascal had an active interest in the undertaking.  His sister tells that
+he had mortgaged his share of its first year’s profits in order to
+provide for the poor at Blois; {51} and a note from his own hand,
+appended to his sister’s letter, shows with what eagerness he entered
+into the affair and hailed its success.  It is singular to connect the
+name of Pascal, and that, too, during the last sad months of his life,
+with so world-wide a commonplace as the omnibus.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+PASCAL IN THE WORLD.
+
+
+Pascal’s health, we have seen, was very delicate.  His labours to perfect
+his arithmetical machine had seriously impaired it.  The attack of
+partial paralysis, described by his niece, seems to have taken place in
+the early summer of 1647.  As soon as he was able, he removed to Paris,
+where we find him settled with his younger sister in September of the
+same year.  It was on the twenty-fifth of this month that Jacqueline
+writes from Paris of Descartes’s memorable visits.  One of the motives of
+his change of residence was no doubt to consult the best physicians of
+the day; and Descartes, who, amongst his other numerous gifts, had some
+skill in medicine, made his second visit to him partly as a physician.
+“He came in part,” says Jacqueline, “to consult as to my brother’s
+illness.”  He appears to have given him very sound advice, which,
+unfortunately, Pascal did not follow—“to lie in bed as much as he could,
+and take strong soup.”  On the contrary, he was “bled, bathed, and
+purged,” after the usual medical routine of the time, apparently without
+any good effects, or any alleviation of his sufferings.
+
+The father also returned to Paris in May 1648.  The Provincial
+Parliament, with regained authority, had exacted the recall of the
+Intendants appointed by the Court.  Étienne Pascal’s services were
+remunerated by the dignity of a Counsellor of State, and he was set at
+liberty to rejoin his children.  It was at this period that the struggle
+took place betwixt father and daughter as to the latter’s determination
+to choose a religious life.  Encouraged by her brother after his access
+of zeal at Rouen, Jacqueline was gradually more and more drawn towards
+piety.  After their settlement in Paris they went frequently together to
+the Church of Port Royal de Paris, to listen to the sermons of M.
+Singlin, whose touching pictures of the beauty and perfection of the
+Christian life awoke in the youthful enthusiast the desire of entering
+Port Royal.  She opened personal communications with the sainted head of
+the House, the Mère Angélique, and also with M. Singlin, who recognised
+in her all the marks of a true vocation, but who would not allow her to
+proceed further without her father’s consent and approval.  The brother
+at this time strongly sympathised with her aspirations, and favoured
+them.  On the father’s arrival in Paris, the design of his daughter was
+imparted to him.  He was greatly surprised and moved by the
+proposition—pleased, on the one hand, by his daughter’s devotion, and yet
+deeply wounded by the idea of parting with her.  He took time for
+consideration, and at length made up his mind that it was impossible to
+give his consent.  Not only so, but he strongly blamed his son, who had
+broken the matter to him, for encouraging his sister’s design without
+first ascertaining whether it would be agreeable to himself, and he seems
+for the time to have felt so much distrust in them both, that he
+instructed an old domestic, who had been with them from their youth, to
+watch over their actions.  This is the narrative of Madame Périer; {54a}
+and the unpleasantness which arose out of this event appears also implied
+in Jacqueline’s letter to her sister in the spring of the same year.
+{54b}
+
+In 1649 the Pascal family left Paris for Auvergne, and seem to have
+remained there for about a year and a half.  Madame Périer says nothing
+of this visit, so far as her brother is concerned, beyond the fact that
+he accompanied Jacqueline and her father.  The likelihood, however, is,
+that the visit was in some degree prompted by a regard for Pascal’s
+health.  He had made in Paris some progress towards recovery,
+notwithstanding the severity of his treatment.  But he was still far from
+well, and it was judged necessary, “in order to re-establish him
+entirely, that he should abandon every sort of mental occupation, and
+seek, as much as he could, opportunities of amusing himself.”  Her
+brother, she adds, was very reluctant to take this advice, “because he
+saw its danger.”  At length, however, he yielded, “considering himself
+obliged to do all he could to restore his health, and because he thought
+that trivial amusements could not harm him.  So he set himself on the
+world.”  When this definite change in Pascal’s life began is left
+uncertain, but there are indications that he had largely abandoned his
+studies in 1649 and the following year.  During these years there is
+nothing from his pen.  The interval between the “recital” of the
+experiments on the Puy de Dôme (1648), and his letter to M. Ribeyre, 12th
+July 1651, is blank in any record of scientific or literary labour.  This
+is not conclusive, of course, that he was idle; but taken in connection
+with the remarks of his sister, and the retirement to Auvergne, it
+suggests that the family may have sought there, in rural isolation and
+domestic reunion, the means of entirely withdrawing Pascal from his
+severer studies, and the scientific companions who were constantly
+prompting them in Paris.  It may be, also, that the father sought the
+means of withdrawing Jacqueline from the neighbourhood of Port Royal, and
+from the equally exciting associations to her connected with that
+neighbourhood.
+
+Of Pascal’s life at this time in Auvergne we know nothing, or next to
+nothing.  There is, indeed, a single trace, of which the most has been
+made, in the Memoirs of Fléchier, describing his stay at Clermont in 1665
+and 1666, a few years after Pascal’s death.  In these Memoirs, Fléchier
+relates an anecdote of a young lady “who was the Sappho of the country,”
+and greatly beloved by all the _beaux esprits_ of the time.  Amongst
+others, “M. Pascal, who had then acquired so much reputation, and another
+_savant_, were continually with this _belle savante_.”  It is difficult
+to know what to make of this vague if piquant anecdote.  Some of Pascal’s
+more religious admirers have even been scandalised by it, and have tried
+to show that it could not refer to the author of the ‘Pensées.’  M.
+Cousin and other parties have emphasised it too much. {55}  There seems
+no reason to doubt that the anecdote relates to the younger Pascal—it
+cannot reasonably be supposed to relate to his father.  Nor is there any
+ground to suppose that Pascal was less likely to be interested in a
+beautiful and accomplished _demoiselle_ than any other young man of his
+age.  On the contrary, there is some reason to think him at this time
+peculiarly susceptible to the charms of female companionship.  The
+passing glimpse which the story gives of his occupations in Auvergne, and
+the comparative brightness and leisure in which it seems to set his life
+for a little, are pleasing.  It suggests the idea that the change to the
+country had worked successfully, and that with rest and retirement from
+Paris his health had greatly benefited.
+
+It is a very different picture we get of the once brilliant Jacqueline.
+If her father had cherished any hopes of restoring her again to the
+world, he was destined to disappointment.  With her conversion at Rouen,
+and her association with M. Singlin and Port Royal, her old life seems
+entirely to have died out.  Even her old pleasure in making verses was
+renounced at the bidding of Port Royal.  She was told “that it was a
+talent of which God would not take any account—it was necessary to bury
+it,” and this although she only exerted it now in the service of religion
+and the Church.  While Madame Périer has given us no details, and,
+indeed, no facts whatever, of her brother’s life at this time, she has
+given us a minute picture of Jacqueline’s austerities.  In everything
+save in name she had already become a nun.  She wore a dress approaching
+as nearly as possible to a religious habit; she fasted and kept vigils;
+she spent her whole time either in the house alone, absorbed in religious
+ecstasy, or abroad in works of active charity; in every way she made it
+plainly to be known that it was only her father’s wish that kept her in
+the world at all.
+
+After a stay in Auvergne of seventeen months, the family returned to
+Paris in November 1650.  There we still read of the pious labours and
+devotion of Jacqueline—little or nothing of her brother.  How far the
+leisure of country life may have weaned him from his old pursuits, how
+far the world had begun to exercise a new attraction over him, we learn
+nothing.  It is evident from his letter to M. Périer on his father’s
+death, nearly a year after this, that he still cherished strongly his
+religious convictions.  Yet there is nothing in all this time to tell of
+his religious profession; and Madame Périer plainly does not care to
+dwell upon it, but hurries forward to the later and more edifying period
+of his career.  The impression is left upon us that worldly distractions
+had already begun to influence his life.
+
+These distractions rapidly acquired force after the father’s death in the
+autumn of 1651 (September).  The devoted Jacqueline attended his last
+moments with assiduous tenderness; but no sooner was the event over than
+she renewed her determination to enter Port Royal.  The issue cannot be
+so well described as in Madame Périer’s words:—
+
+    “Being ill,” she says, “I was unable to leave Paris till the end of
+    November.  In this interval, my brother, who was greatly afflicted,
+    and had received much consolation from my sister, imagined that her
+    affection would make her remain with him at least a year. . . .  He
+    spoke to her on the subject, but in such a manner as to convey the
+    impression that she would not so far contradict him for fear of
+    redoubling his grief.  This led her to dissemble her intention till
+    our arrival.  Then she told me that her resolution was fixed to adopt
+    a religious life as soon as our respective shares [of the father’s
+    property] were arranged.  She would, however, spare my brother by
+    leading him to suppose she only meditated a retreat!  With this view,
+    she disposed of everything in my presence; our shares were settled on
+    the last day of December; and she fixed upon the 4th of January for
+    carrying out her decision.  On the evening before, she begged me to
+    say something to my brother, that he might not be taken by surprise.
+    I did so with all the precaution I could; but although I hinted that
+    it was only a retreat, with the view of knowing something of the sort
+    of life, he did not fail to be deeply touched.  He withdrew very sad
+    to his chamber without seeing my sister, who was then in a small
+    cabinet where she was accustomed to retire for prayer.  She did not
+    come out till my brother had left, as she feared his look would go to
+    her heart.  I told her for him what words of tenderness he had
+    spoken; and after that we both retired.  Though I consented with all
+    my heart to what my sister was doing, because I thought it was for
+    her the highest good, the greatness of her resolution astonished and
+    occupied my mind so that I could not sleep all night.  At seven
+    o’clock, when I saw that my sister was not up, I concluded that she
+    was no longer sleeping, and feared that she might be ill.
+    Accordingly, I went to her bed, where I found her still fast asleep.
+    The noise I made awoke her; she asked me what o’clock it was.  I told
+    her; and having inquired how she was, and if she had slept well, she
+    said she was very well, and that she had slept excellently.  So she
+    rose, dressed, and went away, doing this, as everything else, with a
+    tranquillity and equanimity inconceivable.  We said no adieu for fear
+    of breaking down.  I only turned aside when I saw her ready to go.
+    In this manner she quitted the world on the 4th January 1652, being
+    then exactly twenty-six years and three months old.” {58}
+
+Our readers will not grudge this extract, so touching in its simplicity.
+What a living picture does it give us of this remarkable family!—the
+elder sister’s wakeful anxiety—the younger’s calm determination—the
+brother’s half-suppressed yet deeply-moved tenderness—the proud and
+sensitive reserve of all the three.  Jacqueline’s firmness was heroic,
+but her heart was full of concern.  She had escaped the
+half-authoritative, half-supplicating entreaties of her brother, and
+found refuge for her long-cherished solicitudes of heart in the bosom of
+Port Royal, and the strong counsels both of the Mère Angélique and the
+Mère Agnès.  But after a while this did not satisfy her.  When the time
+came to make her profession, she was anxious to do so, not merely with
+her own consent, but with her brother’s.  And accordingly, she addressed
+him in the following March a remarkable letter, in which, while reminding
+him that she was her own mistress to do as she wished in a matter so
+seriously affecting her life, she yet prayed him to give her a kindly
+greeting in her solemn act, and to come to the ceremony of her taking the
+vows.  The letter breathes at once the affection of a sister and the
+passion of a saint,—the proud firmness so characteristic of the family,
+with a charming sweetness, blending entreaty with command.  She signs
+herself already “Sister of Sainte Euphémie,” the name which she adopted
+as an inmate of Port Royal, addressing her brother for the most part with
+the grave formal “you,” but now and then relapsing into the old familiar
+“thou,” as if she were still in the family home.
+
+    “Do not take that away,” she says, {59} “which you cannot give.  If
+    it is true that the world has preserved some impressions of the
+    friendship which it showed for me when I was with it, please God this
+    should not turn me from quitting it, nor you from consenting to my
+    doing so.  This ought rather to be my glory, and your joy, and that
+    of all my true friends, as showing the strength of my God, and that
+    it is not the world which quits me, but I that quit the world, and
+    that the effort which it makes to retain me is to be regarded as only
+    a visible punishment of the complacency with which I formerly
+    regarded it, and which it now pleases God to give me power to resist.
+    . . .  Do not hinder those who do well; and do well yourself; or if
+    you have not the strength to follow me, at least do not hold me back.
+    Do not render me ungrateful to God for the grace which He has given
+    to one whom you love. . . .  I wait this proof of your brotherly
+    friendship, and pray you to come to my divine betrothal, which will
+    take place, God helping, on Trinity Sunday.  I wrote also to my
+    faithful one [her sister Gilberte].  I beg you to console her, if
+    there is need, and encourage her.  It is only for the sake of form
+    that I ask you to be present at the ceremony; for I do not believe
+    you have any thought of failing me.  Be assured that I must renounce
+    you if you do.”
+
+The result of this moving appeal was to bring her brother to her side.
+
+    “He came the following day very much put out,” she says, “with a bad
+    headache, the result of my letter, yet also very much softened, for
+    instead of the two years which he had formerly insisted on, he wished
+    me merely to wait till All Saints’ Day.  But seeing me firm not to
+    delay, yet willing to give him some further time to think over the
+    matter, he melted entirely, and expressed pity for the trouble which
+    had made me delay so long a result which I had so long and so
+    ardently desired.  He did not return at the appointed time; but M.
+    d’Andilly, at my request, had the goodness to send for him on
+    Saturday, and undertook the matter with so much warmth, and yet
+    skill, that he consented to everything we wished.” {60}
+
+Jacqueline gained her point so far; but painful difficulties still
+remained, the story of which she herself has also told us. {61}  While
+eager to be admitted to the full privileges of her vocation, she did not
+wish to enter Port Royal empty-handed.  She thought herself free to endow
+it with the share of her father’s fortune which had fallen to her, and
+seems not to have doubted her brother’s and sister’s concurrence in this
+act of liberality.  But they, on the contrary, were both for a time
+deeply offended that she should apparently prefer strangers to her own
+kindred.  They took the matter “in an entirely secular manner.”  This
+greatly grieved her in turn; and, balked at once in her wishes and her
+sisterly trust, she pictures in the most lively colours the distress she
+endured.  La Mère Agnès consoled her in her disappointment, and sought to
+carry her thoughts beyond the mere chagrin which so obviously mingled
+with her higher feeling.  Her own somewhat resentful obstinacy gradually
+yielded to the pure passivity of resignation—so strong in its seeming
+weakness—which the sister of Arnauld preached to her.  At length she is
+content to make no further demands upon her brother.  He and Madame
+Périer shall do as they wish; the money would not be blessed unless it
+came from free hearts, and was given for the love of God.  She is willing
+even to be received gratuitously as a sister—a feeling evidently not
+without its bitterness.  Her submission became, as may be guessed, her
+triumph; a result probably not unforeseen by the deeper experience of La
+Mère Agnès and M. Singlin.
+
+When her brother—“he who had most interest in the affair”—at last came to
+see her, she endeavoured to meet him as the Mother advised.  “But, with
+all her effort” she could not hide the sadness of her heart.
+
+    “This,” she says, “was so unlike my usual manner, that he perceived
+    it at once; and there was no need of an interpreter to explain the
+    cause, for though I put on the best face I could, he easily guessed
+    that it was his own conduct which was the cause of my uneasiness.
+    All the same, he was desirous of making the first complaint; and then
+    I learned that both he and my sister felt themselves much aggrieved
+    by what I had written.  He dwelt on this, but could hardly go on,
+    seeing I made no complaint on my side.  Otherwise, I could have
+    destroyed by a single word all his reasons!”
+
+A true family trait!  The result of all was, that Pascal yielded to the
+tender resignation of his sister what he had refused to her arguments.
+He was so “touched,” she says, “with confusion, that he resolved to put
+the whole affair in order,” and to undertake himself any risks or charges
+that it might involve.
+
+But the heads of the House required to be satisfied, no less than
+Jacqueline.  They were not disposed to accept any gift which was not
+freely and piously given.  Accordingly, before the final disposition of
+the property was made, La Mère Angélique took care that Pascal should
+understand the matter anew from the Port-Royalist point of view.  St
+Cyran had taught them that they were never “to receive anything for the
+house of God but that which came from God.”  Even he was not a little
+surprised, according to the statement of his sister, at all this
+scrupulousness—“the manner in which we deal with such matters;” and the
+men of business whose presence was necessary on the occasion are
+represented as astonished beyond measure.  “They had never seen business
+done in such a way.”  At length, however, all was completed.  Pascal
+professed the genuineness of his motives, and only regretted that it was
+not in his power to do more.
+
+If this narrative mainly concerns Jacqueline Pascal, it serves to throw
+light upon the character and life of her brother at this time.  In the
+course of her “relation,” Jacqueline, or her interlocutor La Mère Agnès,
+makes frequent allusion to Pascal’s “worldly life.”  When she is vexed
+that he will not carry out her desires in the matter of the dowry, she is
+reminded that she had far more reason to be distressed by the “faults and
+infidelities” into which he had fallen towards God. {63a}  He is
+represented as being so much engrossed with the vanities and amusements
+of the world as to prefer his own pleasure and advantage to the good of a
+religious community or the pious gratification of his sister.  It was
+only by some miracle that it could be otherwise; and there was no reason
+to “expect a miracle of grace in a person like him.” {63b}  All the means
+at his command were hardly sufficient to enable him to live in the world
+“like others of his condition,” and the associates with whom he was known
+to be mingling. {63c}
+
+Plainly at this time Pascal was abandoned by Port Royal.  He had “set
+himself,” as his sister briefly says, “on the world.”  As his niece more
+particularly indicates, {63d} he had given himself up to the amusements
+of life.  Unable to study, the love of leisure and of fashionable society
+had gradually gained upon him.  At first he was moderate in his worldly
+enjoyments; but a taste for them insensibly sprang up and carried him far
+away from his old associations and the pious severities of his former
+life.  After his father’s death this change was more clearly marked.  He
+was master of his own affairs, and he plunged more freely into the
+pleasures of society, although always, it is distinctly said, “without
+any vice or licentiousness.”  All this, his niece adds, was very grievous
+to her aunt Jacqueline, who grieved in spirit at seeing him who had been
+the means of making her learn the nothingness of the world return to its
+vanities.
+
+Too much is not to be made of such statements, or the still stronger
+expressions of Jacqueline herself in her letters regarding her brother’s
+final conversion.  When she speaks of “wretched attachments” binding him
+to the world, and of his being still “haunted by the smell of the mud
+which he had embraced with such _empressement_,” {64} we are to remember
+that she speaks not only out of the severity of her own youthful
+judgment, (and what judgment is so severe at times as that of youth?) but
+out of the mouth of Port Royal.  She condemns a world which was no doubt
+bad enough, but of which she knew nothing.  Her allusions to the
+“grandeur” of her brother’s life and similar indications have led
+Sainte-Beuve and others to speak of his extravagance at this time.  He is
+supposed not only to have lived in the world, but to have lived in a
+style above his means—the companion of men of higher social position than
+himself, profuse in their habits and expenditure.  That he lived in the
+midst of society of this kind can hardly be doubted.  It is more doubtful
+how far his own habits had become those of an extravagant man of the
+world.  His chief companion was one who remained bound to him through all
+the rest of his life, Pascal’s influence having drawn him also from the
+world when the time of his own change came.  This was the Duc de Roannez,
+a young man of fewer years than himself, who seems to have possessed many
+attractive qualities.  He was devoted to Pascal—could hardly “bear him
+out of his sight,” as Marguerite Périer says—and Pascal warmly returned
+his friendship.  It seems as if they had lived together a good deal, or
+at least that Pascal spent the most of his time with the young Duke; and
+it was in his house and society no doubt that he tasted the joys and
+perils of that fashionable and luxurious life of which his sister speaks
+so bitterly. {65a}  It was a life, after all, of thoughtless enjoyment
+rather than of any deeper folly.  Both men were as yet very young—the
+Duke only twenty-two years of age, and Pascal twenty-eight.  After his
+simple and severe training, and the society of his Jansenist friends, it
+must have been a change full of excitement, possibly of moral danger, to
+the once enthusiastic student; for the society of the time was charged
+with the elements both of sceptical and moral indifference.  It has been
+even said that “no society was ever more grandly dissolute” than that of
+the Fronde, “when women like La Barette {65b} and La Couronne took the
+lead in the least discreet pleasures.”
+
+Among the men whom Pascal evidently met at the hotel of the Duc de
+Roannez, and with whom he formed something of a friendship, was the
+well-known Chevalier de Méré, whom we know best as a tutor of Madame de
+Maintenon, and whose graceful but flippant letters still survive as a
+picture of the time.  He was a gambler and libertine, yet with some
+tincture of science and professed interest in its progress.  In his
+correspondence there is a letter to Pascal, in which he makes free in a
+somewhat ridiculous manner with the young geometrician already so
+distinguished.  Other names still less reputable—those of Miton and
+Desbarreaux, for example—have been associated with Pascal during this
+period.  Miton was undoubtedly an intimate ally of De Méré, and amidst
+all his dissoluteness, made pretensions to scientific knowledge and
+attainments as a writer.  Desbarreaux was a companion of both, but of a
+still lower grade—a man of open profligacy, and a despiser of the rites
+of the Church.  Along with Miton and other boon companions, he is spoken
+of as betaking himself to St Cloud for carnival during the Holy Week.
+{66}  The truth would seem to be that all these men came across Pascal’s
+path at this time, and were more or less known to him.  His allusions to
+both Miton and Desbarreaux in the Pensées imply this.  There is a certain
+familiarity of knowledge indicated in the very heartiness with which he
+assails them—speaking of Miton as “hateful,” {67a} and of Desbarreaux as
+having renounced reason and made himself a “brute.”  {67b}  But it is
+against all probability, no less than against all the facts known to us,
+to suppose that Pascal had more connection with such men than meeting
+them in the society in which he moved during these years, and becoming
+well acquainted with the intellectual and moral atmosphere which they
+breathed.  It may be too much to say, with Faugère, that he was then
+consciously imbibing the experience to be afterwards utilised in his
+great work, or that it was the principles professed by these men which
+gave him the first idea of such a work; but we may certainly say that the
+knowledge of them, as well as all the knowledge he acquired at this time,
+served to deepen and extend his moral intuitions, and to give a finer
+point to many of his Thoughts.  And no student of Pascal can doubt that
+“if his feet touched for a moment the dirt of this dissolute society, his
+divine wings remained unsoiled.” {67c}
+
+A more interesting point than any, however, still remains in connection
+with this period of his life.  It was now, or soon after, that Pascal
+must have composed the “Discours sur les Passions de l’Amour,” one of the
+most exquisite fragments which have come from his pen,—remarkable both in
+itself and in the circumstances of its discovery by M. Cousin about
+thirty years ago.  M. Cousin has himself related these circumstances in
+minute detail, and with a certain self-elation. {67d}  According to M.
+Faugère, there was no particular difficulty, and therefore no particular
+merit, in the discovery.  The fragment was clearly indexed in a catalogue
+of the Pascal MSS. in the well-known State library of Paris as follows:
+“Discours sur les Passions de l’Amour, par M. Pascal,” and again in the
+body of the volume the fragment was entitled, “Discours, etc., on
+l’attribue à M. Pascal.”  The genuineness of the fragment seems admitted
+on all hands.  “In the first line,” says Cousin, “I felt Pascal, and my
+conviction of its authorship grew as I proceeded—his ardent and lofty
+manner, half thought, half passion, and that speech so fine and grand, an
+accent which I would recognise amongst a thousand.” {68a}  “The soul and
+thought of Pascal,” says Faugère, “shine everywhere in the pages, steeped
+in a melancholy at once chaste and ardent.”  {68b}
+
+The following extracts may give some idea of this remarkable paper.  It
+commences in an abstract, aphoristic manner not uncommon with Pascal:—
+
+    “Man is born to think; he is never a moment without thinking.  But
+    pure thought, which, if it could be sustained, would make him happy,
+    fatigues and prostrates him.  He could not live a life of mere
+    thought; movement and action are necessary to him.  He must be
+    agitated by the passions, whose sources he feels deep and strong in
+    his heart.  The passions most characteristic of man, and which
+    embrace most others, are love and ambition.  They have no affinity,
+    yet they are often united; together, they tend to weaken if not
+    destroy each other.  For however grand the human spirit, it is only
+    capable at once of one great passion.  When love and ambition meet,
+    each therefore falls short of what it would otherwise be.  Age
+    determines neither the beginning nor the end of these two passions.
+    They are born with the first years, they continue often to the last.”
+
+    “Man finds no full scope for love in himself, yet he loves.  It is
+    necessary, therefore, for him to seek an object of love elsewhere.
+    This he can only find in beauty.  But as he himself is the most
+    beautiful creature that God has made, he must find in himself the
+    type of that beauty which he seeks elsewhere.  This defines and
+    embodies itself in the difference of sex.  A woman is the highest
+    form of beauty.  Endowed with mind, she is its living and marvellous
+    personation.  If a beautiful woman wishes to please, she will always
+    succeed.  The fascinations of beauty in such a case never fail to
+    captivate, whatever man may do to resist them.  There is a spot in
+    every heart which they reach.”
+
+    “Love is of no age; it is always being born.  The poets tell us so,
+    and hence we represent it as a child.  It creates intelligence, and
+    feeds upon intelligence. . . .  We exhaust our power of gratifying it
+    every day, and yet every day it is necessary to renew its
+    gratification.”
+
+    “Man in solitude is an incomplete being; he needs companionship for
+    happiness.  He seeks this commonly in a like condition with his own,
+    because habits of desire and opportunity in such a case are most
+    readily found by him.  But _sometimes he fixes his affections on an
+    object far beyond his rank_, and the flame burns the more intensely
+    that he is forced to conceal it in his own bosom.  When we love one
+    of elevated condition, ambition may at first coexist with affection.
+    But love soon becomes the master.  It is a tyrant which suffers no
+    rival; it must reign alone.  Every other emotion must subserve and
+    obey its dictates.  A high attachment fills the heart more completely
+    than a common and equal one.  Small things are carried away in the
+    great capacity of love.”
+
+    “The pleasure of loving, without daring to say anything of one’s
+    love, has its pains, but also its sweetnesses.  With what transport
+    do we regulate all our actions with the view of pleasing one whom we
+    infinitely value! . . .  The fulness of love sometimes languishes,
+    receiving no succour from the beloved object.  Then we fall into
+    misery; and hostile passions, lying in wait for the heart, tear it in
+    a thousand pieces.  But anon a ray of hope—the very least it may
+    be—raises us as high as ever.  Sometimes this comes from mere
+    dalliance, but sometimes also from an honest pity.  How happy such a
+    moment when it comes!”
+
+    “The first effect of love is to inspire a great respect.  We revere
+    whom we really love.  This is right, and we know nothing in the world
+    so grand as this. . . .  In love we forget fortune, parents, friends,
+    and the reason of this is that we imagine we need nothing else than
+    the object of our love.  The heart is full; there is no room for care
+    nor disquietude.  Passion is then necessarily in excess; there is a
+    plenitude in it which resists the commencement of reflection.  Yet
+    love and reason are not to be opposed, and love has always reason
+    with it, although it implies a precipitation of thought which carries
+    us away without due examination.  Otherwise we should be very
+    disagreeable machines.  Do not exclude reason from love, therefore;
+    they are truly inseparable.  The poets are wrong in representing love
+    as blind.  It is necessary to take away his veil, and give him
+    henceforth the joy of sight.”
+
+    “It is not merely the result of custom, but a dictate of nature, that
+    man should make the first advances in love. . . .  Great souls
+    require an inundation of passion to disturb and fill them; but when
+    they begin to love, they love supremely. . . .  When we are away from
+    the object of our love we resolve to do and say many things, but when
+    we are present we hesitate.  The explanation is, that at a distance
+    the reason is undisturbed, but in presence of the beloved object it
+    is strangely moved.  In love we fear to hazard lest we lose all.  It
+    is necessary to advance, yet who can tell to what point?  We tremble
+    always till we reach this point, and yet prudence does not help us to
+    keep it when we have found it. . . .  There is nothing so
+    embarrassing as to be in love, and see something in our favour
+    without daring to believe in it.  Hope and fear rage within us, and
+    the last too often triumphs.”
+
+The question arises, What interpretation are we to put on these chaste
+yet glowing sentences?  It seems hardly possible to believe that they
+were not penned out of some real experience.  Pascal was not the man to
+busy himself in writing an imaginary essay on such a subject.  Nothing
+can be conceived less like the sketch of a mere moral analyst standing
+outside the passion he describes.  There may be a tendency here and there
+to over-analysis, and to the balancing of antitheses now on one side and
+now on the other; but there is the breath of true passion all through the
+piece, and touching, as with fire, many of its many fine utterances.  Who
+was then, conceivably, the object of Pascal’s affections?  We have it on
+the authority of his niece that at this time, when he lived so much as
+the companion of the Duc de Roannez, he contemplated marrying and
+settling in the world. {71}  This, and the indications of the piece
+itself, have led to the conjecture that he was in love with the sister of
+his friend.  Charlotte Gouffier de Roannez was then about sixteen years
+of age, endowed with captivating graces of form and manner, animated by a
+sweet intelligence and by that charm of spiritual sympathy so likely to
+prove attractive to a man like Pascal.  Occupying rooms in the house of
+his friend, who, we have seen, could not bear him out of his sight,
+Pascal and Mademoiselle de Roannez were necessarily much in each other’s
+society.  What so natural as that he should fall in love, and overlooking
+all disparity of rank, cherish the secret hope of a union with one so
+gifted and beautiful?—or why may not ambition have mingled with his love,
+as he himself implies, and carried him for a time into a dreamland from
+which all shadows fell away?
+
+It is impossible to do more than form conjectures in such a matter.  To
+M. Faugère nothing seems more probable.  M. Cousin resents the
+supposition as derogatory to Pascal, and as utterly inconsistent with the
+usages of the age of Louis XIV.  But even were it impossible, according
+to the usages of the time, that Pascal should have ever married
+Mademoiselle de Roannez, this is no proof that he may not have fallen in
+love with her.  There is much in this paper that favours the idea, that
+while Pascal loved deeply he yet never told his love; and the social
+obstacles, which for a time may have seemed to him surmountable, at last
+may have shut out all hope from his heart.  Many causes might unite to do
+this, even supposing his love was returned.  It is certain that he
+continued the warm friend, not only of the Duc de Roannez, but of his
+sister; and in after-years a correspondence was established betwixt them
+implying the highest degree of mutual esteem and confidence.  We have
+only the letters of Pascal; nothing is known of those of Mademoiselle de
+Roannez; the rigidity of the Jansenist copyists have given us only
+extracts even of the former.  All trace of earthly passion, if it ever
+existed, has gone from the pious page in which the Jansenist saint sets
+forth his exhortations.  Yet it argues no common interest, that Pascal
+should pause in the midst of his conflict with the Jesuits to advise and
+direct his former companion; and Faugère professes that even before he
+had read the ‘Discours’ he could trace a “tender solicitude”—more than
+the mere impulse of Christian charity—beneath all the grave severity of
+his religious phrases.
+
+The fate of Mademoiselle de Roannez was not a happy one.  After
+vacillating for some time between the cloister and the world—obeying the
+guidance of Pascal, either directly or through Madame Périer, and even
+passing through her novitiate at Port Royal with “extraordinary
+fervour”—she was persuaded to marry and become the Duchesse de la
+Feuillade.  But her marriage proved unfortunate.  Her children died
+young; her own health broke down; she herself at length died under an
+operation, bequeathing a legacy to Port Royal, which had remained
+entwined with all dearest associations.  Whether Pascal and she had loved
+each other or not, this sacred Home bound their best thoughts together,
+and serves to recall their highest aspirations.
+
+It falls to us now to describe how Port Royal claimed the heart of
+Pascal, and called forth the chief activities of his remaining years.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+PORT ROYAL AND PASCAL’S LATER YEARS.
+
+
+Whatever day-dreams Pascal may have cherished, “God called him,” as his
+sister says, “to a great perfection.”  It was not in his nature to be
+satisfied with either the enchantments or the ambitions of the world.
+All the while that he mixed in the luxurious society of Paris, and seemed
+merely one of its thoughtless throng, there were throbs within him of a
+higher life which could not be stilled.  His conscience reproached him
+continually amidst all his amusements, and left him uneasy even in the
+most exulting moments of the love that filled his heart.  This is no
+hypothetical picture, but one suggested by himself in conversation with
+his sister.  She tells us from her retreat how her brother came to see
+her, fascinated by the steadfastness of her faith, in contrast with his
+own indifference and vacillation.  Formerly it was his zeal which had
+drawn her to higher thoughts.  Now it is the attraction of her piety
+which sways him, and leaves him unhappy amidst all the seductions of the
+society in which he mingles.  “God made use of my sister,” says Madame
+Périer, “for the great design, as He had formerly made use of my brother,
+when He desired to withdraw my sister from her engagements in the world.”
+
+The severe Jacqueline tells with unfaltering breath the story of her
+brother’s spiritual anxieties.  She had ceased herself to have any
+worldly thoughts.
+
+    “She led,” says Madame Périer, “a life so holy, that she edified the
+    whole house: and in this state it was a special pain to her to see
+    one to whom she felt herself indebted, under God, for the grace which
+    she enjoyed, no longer himself in possession of these graces: and as
+    she saw my brother frequently, she spoke to him often, and finally
+    with such force and sweetness, that she persuaded him, as he had at
+    first persuaded her, absolutely to abandon the world.”
+
+Writing to her sister on the 25th of January 1655, she says that Pascal
+came to see her at the end of the previous September.
+
+    “At this visit he opened himself to me in such a manner as moved my
+    pity, confessing that in the midst of his exciting occupations, and
+    of so many things fitted to make him love the world—to which we had
+    every reason to think him strongly attached—he was yet forcibly moved
+    to quit all; both by an extreme aversion to its follies and
+    amusements, and by the continual reproach made by his conscience.  He
+    felt himself detached from his surroundings in such a manner as he
+    had never felt before, or even approaching to it; yet, otherwise, he
+    was in such abandonment that there was no movement in his heart to
+    God.  Though he sought Him with all his power, he felt that it was
+    more his own reason and spirit that moved him towards what he knew to
+    be best, than any movement of the Divine Spirit.  If he only had the
+    Divine sentiments he once had, he believed himself, in his present
+    state of detachment, capable of undertaking everything.  It must be,
+    therefore, some wretched ties {76} which still held him back, and
+    made him resist the movements of the Divine Spirit.  The confession
+    surprised me as much as it gave me joy; and thenceforth I conceived
+    hopes that I had never had, and thought I must communicate with you
+    in order to induce you to pray on his behalf.  If I were to relate
+    all the other visits in detail, I should be obliged to write a
+    volume; for since then they have been so frequent and so long, that I
+    was wellnigh engrossed by them.  I confined myself to watching his
+    mood without attempting unduly to influence him; and gradually I saw
+    him so growing in grace that I would hardly have known him.  I
+    believe you will have the same difficulty, if God continues His work;
+    especially in such wonderful humility, submission, diffidence,
+    self-contempt, and desire to be nothing in the esteem and memory of
+    men.  Such he is at present.  God alone knows what a day will bring
+    forth.”
+
+Finally, after many visits and struggles with himself, especially as to
+his choice of a spiritual guide, he became an inmate of Port Royal des
+Granges, under the guidance of M. de Saci.  The questions betwixt him and
+his sister as to his selection of a confessor or director are very
+curious, revealing, as they do, the quiet self-possessed decision of the
+one, the scruples of the other, and the proud self-respect of both.  As
+to one of Pascal’s difficulties, she says, without misgiving—“I saw
+clearly that this was only a remnant of independence hidden in the depth
+of his heart, which armed itself with every weapon to ward off a
+submission which yet in his state of feeling must be perfect.”  M.
+Singlin was willing to assist the sister with his advice, but was
+reluctant himself, in his weak state of health, to assume full
+responsibilities towards the brother.  Jacqueline herself appeared to him
+the best director her brother could have for the time; and there is a
+charming blending of humility and yet assumption in the manner in which
+she relates this, and speaks of “our new convert.”  But finally there is
+found in M. de Saci a director “with whom he is delighted, for he comes
+of a good stock” (dont it est tout ravi, aussi est-il de bonne race).
+
+Pascal first sought retirement in a residence of his own in the country.
+It is particularly mentioned amongst the reasons for his withdrawal from
+Paris, that the Duc de Roannez, “who engaged him almost entirely,” was
+about to return there.  Unable to find everything to his wish, however,
+in his own house, “he obtained a chamber or little cell among the
+Solitaries of Port Royal,” from which he wrote to his sister with extreme
+joy that he was lodged and treated like a prince, “according to St
+Bernard’s judgment of what it was to be a prince.”  It is still
+Jacqueline’s pen which reports all this to Madame Périer.  She continues
+in the same letter:—
+
+    “He joins in every office of the Church from Prime to Compline,
+    without feeling the slightest inconvenience in rising at five o’clock
+    in the morning; and as if it was the will of God that he should join
+    fasting to watching, in defiance of all the medical prescriptions
+    which had forbidden him both the one and the other, he found that
+    supper disagreed with him, and was about to give it up.” {77}
+
+Such is the story of Pascal’s final conversion and retirement from the
+world.  Jacqueline’s details fill in the briefer sketch of Madame Périer,
+and both tell the story at first hand.  None could have known so well as
+they did all the circumstances.  It is remarkable, therefore, that
+neither of them says anything of the well-known incident, emphasised by
+Bossut as the mainly exciting cause of his great change:—
+
+    “One day,” it is said, “in the month of October 1654, when he went,
+    according to his habit, to take his drive to the bridge of Neuilly
+    _in a carriage and four_, the two leading horses became restive at a
+    part of the road where there was a parapet, and precipitated
+    themselves into the Seine.  Fortunately, the first strokes of their
+    feet broke the traces which attached them to the pole, and the
+    carriage was stayed on the brink of the precipice.  The effect of
+    such a shock on one of Pascal’s feeble health may be imagined.  He
+    swooned away, and was only restored with difficulty, and his nerves
+    were so shattered that long afterwards, during sleepless nights and
+    during moments of weakness, he seemed to see a precipice at his
+    bedside, over which he was on the point of falling.”
+
+This alarming incident, which comes from nearly contemporary tradition,
+no doubt contributed to Pascal’s retirement from the world, and no less
+probably also a strange vision he had at this time, to which we shall
+afterwards advert.  But it is peculiarly interesting to trace the inner
+history of Pascal’s great change.  Evidently, from what his sister says,
+his mind had been for some time very ill at ease in the great world in
+which he lived.  How far this was the working of his old religious
+convictions continually renewing their influence through the conversation
+of his sister, how far it was mere weariness and disgust with the
+frivolities of fashionable life, and how far it may have been baffled
+hope and the disenchantments of a broken dream of love, we cannot clearly
+tell.  All may have moved him, and brought him to that strange state of
+isolation which she describes from his own account.  But plainly the
+world-weariness preceded the fresh dawn of divine strength in his heart;
+and there is a tone of hopelessness in speaking of his detachment from
+all the things surrounding him, which favours the thought that some new
+and unwonted smart had entered into his life, and driven him forth to the
+quiet shelter, where at length he found his old peace with God, and the
+great mission to which God had called him.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+The monastery of Port Royal, in which his sister had already found a
+home, remains indelibly associated with Pascal.  It was founded in the
+beginning of the thirteenth century, in the reign of Philip Augustus; and
+a later tradition claimed this magnificent monarch as the author of its
+foundation and of its name.  It is said that one day he wandered into the
+famous valley during the chase, and became lost in its woods, when he was
+at length discovered near to an ancient chapel of St Lawrence, which was
+much frequented by the devout of the neighbourhood, and that, grateful
+because the place had been to him a Port Royal or royal refuge, he
+resolved to build a church there.  But this is the story of a time when,
+as it has been said, “royal founders were in fashion.”  More truly, the
+name is considered to be derived from the general designation of the fief
+or district in which the valley lies, _Porrois_—which, again, is supposed
+to be a corruption of _Porra_ or _Borra_, meaning a marshy and woody
+hollow.
+
+The valley of Port Royal presents to this day the same natural features
+which attracted the eye of the devout solitary in the seventeenth
+century.  Some years ago I paid a long-wished-for visit to it.  It lies
+about eighteen miles west of Paris, and seven or eight from Versailles,
+on the road to Chevreuse.  As the traveller approaches it from
+Versailles, the long lines of a level and somewhat dreary road, only
+relieved by rows of tall poplar-trees, break into a more picturesque
+country.  An antique mouldering village, with quaint little church, its
+grey lichen-marked stones brightened by the warm sunshine of a September
+day, and the straggling vines drooping their pale dusty leaves over the
+cottage-doors, made a welcome variety in the monotonous landscape.  How
+hazy yet cheerful was the brightness in which the poor mean houses seemed
+to sleep!  After this the road swept down a long declivity, crowned on
+one side by an irregular outline of wood, and presenting here and there
+broken and dilapidated traces of former habitations.  The famous valley
+of Port Royal lay before us.  It was a quiet and peaceful yet gloomy
+scene.  The seclusion was perfect.  No hum of cheerful industry enlivened
+the desolate space.  An air rather as of long-continued neglect rested on
+ruined garden and terraces, on farmhouse and dovecot, and the remains as
+of a chapel nearer at hand.  The more minutely the eye took in the scene,
+the more sad seemed its wasted recesses and the few monuments of its
+departed glories.  The stillness as of a buried past lay all about, and
+it required an effort of imagination to people the valley with the sacred
+activities of the seventeenth century.
+
+A rough wooden enclosure has been erected on the site of the high altar
+surmounted by a cross.  It contained a few memorials, amongst the most
+touching of which were simple portraits of Arnauld, Le Maitre, De Saci,
+Quesnel, Nicole, Pascal, the Mère Angélique, the Mère Agnès, Jacqueline
+Pascal, and Dr Hanlon the physician.  Two portraits of the Mère Agnès
+particularly impressed me.  The lines of the face were exquisitely
+touching in their gentle bravery and patience.  As I looked at the noble
+and sweet countenances grouped on the bare unadorned walls, the sacred
+memories of the place rose vividly before my mind.  It was here alone
+that the recluses from the neighbouring Grange met the sainted
+sisterhood, and mingled with them the prayers and tears of penitence.
+Otherwise they dwelt apart, each in diligent privacy, intent on their
+works of education or of charity.  All the ruin and decay and somewhat
+dreary sadness of the scene could not weaken my sense of the beautiful
+life of thought and faith and hope and love that had once breathed there;
+and never before had I felt so deeply the enduring reality of the
+spiritual heroism and self-sacrifice, the glory of suffering and of
+goodness, that had made the spot so memorable.
+
+The monastery was founded, not by Philip Augustus, but by Matthieu, first
+Lord of Marli, a younger son of the noble house of Montmorency.  Having
+formed the design of accompanying the crusade proclaimed by Innocent III.
+to the Holy Land, he left at the disposal of his wife, Mathilde de
+Garlande, and his kinsman, the Bishop of Paris, a sum of money to devote
+to some pious work in his absence.  They agreed to apply it to the
+erection of a monastery for nuns in this secluded valley, that had
+already acquired a reputation for sanctity in connection with the old
+chapel dedicated to St Lawrence, which attracted large numbers of
+worshippers.  The foundations of the church and monastery were laid in
+1204.  They were designed by the same architect who built the Cathedral
+of Amiens, and ere long the graceful and beautiful structures were seen
+rising in the wilderness.  The nuns belonged to the Cistercian order.
+Their dress was white woollen, with a black veil; but afterwards they
+adopted as their distinctive badge a large scarlet cross on their white
+scapulary, as the symbol of the “Institute of the Holy Sacrament.”
+
+The abbey underwent the usual history of such institutions.
+Distinguished at first by the strictness of its discipline and the piety
+of its inmates, it became gradually corrupted with increasing wealth,
+till, in the end of the sixteenth century, it had grown notorious for
+gross and scandalous abuses.  The revenues were squandered in luxury; the
+nuns did what they liked; and the extravagances and dissipations of the
+world were repeated amidst the solitudes which had been consecrated to
+devotion.  But at length its revival arose out of one of the most obvious
+abuses connected with it.  The patronage of the institution, like that of
+others, had been distributed without any regard to the fitness of the
+occupants, even to girls of immature age.  In this manner the abbey of
+Port Royal accidentally fell to the lot of one who was destined by her
+ardent piety to breathe a new life into it, and by her indomitable and
+lofty genius to give it an undying reputation.
+
+Jacqueline Marie Arnauld—better known by her official name, La Mère
+Angélique—was appointed abbess of Port Royal when she was only eight
+years of age.  She was descended from a distinguished family belonging
+originally to the old _noblesse_ of Provence, but which had migrated to
+Auvergne and settled there.  Of vigorous healthiness, both mental and
+physical, the Arnaulds had already acquired a merited position and name
+in the annals of France.  In the beginning of the sixteenth century it
+found its way to Paris in the person of Antoine Arnauld, Seigneur de la
+Mothe, the grandfather of the heroine of Port Royal.  M. de la Mothe, as
+he was commonly called, was endowed with the energetic will, and with
+more than the usual talents, of his family.  He was specially known as
+Procureur-général to Catherine de Médicis; but, as he himself said, he
+wore “a soldier’s coat as well as a lawyer’s robe.”  He was a Huguenot,
+and nearly perished in the Bartholomew massacre.  He had eight sons,
+every one of whom more or less achieved distinction in the service of
+their country; but his second son and namesake peculiarly inherited his
+father’s legal talents, and became his successor in the office of
+Procureur-général.  He more than rivalled his father’s forensic success;
+and many traditions survive of his great eloquence, and of the
+pre-eminent ability with which he pleaded on behalf of the University of
+Paris for the expulsion of the Jesuits from France, under suspicion of
+having instigated an attempt on the life of Henri IV. in 1593.  This
+great effort has been called the “original sin” of the Arnauld family
+against the Jesuit order, which was never forgiven.  His eloquence
+produced such an impression, that it is said the judges rose in their
+seats to listen to his speech, while crowds assembled at the closed doors
+of the Court to catch its partial echoes.  And yet, like some other great
+speeches, it cannot now be read without weariness.
+
+Antoine Arnauld married the youthful daughter of M. Marion, the
+Avocat-général, who became a mother while still only a girl of fifteen,
+but who grew into a noble and large-hearted woman, full of deeds of piety
+and charity.  In all, the couple had twenty children, and felt, as may be
+imagined, the pressure of providing for so many.  Out of this pressure
+came the remarkable lot of two of the daughters.  The benefices of the
+Church were a fruitful field of provision, and the avocat-général, the
+maternal grandfather of the children, had large ecclesiastical influence.
+The result was the appointment not only of one daughter to the abbey of
+Port Royal, but also of a younger sister, Agnès, only six years of age,
+to the abbey of St Cyr, about six miles distant from Port Royal.
+Difficulties, not without reason, were found in obtaining the papal
+sanction to such appointments; but these were at last overcome by means,
+it is said, more creditable to M. Arnauld’s ability than to his
+integrity.
+
+At the age of eleven, in the year 1602, Angélique was installed Abbess of
+Port Royal.  Her sister took the veil at the age of seven.  United in the
+nursery, they had also spent some months together at the abbey of St Cyr,
+in preparation for their solemn office.  They were of marked but very
+contrasted characters.  The elder inherited the strong will and dominant
+energy of her race.  As yet, and for some time afterwards, without any
+religious bias, she contemplated her prospects with a quiet and proud
+consciousness of responsibility.  The younger sister was of a softer and
+more submissive nature.  She shrank from her high position, saying that
+an abbess had to answer to God for the souls of her nuns, and she was
+sure that she would have enough to do to take care of her own.  Angélique
+had no such scruples.  She was glad to be an abbess, and was resolved
+that her nuns should thoroughly do their duty.  These sayings have been
+preserved in the memoirs of the family, and are supposed to indicate
+happily the firm, persistent spirit and legislative capacity of the one
+sister, in contrast with the passive rather than active strength, and
+milder yet no less enduring purpose, of the other.
+
+The remarkable story of Angélique’s conversion by the preaching of a
+Capucin friar in 1608, her strange contest with her parents which
+followed, the strengthening impulses in different directions which her
+religious life received, first from the famous St Francis de Sales, and
+finally, and especially, from the no less remarkable Abbé de St Cyran,
+all belong to the history of Port Royal, and cannot be detailed here.  It
+is a touching and beautiful story, which can never lose its interest.  It
+is only necessary that we draw attention to the temporary removal of the
+Abbess with her nuns to Paris in the year 1635, and to the settlement in
+the valley, during their absence from it, of the band of Solitaries whose
+piety and genius, no less than the heroic devotion of the sisterhood,
+have shed such a glory around it.  It was the spiritual influence of St
+Cyran which overflowed in this direction.  The religious genius of this
+remarkable man, of whom we shall speak more particularly in the next
+chapter, laid its spell upon the social life around him, and brought to
+his feet some of the most able and distinguished young men of the time.
+The elder brother of Angélique and Agnès Arnauld, known as M. d’Andilly,
+was amongst his devoted friends; and it was through him that St Cyran
+first became connected with Port Royal.  D’Andilly was married, and a
+courtier—a busy man in the political circles of his day; but he had long
+bowed before the force of St Cyran’s religious convictions, and finally
+he too abandoned the world, and sought the retirement of Port Royal,
+whither three of his nephews had preceded him; and a younger and yet more
+distinguished brother, the namesake of his father, soon followed him.  It
+was D’Andilly who said of St Cyran, “I was under such obligations to him
+that I loved him more than life.”  On the other hand, St Cyran said of
+him, “He has not the virtue of a saint or an anchorite, but I know no man
+of his condition who is so solidly virtuous.”
+
+The brotherhood of Port Royal had its beginning in 1637 with the
+conversion of two of the nephews of D’Andilly and the Mère Angélique,
+children of Arnauld’s eldest daughter, who had married unhappily and been
+soon separated from her husband.  These grandsons of Arnauld are known as
+M. le Maitre and M. de Sercourt, the former of whom, like his ancestors,
+had greatly distinguished himself at the bar.  The latter was no less
+distinguished as a soldier.  In the midst of worldly success, they
+forsook everything and gave themselves to a life of religious retirement,
+in which they were by-and-by joined by a younger and still more
+remarkable brother, known as M. de Saci, trained for the Church, and
+already mentioned in connection with Pascal’s conversion.  He became
+Pascal’s spiritual director, and held with him the famous conversation on
+Epictetus and Montaigne.  To the same group of men belonged Singlin, of
+whom we have heard so much in former pages, and Lancelot and Fontaine;
+above all, Antoine Arnauld, the youngest of the large Arnauld family, and
+the most indefatigable of them all.  Singlin was a favourite of St Cyran,
+and his successor in the office of spiritual director to the monastery,
+as De Saci was again the successor of Singlin in the same capacity.  He
+was a man of less ability and knowledge than many of the others, the son
+of a wine merchant, who did not begin his religious studies till a
+comparatively late period, but of a very direct and simple character, and
+well skilled in the mysteries of the conscience, which made him a
+spiritual power in the community.  He was withal of singular humility,
+and would fain have retired from the office of Confessor when St Cyran
+was set at liberty in 1643 after his long imprisonment; but neither then
+nor afterwards, on his illustrious friend’s death, was he allowed to do
+so.  St Cyran warned him that he could not fly from the duties of such a
+position without incurring the guilt of disobedience.  De Saci seems to
+have been especially remarkable for his quiet self-possession and
+cautious insight into character.  His brother, Le Maitre, brings out in a
+curious manner the contrast between his own impetuous character and the
+leisurely efficiency of De Saci’s temper.  As they sat at their evening
+meal—“a very modest collation”—
+
+    “He had hardly begun his supper when mine was already half digested.
+    . . .  Of quick and warm disposition, I had seen the end of my
+    portion almost as soon as the beginning; it rapidly disappeared; and
+    as I was thinking of rising from the table, I saw my brother De Saci,
+    with his usual coolness and gravity, take a little piece of apple,
+    peel it quietly, cut it leisurely, and eat it slowly.  Then, after
+    having finished, he rose almost as light as he had sat down, leaving
+    untouched nearly all his very moderate portion.  He went away as if
+    he were quite satisfied, and even appeared to grow fat upon fasts.”
+    {87}
+
+Claude Lancelot was the schoolmaster of the community, and represents to
+us perhaps more fully than any other name its famous system of education.
+Fontaine was one of its chief memoir writers, from whom we derive so much
+of our knowledge of the society; while the younger Arnauld, of whom we
+shall afterwards speak, Nicole, and the subject of our present sketch,
+represent its philosophical and literary activity.
+
+Such was the company to which Pascal joined himself in 1655.  They had
+been settled in divers places,—at first, in 1637, when they were still
+only a few disciples gathered around St Cyran, in the immediate
+neighbourhood of Port Royal de Paris; and then, when driven from this
+after their great head’s imprisonment, for a short time at a place called
+Ferté Milon; and then, finally, in 1639, at Port Royal des Champs.  Here
+they made a great change for the better by their assiduous industry.
+They drained the marshy valley, cleared it of its overgrowth of
+brushwood, and converted it into a comparatively smiling and salubrious
+abode.  On the return of the sisterhood from Port Royal de Paris in 1648,
+the nuns found the place improved beyond their expectations.  The
+conventual buildings had been repaired, and the church kept in good
+preservation.  The bells of the church tower pealed a welcome; a large
+concourse of the neighbouring poor assembled in the courtyard to greet
+them; while the Solitaries—one of their number, a priest, bearing a
+cross—waited at the church door to enter with them, and swell with their
+voices the Te Deum with which they celebrated their return.  After this
+they parted, a few of the brotherhood repairing to a house which had been
+taken for them in Paris, but others retiring to the well-known farm on
+the hill known as Les Granges.  There was, of course, the strictest
+seclusion maintained in the nunnery, as before, and the inmates of Les
+Granges were wellnigh as completely severed from it as the brethren who
+retired to Paris.
+
+The mode of life of the Solitaries was simple in the highest degree.
+They wore no distinctive dress.  Their wants were supplied by the barest
+necessaries in the shape of lodging and furniture.  From early morning,
+three A.M., to night, they were occupied in works of piety, charity, or
+industry.  They met in the chapel after their private devotions to say
+matins and lauds, a service which occupied about an hour and a half,
+after which they kissed the earth in token of a common lowliness, and
+sought each his own room for a time.  The round of devotion thus
+commenced was continued with a steady uniformity,—Prime at half-past six;
+Tierces at nine, and after this a daily Mass; Sexte at eleven; Nones at
+two; Vespers at four; and Compline closing the series at a quarter-past
+seven. {89}  The Gospel and Epistles were read daily; and sometimes
+during or after dinner the Lives of the Saints.  They dined together; and
+a walk thereafter formed the sole recreation of the day.  Two hours in
+the morning, and two in the afternoon, were devoted to work in the fields
+or in the garden by those who were able for such tasks.  Confession and
+communion were frequent, but no uniform rule was enforced.  In this, as
+in fasting and austerities generally, each recluse was left to his own
+free will; and, as will be seen in Pascal’s case, there was no need to
+stimulate the morbid desire for bodily mortification.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+It was in the last month of 1654 that Pascal’s final conversion and
+adhesion to Port Royal took place.  His mind for some time before had
+been greatly agitated, as already explained—filled with disgust of the
+world and all its enjoyments.  Then had come the accident at the Bridge
+of Neuilly, and about the same time, or a little later, a remarkable
+vision or ecstasy which he has himself described, and which has given
+rise to a good deal of useless speculation.  During life he never spoke
+of this matter, unless it may have been to his confessor; {90} but after
+his death two copies of a brief writing were found upon him,—the one
+written on parchment enclosing the other written on paper, and carefully
+stitched into the clothes that he had worn day by day.  It is beyond
+question that Pascal must have been deeply touched by the event, whatever
+may have been its precise nature, the memorial of which he had thus
+preserved.  The footnote shows the writing in the original, as printed by
+M. Faugère: there are some variations in the copies, but it seems most
+correctly given as below.  It may be translated as follows:—
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                         The year of grace 1654.
+  Monday 23d November, day of St Clement, pope and martyr, and others in
+                             the martyrology.
+                Vigil of St Chrysogone, martyr and others.
+   From about half-past ten o’clock in the evening till about half-past
+                                 twelve.
+
+                                  Fire.
+               God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,
+                   Not of philosophers and of savants.
+             Certitude.  Certitude.  Sentiment.  Joy.  Peace.
+                           God of Jesus Christ
+                           My God and your God.
+                         Thy God will be my God—
+                Oblivion of the world and of all save God.
+            He is found only by the ways taught in the Gospel.
+
+                       Grandeur of the human soul.
+    Just Father, the world hath not known Thee, but I have known Thee.
+                       Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
+                    I have separated myself from Him—
+           They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water.
+                      My God, will you forsake me?—
+
+              Oh, may I not be separated from Him eternally!
+       This is life eternal, that they know Thee the only true God,
+                    and Him whom Thou hast sent, J.-C.
+                              Jesus Christ—
+                              Jesus Christ—
+ I have separated myself from Him; I have fled, renounced, crucified Him.
+                Oh that I may never be separated from Him!
+          He is only held fast by the ways taught in the Gospel.
+
+                      Renunciation total and sweet,
+                                etc. {91}
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+It is difficult to make much of this document.  Are we to suppose that
+Pascal, on the 23d of November 1654, thought he saw a vision, revealing
+to him the truth of Christianity, and the vanity of philosophy and the
+world?  Even if Pascal did this, our estimate of the matter could hardly
+be much affected.  But there is no evidence that he himself attached a
+supernatural character to the incident.  He felt, no doubt, that a real
+revelation had come to him, that his mind had been lifted in spiritual
+ecstasy away from the love of all that for a time had hid from him the
+presence of God and of a higher world.  The moment of this blessed
+experience had been sacred to him.  He had tried to trace it in these
+broken characters, and in seasons of doubt or depression he may have
+sought to awaken a new fervour of faith and love by their contemplation.
+This seems all the natural meaning of the incident; but, as some have
+endeavoured to attach to it a supernatural importance, so others, in whom
+the idea not only of the supernatural but of the spiritual only excites
+contempt, have tried to give to it a purely superstitious character.  It
+was Condorcet who first applied to the paper the epithet of Pascal’s
+“Amulette;” and Lélut has adopted the epithet, and written a volume more
+or less relating to it.  He supposes the vision to have occurred to
+Pascal on the evening of the day when the event at Neuilly had upset his
+nervous system—always easily disturbed—and brought before him a frightful
+picture of his alienation from God, and the piety of his early manhood.
+Facts mingled with the dreams of his excited imagination.  He saw the
+horses plunging over the precipice, and an abyss seemed to open beside
+him—the abyss of eternity; when, lo! from the depths of the abyss there
+appeared a globe of fire (_un globe de feu_) encircled with the Cross;
+and the irresistible impulse was stirred in him to throw aside the world
+for ever, and embrace God,—“Not the God of philosophers or of savants,”
+but “the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob—the God of Jesus Christ,”
+from whom he had been severed, but from whom he felt he never more would
+be severed; abiding in Him in “sweet and total renunciation” of all else.
+The idea, of course, is that Pascal’s dream or vision was the result of
+physical derangement; and it may be safely granted that if the reality at
+all corresponded to Lélut’s imaginary picture, this is its natural
+explanation.  The story of the “vision” and the “abyss” are thus made,
+not without a certain appearance of probability, to fit into one another,
+and both into the accident at Neuilly; and a certain congruity of
+external and internal alarm is hence given to the great crisis of
+Pascal’s life.  Unhappily, however, there is a lack of evidence regarding
+the accident itself, {94} and, still more, the accompanying story of the
+abyss seen by Pascal at his side, which must make the reader cautious who
+has no theory to support.  Voltaire, in his usual manner, made the most
+of Pascal’s supposed delusions.  “In the last years of his life,” he
+said, “Pascal believed that he had seen an abyss _by the side of his
+chair_,—need we on that account have the same fancy?  I, too, see an
+abyss, but it is in the very things which he believed that he had
+explained.”  He quotes also the authority of Leibnitz for the statement
+that Pascal’s melancholy had led his intellect astray—a result, he adds,
+not at all wonderful in the case of a man of such delicate temperament
+and gloomy imagination.  But Voltaire was not precise here, as in other
+matters about Pascal.  He understood him too little to be a good judge of
+his mental peculiarities.  All that Leibnitz really said was, that
+Pascal, “in wishing to fathom the depths of religion, had become
+scrupulous even to folly.” {95}
+
+Whatever explanation we may give of the supposed incidents attending
+Pascal’s conversion, there never was a more absurd fancy than that
+Pascal’s mind suffered any eclipse in the great change that came to him.
+He may have been credulous, he may have been superstitious.  The miracle
+of the Holy Thorn may be an evidence of the one, and the unnatural
+asceticism of his later years a proof of the other.  But to speak of the
+author of the ‘Provincial Letters,’ of the problems on the Cycloid, and
+finally of the ‘Pensées,’ as if his intellect had suffered from his
+conversion, is to use words without meaning.  All his noblest writings
+were the product of his religious experience, and he never soared so high
+in intellectual and literary achievement as when moving on the wings of
+spiritual indignation or of spiritual aspiration.
+
+The whole interest of Pascal’s life from this period is concentrated in
+his writings—first the ‘Provincials,’ and then the ‘Pensées,’ to which we
+devote separate chapters.  There was only the interval of a year between
+his conversion and the commencement of his great controversy, and little
+is known of how he passed his time during this interval.  He seems to
+have remained chiefly at Port Royal under the guidance of M. de Saci, and
+to have felt an unwonted measure of happiness in his triumph over the
+world and in the possession of his own quiet thoughts.  We have seen how
+he spoke of being treated “like a prince,” and even his health seemed to
+improve, notwithstanding the regularity and severity of his religious
+devotions.  He communicated his feelings of elation to his sister, who
+replied (19th January 1655) that she was delighted to find him “gay in
+his solitude,” as she never was at his happiness in the world.
+“Notwithstanding,” she adds, “I do not know how M. de Saci adapts himself
+to so light-hearted a penitent, who professes to find compensation for
+the vain joys and amusements of the world in joys somewhat more
+reasonable, and _jeux d’esprit_ more allowable, instead of expiating them
+by perpetual tears.”
+
+How long Pascal’s pious elation continued is not said, nor have we any
+further details of his religious life at Port Royal.  He never absolutely
+took up his abode there as one of the Solitaries, and could therefore say
+in his sixteenth Provincial Letter, without more than an innocent
+equivocation, that he “did not belong to Port Royal.”  He was still found
+there, however, in the beginning of the following year (1655), when the
+affair of M. Arnauld and the Sorbonne was approaching its crisis, and the
+idea of his famous letters was started in a meeting, to be afterwards
+mentioned, between him and Arnauld and Nicole.  After this, during the
+publication of the ‘Letters,’ Pascal seems chiefly to have resided in
+Paris, probably with a view to the greater facilities he enjoyed there in
+prosecuting his assaults upon the Jesuits, which continued till the
+spring of 1657.  During the following year he was busy with the great
+idea of a work in defence of religion, suggested partly by his own
+intellectual activity, but partly also by a special incident at Port
+Royal which made a great impression upon him.
+
+This was the famous “miracle” of the Holy Thorn.  Madame Périer’s
+daughter, Marguerite Périer—the same to whom we are indebted for
+interesting memorials of her uncle’s life—had become, with her sister, a
+pupil at Port Royal.  She suffered from an apparently incurable disease
+of the eye, _fistula lachrymalis_.  On a sudden she was reported to be
+entirely cured, and the cure was attributed to the touch of a relic which
+had been brought to the abbey by a priest,—a supposed thorn from the
+crown of Christ.  It is remarkable that the Mère Angélique was somewhat
+slow of belief as to the “miracle,” and that she marvelled the world
+should make so much of it.  But it secured the credence of Pascal, and
+became a great fact in the history of Port Royal, staying for a time the
+hand of persecution, and pointing, as its friends believed, to the
+visible interposition of heaven.  How could the accusations against Port
+Royal be true, seeing what God Himself had done on its behalf?  “This
+place, which men say is the devil’s temple, God makes His house.  Men
+declare that its children must be taken out of it, and God heals them
+there.  They are threatened with all the furies; God loads them with His
+favours.”  This was Pascal’s own language on the subject, {97} and there
+can be no doubt that the supposed miracle deeply affected him.  He was
+“sensibly touched,” it is said, “by such a grace, regarding it as
+virtually done to himself, seeing it was done to one so near to him in
+kindred, and who was his spiritual daughter in baptism.”  He was
+penetrated by a great joy, and much occupied by the thought of what had
+happened, and the general subject of miracles.  There was in this manner
+awakened in him “the extreme desire of employing himself on a work in
+refutation of the principles and false reasonings of the atheists.”  “He
+had studied them,” his sister continues, “with great care, and applied
+his whole mind to search out the means of convincing them.  His last year
+of work was entirely occupied in collecting divers thoughts on this
+subject.”
+
+Unhappily, in the course of 1658 Pascal’s old illness returned with
+redoubled severity, and the last four years of his life became in
+consequence years of great languor and interruption of his projected
+work.  The practice of continuous composition failed him.  Hitherto he
+had been wont to develop his thoughts completely,—to write them out, as
+it were, mentally before committing them to paper; but now he began the
+habit of transferring his ideas rapidly, and sometimes imperfectly, to
+manuscript, as they arose in his mind.  In many cases, if not in all,
+these first sketches remained as originally made, without any revision or
+further reconstruction; and from the mass of papers accumulated in this
+manner during these years the ‘Pensées’ were formed—the story of whose
+publication will be afterwards told.  Strangely, it was in this very
+year, during a fit of severe toothache, apparently connected with his
+general illness, that Pascal began his wonderful series of problems on
+the cycloid, showing how fresh and unimpaired his scientific genius
+remained under all the changes of his health and of his main intellectual
+interests.
+
+The last years of Pascal’s life, in their deep suffering, and in their
+many traits of pious resignation and self-denial, have been fully
+sketched by Madame Périer.  We do not think it necessary to repeat the
+sketch here, touching and beautiful as in some respects it is.  It is
+impossible to read her simple and earnest narrative without emotion, and
+yet the emotion is apt to evaporate in translation.  It is impossible,
+also, to avoid the feeling that, with all the tenderness and humility of
+Pascal’s later years, there mingle a strange pride in his very
+austerities, and something of the nature of religious mania, which,
+beautiful as may be the forms it sometimes takes, is yet in its spirit,
+and in not a few of its excesses, essentially unlovely.  Pascal’s care of
+the poor, his love of them—“to serve the poor in a spirit of poverty” was
+what appeared to him “most agreeable to God”—his wish to die among them,
+to be carried to the Hospital for Incurables, and breathe his last there;
+the story of his rescue of the poor girl who asked alms from him on the
+streets; his unparalleled patience, and even gladness, in suffering, so
+that he seemed to welcome it and bind it about him as a garment; his
+wonderful humility and yet his noble courage at the last in the matter of
+the Formulary,—all this goes to the heart of the reader.  It must be a
+cold heart that is not moved by the picture of a great soul striving “to
+renounce all pleasure and all superfluities,”—to copy literally, like St
+Francis, the portrait of his Master.  But here, as everywhere, the human
+copy falls infinitely short of the divine Original.  There is the
+loveliness of a true human life beneath all the picture of suffering
+presented to us in the Gospels.  All the hues of natural feeling have
+gone out of the last years of Pascal.  He not only bore suffering—he
+preferred it; and he boldly justified his preference.  “Sickness,” he
+said, “is the natural state of the Christian; it puts us in the condition
+in which we always ought to be.”  In this spirit he strove to deaden any
+sensation of pleasure in his food, in the attentions of his relatives and
+friends, even in his studies.  He could not bear to see his sister
+caressing her children; there seemed to him harm in even saying that a
+woman was beautiful; the married state was a “kind of homicide or rather
+Deicide.”  He thought it wrong that any one should find pleasure in
+attachment to him, for he “was not the final object of any being, and had
+not wherewith to satisfy any.”  So jealous was he of any surprise of
+pleasure, of any thought of vanity or complacency in himself and his
+work, that he wore a girdle of iron next his skin, the sharp points of
+which he pressed closely when he thought himself in any danger,
+especially in such moments of intercourse with the world as he still
+sometimes allowed himself.
+
+Such details are neither interesting in themselves nor do they present
+Pascal in his highest character.  One cannot help feeling that, touching
+as Madame Périer’s narrative is, there must have been, even in the Pascal
+of later years, more than she has drawn for us.  One glimpse we get, but
+not in her pages, of a more natural temper, when he withstood his
+Jansenist friends in the matter of subscribing the Formulary demanded
+from the Port Royalists.  He had himself previously been willing to
+subscribe, with certain restrictions, when his sister Jacqueline alone
+stood out in her resistance to what she deemed a treasonable betrayal of
+the cause.  She signed at last, but against her conscience, and, so to
+speak, with her blood.  She died immediately afterwards, the first victim
+of the signature, as she has been called, and bequeathing a letter to her
+fellow-sufferers on the subject.  Whether inspired by her words or not,
+Pascal took a firm stand against any further concessions, and in a famous
+interview with Arnauld, Nicole, and Sainte-Marthe, he argued the point
+with such strength and vehemence that he fell fainting to the ground.
+{101}
+
+This was in the end of 1661, when his sufferings were fast drawing to a
+close.  In the previous summer, when at Clermont, he had written to
+Fermat that he was so weak as to be “unable to walk without a stick, or
+to hold himself on horseback.”  His weakness had grown apace, and in June
+1662 he was seized with his last illness.  It was necessary that his
+sister should nurse him, and this could only be done by his removal to
+her house, for he had given up his own house to a poor family, one of
+whose children had taken smallpox, and he would allow neither the child
+to be removed nor his sister to run the risk of carrying infection to her
+children.  He left his own home for hers, therefore, on the 27th of June,
+and never returned.  Three days after his removal he was seized with a
+violent colic, which deprived him of all sleep.  His physicians at first
+were not alarmed, as his pulse continued good, but gradually pain and
+sleeplessness wore him out.  He confessed both to the _curé_ of the
+parish and to his friend Sainte-Marthe, one of the directors of the
+community.  He wished, as we said, to die in the Hospital for Incurables
+amongst the poor, but in his state of weakness it was impossible to
+gratify this wish.  After the administration of the last sacrament, which
+he received with tearful emotion, he thanked the _curé_, and exclaimed,
+“May God never leave me!”  These were his last words.  Convulsions having
+returned, he expired on the 19th of August 1662.
+
+It is unnecessary to attempt any estimate of Pascal’s character.  The
+reader must draw it for himself in the light of these pages.  With all
+enthusiasm for its grandeur and unity of purpose, and that moral and
+intellectual elevation which it everywhere shows, it may be found lacking
+in breadth and variety, and that familiar interest and charm which
+strangely often come from the contemplation of human weakness rather than
+of human strength.  There is certainly less to love in him than to
+admire—less to call forth delight than respect.  The play of natural
+individuality is hidden behind lines of lofty distance, and latterly of
+Jansenist severity.  A proud, ascetic, and worn figure seems to rise
+before us; but strangely Pascal’s portrait, as known to us, conveys no
+idea of asceticism.  The face is full-fleshed and expressive, like the
+face of a child, with large ripe lips and open eyes of wonder,—a portrait
+which suggests the companion of the Duc de Roannez in his years of
+pleasure, rather than the weary and pain-worn penitent of Port Royal.
+{102}
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+THE ‘PROVINCIAL LETTERS.’
+
+
+Pascal’s ‘Letters to a Provincial’ represent a great controversy, the
+nature of which it is necessary to explain.  They are, at the same time,
+the most perfect expression of his literary genius, and touch theological
+questions with such an inimitable grace and felicity of expression as to
+have awakened a universal intellectual interest.  It may be hard to
+justify this interest by any analysis of their contents, or by such
+extracts as can be given from them.  No English can convey the exquisite
+fitness of French polemical expression in its highest form, its mingled
+force and delicacy, its keenness and yet its lightness.  We shall,
+however, endeavour to give as clearly as we can an account, first, of the
+controversy out of which the ‘Letters’ originated, and then of the
+consummate skill with which Pascal conducted it.
+
+M. de St Cyran is not merely one of the chief figures connected with Port
+Royal: he was the fountain-head of its special power.  To his influence
+and teaching it was indebted for its chief glory and its most terrible
+sufferings.  Jean Baptist du Vergier d’Hauranne, better known by the
+above official designation, was of noble family.  He was born at Bayonne
+in 1581, and early devoted himself to the study of theology at Louvain
+and Paris.  While a student, he is supposed to have first made the
+acquaintance of Cornelius Jansen, and to have begun with him that
+co-operation which was destined to bear such remarkable fruits.  Their
+intimacy was one based on spiritual affinity and a common enthusiasm.
+For Jansen was the son of poor peasants, without even a surname.  His
+father is only known as Jan Ottosen, or John the son of Otto; as the son
+in his turn was Cornelius Jansen, or the son of John.  Jansen was the
+younger of the two friends, having been born in 1585; but he appears to
+have exercised a powerful influence over his older companion.  The great
+bond of their union and common enthusiasm was the study of St Augustine.
+For the purpose of pursuing this study undisturbed, they retired to the
+seaside near Bayonne, and here they established themselves in scholastic
+seclusion.  Smitten with the desire of attaining theological truth, they
+found the Schoolmen constantly appealing to St Augustine as their
+authority, and they consequently resolved to examine this authority for
+themselves, and so ascend to what they believed to be the source of their
+favourite science.  Had they taken only one step further, they would have
+approached Protestantism; and as it was, the favourite charge which the
+Jesuits afterwards made against them was, that they were Calvinists in
+disguise.  Unconsciously they were so, notwithstanding all their
+disclaimers.  The Jesuits were unscrupulous; but their penetration here,
+as in many other cases, was not at fault.  The doctrines so warmly
+espoused by Jansen and St Cyran were the old doctrines of _grace_, which
+Calvin and they alike borrowed from St Augustine, and he in his turn
+found in the Epistles of St Paul. {105}  And the controversy which their
+labours were destined once more to awaken in the bosom of the Catholic
+Church was nothing else than the old dispute which, since the days of
+Augustine and Pelagius, had more than once already agitated it.
+
+The fellow-students continued their studies near Bayonne for five years.
+So closely did they work, that Jansen is said to have spent days and
+nights in the same chair, snatching only brief intervals of rest.  A game
+at battledore and shuttlecock occasionally relieved their vigils; but no
+serious employment divided their attention with the arduous task upon
+which they had entered, of mastering and digesting the principles of the
+Augustinian theology.  The Bishop of Bayonne offered preferment to
+D’Hauranne, and there were projects of settling Jansen also at the head
+of a college; but it was not till some time afterwards that either of
+them entered upon official labours.  They were left during those years to
+the uninterrupted studies which subsequently resulted in the great work
+of Jansen.  The system of theological thought associated with his name
+was then definitely matured.
+
+It is beyond our province to sketch the career of these fellow-students,
+one of whom became the chief spiritual director of Port Royal, and the
+other its great theological centre.  The abbey of St Cyran was the only
+preferment which D’Hauranne ever accepted, notwithstanding Richelieu’s
+repeated offers of a bishopric.  He was content to exercise from his
+monastic seclusion an influence far more powerful than that of any bishop
+of his day.  And so penetrating and dangerous did this influence seem to
+the great Minister whose efforts to bind him to his side had so often
+failed, that he at length shut him up in Vincennes (May 1638).  Here he
+remained in close confinement for more than four years; but even from
+this gloomy retreat the impression of his great personal power was spread
+abroad, and felt in many quarters as steadily as before.  He survived his
+release only a few months.  His long imprisonment had broken down his
+health; and although the enthusiasm of his spirit was strong as ever, his
+weakened body was no longer able to answer to its demands.  He could
+hardly “hold himself up,” and a slight attack of illness carried him off.
+
+St Cyran’s chief strength seems to have lain in a concentrated enthusiasm
+and quiet strength of will which enabled him to hold his own against all
+opposition, and to subdue other minds larger than his own to his
+purposes.  When the Prince de Condé interceded for him after his arrest,
+Richelieu’s reply was: “Do you know of whom you are speaking?  That man
+is more dangerous than six armies.  _I_ say that attrition with
+confession is necessary: _he_ believes that contrition is necessary.
+{106}  And in the affair of Monsieur’s marriage all France has given way
+to me, and he alone has the hardihood to oppose it.”  Against all
+enticements and assaults alike he set a proud and firm faith in his own
+mission—a patience sublime in its calmness, and in the unwavering
+consciousness of Divine right on his side.  “I am careful to complain of
+nothing,” he said in his imprisonment.  “I am ready to remain here a
+hundred years; to die here, if God will.  I am ready for whatever He
+designs—for action or for suffering.”  The same faith and quiet assurance
+gave him his marvellous influence over others, and that fascination which
+made him a power in the cultivated society of Paris.  All the Arnauld
+family more or less owned his influence; and it was his teaching mainly
+that peopled Port Royal with the Solitaries who have made it so
+illustrious.
+
+The life and work of Jansen seem at first far removed from Port Royal.
+He returned to Louvain after his sojourn at Bayonne, and became a
+professor of theology in its famous university, on whose behalf he was
+employed in several political negotiations with the Spanish Court.
+Finally he was appointed Bishop of Ypres, in which capacity he is chiefly
+known in the ecclesiastical world.  His fame, however, rests not on any
+political or ecclesiastical labours, but on the results flowing from his
+original studies at Bayonne.  He never forgot his devotion to St
+Augustine.  He is said to have read the whole of his writings ten times,
+and the treatises against the Pelagians not less than thirty times.  The
+fruit of all this studious devotion was his work known briefly as the
+‘Augustinus,’ {107} published two years after his death (in 1640).
+Nothing could have seemed more innocent or laudable than the attempt by a
+bishop of the Church to set forth the doctrine of St Augustine.  The book
+professed to have been undertaken in a humble spirit.
+
+    “I have avoided error where I could,” says the author; “for the cases
+    in which I could not, I implore the reader’s pardon. . . .  Let the
+    knowledge of my sincerity make amends for the simplicity of my error.
+    I know that if I have erred, it is not in the assertion of Catholic
+    truth, but in the statement of the opinion of St Augustine; for I
+    have not laid down what is true or false, what is to be held or
+    rejected according to the faith of the Catholic Church, but only what
+    Augustine taught and declared was to be held.”
+
+A task of such a character, carried out in such a spirit, might have
+seemed a harmless one.
+
+But the Jesuits had long marked both St Cyran and Jansen as theological
+foes, opposed to their special doctrines.  They endeavoured therefore,
+first of all, to prevent the publication of Jansen’s work; and failing in
+this, they directed all their efforts to procure a condemnation of the
+book from the Court of Rome.  “Never,” it has been said, “did any book
+receive a more stormy welcome.  Within a few weeks of its appearance the
+University, the Jesuits, the executors of Jansen, the printer of the
+‘Augustinus,’ the Spanish governor of the Low Countries, and the Papal
+Nuncio were engaged in a warfare of pamphlets, treatises, pasquinades,
+pleadings, synods, audiences, which it would be impossible to set forth
+in historical sequence.” {108}  In the midst of all this, Jansen’s old
+fellow-student received the book, in the preparation of which he also had
+had some share, in his prison at Vincennes, as if an echo of his own
+thoughts.  “It would last as long as the Church,” he said.  “After St
+Paul and St Augustine, no one had written concerning grace like Jansen.”
+
+The Jesuits were resolved in their hostility.  They knew that the book,
+while assuming a historical form, and professing in the main to represent
+the doctrine of Augustine as directed against the errorists of his own
+time, had a side reference to the “opinions of certain modern authors,”
+understood to be well-known theologians of their own school.  This was in
+fact acknowledged in an appendix.  Unable any longer to wreak their
+vengeance on the author himself, they were resolved to put his work under
+ban; and accordingly, a Bull was obtained from Rome in the summer of
+1642, condemning Jansen by name, and declaring that the ‘Augustinus’
+contained “many propositions already condemned” by the Holy See.  It was
+doubted whether the Pope, Urban VIII., designed to go the length
+announced in the bull, and the terms of the condemnation were rumoured to
+have been inserted by a Papal officer in the interests of the Jesuits.
+The Universities of Louvain and Paris therefore did not take any steps to
+carry out the condemnation.  They remained spectators of the controversy
+which raged around them, in which the Archbishop of Paris on one side,
+and the youngest of the Arnauld family on the other, were conspicuous.
+
+Antoine Arnauld was the last of the twenty children born to the great
+parliamentary orator and Catherine Marion his wife, of whom we have
+already spoken.  His nephews, Le Maitre and De Saci, were so near his own
+age, that they were accustomed to call him familiarly _le petit oncle_.
+Early consecrated to theological studies by the influence of St Cyran and
+his mother, he espoused zealously the Augustinian doctrines.  A splendid
+prospect seemed opening before him, had he chosen to enter the Church and
+pursue an ecclesiastical career in the ordinary manner.  But while
+thirsting for theological distinction, he had scruples about his vocation
+to the holy office.  He overcame his scruples so far as to become a
+priest; but not only would he not accept the benefices placed within his
+reach by powerful friends—he insisted on resigning such as he held.  He
+even disposed of his patrimony for the benefit of Port Royal, preserving
+only as much as would provide him with the bare necessaries of life.  He
+became a doctor in 1641, and already, in 1643, the interest of the whole
+theological world was aroused by his treatise, ‘Of Frequent Communion.’
+
+The aim of this treatise, as of all Arnauld’s writings, was
+anti-Jesuitical.  He set forth, backed by the authority of “Fathers,
+Popes, and Councils,” the necessity of spiritual preparation for the Holy
+Communion, in opposition to the formula which had been boldly advanced by
+more than one Jesuit teacher, that “the more we are devoid of divine
+grace, the more ought we to seek Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.”  The
+commotion made by the publication shows how grave was the need for it.
+On the one hand it was warmly welcomed, many pious bishops and doctors
+testifying approbation of its contents; on the other hand it was
+violently assailed.  The Jesuit pulpits resounded with abuse of it and of
+its author.  All Paris was disturbed by the noise which it made.  “There
+must be a snake in the grass somewhere,” it was wittily remarked, “for
+the Jesuits were never so excited when only the glory of God was at
+stake.”  The learned Petavius, and even the Prince de Condé, did not
+disdain to mingle in the combat.  For a time Arnauld seemed to triumph,
+but finally the influence of Rome was brought against him, and he was
+glad to take refuge in concealment—the first of the many concealments
+into which his incessant polemical activity drove him in the course of
+his long life.  He never abated his opposition.  He had no sooner retired
+from one controversy, than he reappeared in some other.  His energy knew
+no bounds, his love of fighting no pause.  When in his old age his friend
+and fellow-student Nicole advised him to rest.  “Rest!” he said; “have I
+not all eternity to rest in?”
+
+It was a matter of course that when the great Jansenist controversy
+began, Arnauld should be found in the van of it.  ‘An Apology for Jansen’
+appeared from his pen in 1644, and a second ‘Apology’ in the following
+year.  It seemed for a time as if the Jesuits would be foiled in their
+efforts to secure the effectual condemnation of the book.  But at length
+one of their number, Nicolas Cornet, Syndic of the Faculty of Theology at
+Paris, collected its essential heresy in the shape of seven propositions.
+These propositions were afterwards reduced to five; and at length, on the
+31st of May 1653, a formal condemnation of them was obtained from the
+Court of Rome.  There was no longer any doubt as to the attitude of the
+Holy See.  All the propositions were declared to be distinctly heretical,
+and the first and the fifth, moreover, to be blasphemous and impious.
+This result was not reached without much debate and delay.  No sooner had
+Cornet’s propositions appeared than Arnauld assailed them and all who
+supported them.  A congregation of four cardinals and eleven theological
+assessors had been appointed to examine them in the end of the year 1651.
+They had taken, therefore, a year and a half to their work, and the
+sentence at length issued was intended to bring the long warfare to a
+close.  In point of fact it kindled a fresh fire, and opened, if not a
+larger, yet a more vital controversy.  Arnauld retired willingly before a
+new writer summoned by himself into the field, and girded with his
+blessing as he went forth to the encounter.
+
+The five propositions, which were professed to be extracted from Jansen’s
+book, and as such were condemned by the Papal Bull of 31st May 1653, are
+so intimately connected with the ‘Provincial Letters’ as to claim a place
+in our pages.  They are as follows:—
+
+    I.  There are divine commandments which good men, although willing,
+    are unable to obey; and the grace by which these commandments are
+    possible is also wanting in them.
+
+    II.  No person, in the state of fallen nature, is able to resist
+    internal grace.
+
+    III.  In order to render human actions meritorious or otherwise,
+    liberty from necessity is not required, but only liberty from
+    constraint.
+
+    IV.  The semi-Pelagians, while admitting the necessity of prevenient
+    grace—or grace preceding all actions—were heretics, inasmuch as they
+    said that this grace was such as man could, according to his will,
+    either resist or obey.
+
+    V.  The semi-Pelagians also erred in saying that Christ died or shed
+    His blood for all men universally.
+
+It would be needless for us to touch these propositions, even by way of
+explanation.  We have endeavoured to state them from the original Latin
+as clearly as we can, so that they may bear some definite meaning even to
+the non-theological reader.  But their very statement bristles with
+controversy, and the half-extinct meanings of old questions that go to
+the root of Christian thought lie hid in their language.  All the
+propositions were condemned without reserve, but two points were left
+unsettled.  It was not asserted that the propositions were to be found in
+the ‘Augustinus,’ and that they were condemned in the sense in which
+Jansen held them, and in no other.  The course of the controversy and the
+fate of Port Royal in the end mainly turned upon these points.
+
+The Papal Bull condemning the five propositions was speedily published in
+France, and the triumph of the Jesuits was undisguised.  A great blow had
+been struck, and for a time all seemed inclined to bow before it.
+Political reasons combined with others to give effect to the Papal
+verdict.  Cardinal Mazarin, in possession of the favour of the
+Queen-mother, had imprisoned his enemy, Cardinal de Retz, who had so long
+waged in the intrigues and wars of the Fronde a restless conflict with
+them; and as the latter in his prosperity had shown a certain favour for
+Port Royal, this was enough to stimulate, on the part of Mazarin, an
+interest on behalf of the Jesuits.  Yet he was reluctant to move actively
+against the Jansenists.  M. d’Andilly still had his ear in matters of
+State, and by his intervention and that of others the project of an
+armistice was for a time entertained.  Port Royal was to keep silence, if
+its enemies did not push their triumph to an extremity.  Even the
+indefatigable Arnauld seems to have promised to be quiet.  But the
+Jesuits were too conscious of their power, and too relentless in their
+hostility, to pause in their determination to crush their opponents.
+They had recourse both to gibes and to active persecution.  They printed
+an almanac with the figure of Jansen as frontispiece, flying in the guise
+of a winged devil before the Pope and the king into the arms of the
+Huguenots.  They assailed the Duc de Liancourt, and refused him
+absolution in his own parish church, for no other reason but that he was
+on friendly relations with Port Royal, and would not withdraw, at their
+demand, his granddaughter from its protection.  This affair, which
+appears to have been deliberately planned, caused a great sensation, and
+became, strangely, the indirect occasion of the ‘Provincial Letters.’
+
+Indignant at such an outrage, Arnauld was no longer to be restrained.  He
+rushed before the public with a pamphlet under the title, “Letter of a
+Doctor of the Sorbonne to a Person of Condition, concerning an event
+which has recently happened in a parish of Paris to a Nobleman of the
+Court, February 24, 1655.”  The Letter opened with an expression of his
+wish to dispute no more; but as Sainte-Beuve hints, the avowed desire of
+peace plunged him all the more into war.  His letter called forth
+numerous replies.  He responded by a “Second Letter,” in the shape of a
+volume.  In this letter his enemies seemed to see his fate written.  They
+extracted from it two propositions which in their view clearly
+contravened the Papal verdict—namely, 1st, that he had expressed doubts
+whether the five propositions condemned as heretical were in Jansen’s
+book at all; and 2d, that he had really reproduced the first of the five
+condemned propositions in one of his own statements, that according to
+both the Gospel and the Fathers, St Peter, a just man, was wanting in
+grace when he fell.  This was nothing but undisguised Jansenism, and his
+accusers in the Sorbonne rallied for his overthrow.  A meeting was
+summoned to consider the letter, and to judge it and the author.
+
+The details of the proceedings would weary the reader.  It is sufficient
+to say that, notwithstanding the concessions wrung from Arnauld, some of
+which were humiliating enough, he was condemned on the first point (Jan.
+1656)—the great question of “fait,” in contrast to the question of
+“droit,” involved in the second statement as to grace being wanting to St
+Peter in his fall.  His condemnation, however, was mainly secured by the
+introduction of a number of monks who swelled the majority against him,
+and the legality of whose vote was challenged by many members.  But, as
+Pascal afterwards said, “it was easier to find monks than arguments.”
+The second and doctrinal point received professedly more deliberate
+discussion.  The sittings regarding it were protracted till the close of
+the month, the 29th of January.  But the result was really forestalled.
+The restriction laid on free debate was such as to lead no fewer than
+sixty doctors to withdraw, protesting to Parliament against the
+interference with their rights.  Their protest, however, came to nothing.
+Sentence was finally passed, against not only Arnauld, but all who
+adhered to him or espoused his opinions.  The victim, with his usual
+adroitness, escaped his pursuers, and went once more into a concealment
+which all their vigilance could not penetrate.  Two days after the
+censure he wrote to one of his nieces, “I am in very close hiding, and by
+God’s grace without trouble or disquiet.”  “Would you like me to tell you
+where M. Arnauld is hidden?” inquired a lady of the _gendarmes_ who were
+searching her house for traces of him.  “He is safely hidden here,”
+pointing to her heart; “arrest him if you can.”
+
+It was in the interval betwixt the first and second judgment of the
+Sorbonne that the first of the ‘Provincial Letters’ appeared.  The story
+is, {116a} that during the course of the process Arnauld, Nicole, and
+Pascal, along with M. Vitart, the steward of the Duc de Luynes (to whom
+Arnauld’s second Letter had been addressed), and other friends, were met
+in secrecy at Port Royal des Champs.  Their conversation turned to the
+pending case, and the misapprehensions and prejudices which prevailed in
+the public mind regarding it.  It was felt that some effort should be
+made to clear away these prejudices, and to diffuse right information in
+a popular form.  Arnauld, ever ready with his pen, was prepared himself
+to undertake this task; and in a few days afterwards he read to his
+friends a long and serious paper in vindication of his position.  But his
+friends were not moved as he expected.  His pen, powerful in its own
+sphere, was not fitted to tell upon the popular mind; and his audience
+were too honest to conceal their disappointment.  Arnauld, in his turn,
+frankly acknowledged the truth forced upon him.  “I see you do not find
+my paper what you wished, and I believe you are right,” he said; and
+then, turning all at once to Pascal, he said, “But you, who are young,
+who are clever, {116b} you ought to do something.”  The effect was not
+lost upon Pascal.  He divined with his genuine literary instinct exactly
+what was required in the circumstances, although distrusting his power to
+produce it.  He promised, however, to make an attempt, which his friends
+might polish and put in shape as they thought fit.  Next day he produced
+“A Letter written to a Provincial by one of his friends.”  The Letter was
+unanimously pronounced exactly what was required, and ordered to be
+printed.  It appeared on the 23d January 1656; and a second followed six
+days later.
+
+Nothing could have been happier or more admirably suited for their
+purpose than those Letters.  They took up the subject for the first time
+in a light intelligible to all.  They brought to play upon it not only a
+penetrating and rapid intelligence, but a brightness of wit, and a
+dramatic creativeness, which made the Sorbonne and its parties, the
+Jansenists and their friends, alive before the reader.  Never was the
+triumph of genius over mere learned labour more complete.  Arnauld, as he
+listened to them, must have felt his own thoughts spring up before him
+into a living shape, hardly less startling to himself than to his
+opponents.
+
+Addressing his friend in the country, the author expresses his surprise
+at what he has come to learn of the character of the disputes dividing
+the Sorbonne:—
+
+    “We have been imposed upon,” he says.  “It was only yesterday that I
+    was undeceived.  Until then I had thought that the disputes of the
+    Sorbonne were really important, and deeply affected the interests of
+    religion.  The frequent convocation of an assembly so illustrious as
+    that of the Theological Faculty of Paris, attended by so many
+    extraordinary and unprecedented circumstances, induced such high
+    expectations that one could not help believing the business to be of
+    extraordinary importance.  You will be much surprised, however, when
+    you learn from this letter the upshot of the grand demonstration.  I
+    can explain the matter in a few words, having made myself perfectly
+    master of it.”
+
+Two questions, he says, were under examination—“the one a question of
+fact, the other a question of right.”
+
+He explains the question of fact as consisting in the point whether M.
+Arnauld was guilty of temerity in expressing his doubts as to the
+propositions being in Jansen’s book after the bishops had declared that
+they were.  No fewer than seventy-one doctors undertook his defence,
+maintaining that all that could reasonably be asked of him was to say
+that “he had not been able to find them, but that if they were in the
+book, he condemned them there.”
+
+    “Some,” he continues, “even went a step farther, and protested that,
+    after all the search they had made in the book, they had never
+    stumbled upon these propositions, and that they had, on the contrary,
+    found sentiments entirely at variance with them.  They then earnestly
+    begged that if any doctor present had discovered them, he would have
+    the goodness to point them out; adding that what was so easy could
+    not be reasonably refused, as that would be the surest way to silence
+    all objectors, M. Arnauld included.  But this they have always
+    refused to do.  So much for the one side.
+
+    “On the other side are eighty secular doctors, and some forty
+    mendicant friars, who have condemned M. Arnauld’s proposition,
+    without choosing to examine whether he has spoken truly or
+    falsely—who, in fact, have declared that they have nothing to do with
+    the veracity of his proposition, but simply with its temerity.
+    Besides these were fifteen who were not in favour of the censure, and
+    who are called Neutrals.”
+
+Having thus stated the question of fact, and the balance of parties
+regarding it, Pascal dismisses it at once, important as it proved in the
+after-history of Port Royal.
+
+    “As to the issue of the question of fact, I own I give myself very
+    little concern.  It does not affect my conscience in the least
+    whether M. Arnauld is presumptuous or the reverse; and should I be
+    tempted from curiosity to ascertain whether these propositions are
+    contained in Jansen, his book is neither so very scarce nor so very
+    large but that I can read it all through for my own enlightenment
+    without consulting the Sorbonne at all.”
+
+Only, while himself hitherto inclined to believe with common report that
+the propositions were in Jansen, he was now almost led to doubt that they
+were so from the absurd refusal to point them out.  In this respect he
+fears the censure will do more harm than good.  “For, in truth, people
+have become sceptical of late, and will not believe things till they see
+them.”
+
+But the point being in itself so frivolous, he hastens to take up the
+question of right, as touching the faith.  And here the play of the
+dialogue begins:—
+
+    “You and I supposed that the question here was one involving the
+    deepest principles of grace, as to whether it is given to all men, or
+    whether it is efficacious of itself.  But truly we were deceived.
+    You must know I have become a great theologian in a short time, and
+    you will see the proofs of it.”
+
+He describes, then, how he had made a visit to a doctor of the Sorbonne,
+who was his neighbour, and one of the most zealous opponents of the
+Jansenists, to inquire into the controversy.  He asked him why the
+question as to grace should not be set at rest by a formal decision that
+“grace is really given to all”?  But he received a rude rebuff, and was
+told that this was not the point.  “There were those on his side who held
+that grace is not given to all, and even the examiners themselves had
+declared, in a full meeting of the Sorbonne, that this opinion was
+problematical.”  This was, in fact, his own view; and he confirmed it by
+what he said was a celebrated passage of St Augustine, “We know that
+grace is not given to all men.”  He was equally unfortunate in his second
+inquiry.  His neighbour, opposed as he was to Jansenism, would not
+condemn the doctrine of efficacious grace.  The doctrine, on the
+contrary, was quite orthodox, was held by the Jesuits, and had even been
+defended by himself in his thesis at the Sorbonne.  The inquirer is
+confounded, and ventures to ask then in what M. Arnauld’s heresy
+consisted?  “In this,” replies his friend, “that he does not acknowledge
+that the just have the power of obeying the commandments of God in the
+way in which we understand it.”  Having got to what he supposes the
+“heart of the affair,” he posts off to a Jansenist acquaintance, “a very
+decent man notwithstanding.”  But if he was puzzled before, he is still
+more puzzled when he hears the worthy Jansenist declare that it is no
+heresy to hold that “all the just have always the power of obeying the
+Divine commandments.”  Confounded by such a reply, he felt that he had
+been too plain-spoken with both Jansenist and Molinist. {120}  There must
+be something more in this dispute than he understood; and if not, there
+was no reason why there should not now be peace in the Church and the
+Sorbonne.  He returned to the Molinist, whom he had first visited, with
+this assurance.  The Jansenists, he said, were quite at one with the
+Jesuits as to the power of the righteous always to obey the commandments
+of God.
+
+    “All very well,” said he, “but you must be a theologian to see the
+    gist of the matter.  The difference between us is so subtle that we
+    can hardly make it out ourselves.  It is quite beyond _your_
+    understanding.  Suffice it for you to know that the Jansenists will
+    indeed say that the just have always the power of obeying the
+    commandments—this is not the point in dispute; but they will not say
+    that this power is _proximate_.  _That_ is the point.”
+
+Mystified more than ever by this new and unknown expression, of which he
+could get no explanation, the inquirer now returned to his Jansenist
+friend to demand of him if he admitted it.  “Do you admit the _proximate
+power_?” was all that he could say to him.  He had charged his memory
+carefully with the expression, all the more that he did not understand
+it.  The Jansenist smiled, and said coldly, “Tell me in what sense you
+use the expression, and I will tell you what I believe about it.”  But
+this was just what he could not do.  So he gave the haphazard answer,
+that he used it “in the sense of the Molinists.”  “Which of the
+Molinists?” was the rejoinder.  “All of them together, as being one body,
+and having one and the same mind,” was the second answer at random: upon
+which he is assured he is very ill informed; that the Molinists, instead
+of being at one, are hopelessly divided, but that being united in the
+design to ruin M. Arnauld, they have all agreed to use this term,
+understanding it in different senses, and so by an apparent agreement to
+form a compact body in order to crush him more confidently.
+
+The ingenuous inquirer hesitates to believe in such wickedness.  He
+professes himself to be animated by a pure desire of understanding the
+subject, and asks still that the mysterious word _proximate_ may be
+explained to him.  His Jansenist friend professes a willingness to
+enlighten him, but says that his explanation would be liable to
+suspicion.  He must have recourse to those who invented the expression,
+and is referred to a M. le Moine, on the one hand, as representing the
+Molinists or Jesuits; and a Father Nicolai as representing the Dominicans
+or “New Thomists.”  Both of these were real characters: the former a
+doctor of the Sorbonne, and a violent anti-Jansenist, who had written on
+the subject of grace; the latter a Dominican, who is said, however, by
+Nicole to have abandoned the principles of his order and embraced
+Pelagianism.  The bewildered seeker after theological knowledge resorts,
+not to these worthies themselves, with whom he professes to have no
+acquaintance, but to certain disciples of theirs.  In this manner he gets
+a definition of “proximate power,” from which it is apparent that, while
+the Jesuits and Dominicans are only agreed in using the same
+expression—the meanings they put into it being entirely different—the
+Jansenists and Dominicans agree in substance, while only differing in the
+use of words.  The passage in which the result of his successive
+interviews is described is one of the happiest in the letter.  On
+receiving from the Dominicans, whom he terms “Jacobins,” from their
+association with the Rue de St Jacques, where the first Dominican convent
+in Paris was erected, an explanation of the doctrine of grace, he
+exclaims:—
+
+    “Capital!  So, according to you, the Jansenists are Catholics, and M.
+    le Moine a heretic; for the Jansenists say that the just have the
+    power of praying, but that further efficacious grace is necessary—and
+    this is what you also approve.  M. le Moine, however, says that the
+    just may pray without efficacious grace—and this you condemn.  ‘Ay,’
+    they replied, ‘but M. le Moine calls this power _proximate power_.’
+    ‘But what is this, my father,’ I exclaimed in turn, ‘but to play with
+    words—to say that you agree as to the common terms you employ, while
+    your sense is quite different?’  To this they made no reply; and at
+    this very point the disciple of M. le Moine, with whom I had
+    consulted, arrived by what seemed to me a lucky and extraordinary
+    conjuncture.  But I afterwards found that these meetings were not
+    uncommon; that, in fact, they were continually mixing the one with
+    the other.  I addressed myself immediately to M. le Moine’s disciple:
+    ‘I know one,’ said I, ‘who maintains that the just have always the
+    power of praying to God, but that nevertheless they never pray
+    without an efficacious grace which determines them, and which is not
+    always given by God to all the just.  Is such a one a heretic?’
+    ‘Wait,’ said my doctor; ‘you take me by surprise.  Come, gently.
+    _Distinguo_.  If he calls this power _proximate power_, he is a
+    Thomist, and yet a Catholic; if not, he is a Jansenist, and therefore
+    a heretic.’  ‘He calls it,’ said I, ‘neither the one nor the other.’
+    ‘He is a heretic then,’ said he; ‘ask these good fathers.’  It was
+    unnecessary to appeal to them, for already they had assented by a nod
+    of their heads.  But I insisted.  ‘He refuses to use the word
+    _proximate_, because no one can explain it to him.’  Whereupon one of
+    the fathers was about to give his definition of the term, when he was
+    interrupted by M. le Moine’s disciple.  ‘What!’ said he; ‘do you wish
+    to recommence our quarrels?  Have we not agreed never to attempt an
+    explanation of this word _proximate_, but to use it on both sides
+    without saying what it means?’  And to this the Jacobin assented.  I
+    saw at once into their plot, and rising to quit them, I said, ‘Of a
+    truth, my fathers, this is nothing, I fear, but a quibble; and
+    whatever may come of your meetings, I venture to predict that when
+    the censure is passed, peace will not be restored. . .  Surely it is
+    unworthy, both of the Sorbonne and of theology, to make use of
+    equivocal and captious terms without giving any explanation of them.
+    Tell me, I entreat you, for the last time, fathers, what I must
+    believe in order to be a Catholic?’  ‘You must say,’ they all cried
+    at once, ‘that all the just have the _proximate power_.’ . . .  ‘What
+    necessity can there be,’ I argued, ‘for using a word which has
+    neither authority nor definite meaning?’  ‘You are an opinionative
+    fellow,’ they replied.  ‘You shall use the word, or you are a
+    heretic, and M. Arnauld also; for we are the majority, and if
+    necessary we can bring the Cordeliers into the field and carry the
+    day.’”
+
+The second Letter, entitled “Of Sufficient Grace,” is exactly in the same
+vein:—
+
+    “Just as I had sealed my last letter,” the writer opens, “I received
+    a visit from our old friend, M. N---, a most fortunate circumstance
+    for the gratification of my curiosity.  For he is thoroughly informed
+    in the questions of the day, and up to all the secrets of the
+    Jesuits, at whose houses, including those of the leading men, he is a
+    constant visitor.”
+
+Using his friend conveniently as an informant, Pascal proceeds to explain
+to the Provincial the question of sufficient grace as betwixt the
+Jesuits, Jansenists, and Dominicans.  The amusement of the Letter
+consists in the manner in which he brings out, as before, the substantial
+identity in opinion of the Dominicans and Jansenists, notwithstanding the
+junction of the former with the Jesuits to oppress the latter.  The
+Jesuits hold the old Pelagian doctrine that grace is given to all,
+dependent for its efficacy upon the free will of the recipient.  This is
+with them _sufficient grace_.  The Jansenists follow St Augustine, and
+will not allow any grace to be _sufficient_ which is not also
+efficacious.  What is the view of the Dominican?—
+
+    “It is rather an odd one,” he says; “for while they agree with the
+    Jesuits in allowing a _sufficient grace_ given to all men, they
+    nevertheless hold that with this grace alone men cannot act, but
+    require further from God an _efficacious grace_ which determines
+    their will to action, and which is not given to all.”
+
+In short, _this grace_ is _sufficient_ without being so.  It bears the
+same name as the grace of the Jesuits, but in reality the Dominican
+doctrine is that of the Jansenists, that men require efficacious grace in
+order to pious action.  What is the meaning of all this jumble of
+opinion?  Simply, that the Dominicans are too powerful to be quarrelled
+with.  The Jesuits are content that they should so far use the same
+language with them.
+
+    “They do not insist upon their denying the necessity of efficacious
+    grace.  This would be to press them too far.  People should not
+    tyrannise over their friends; and the Jesuits have really gained
+    enough.  But the world is content with words; and so the name of
+    sufficient grace being received on all sides, though in different
+    senses, none except the most subtle theologians can dream that the
+    expression does not signify the same to the Jacobins and the Jesuits;
+    and the result will show that the latter are not the greatest dupes.”
+
+This conclusion becomes the subject of conversational by-play, similar to
+that of the first Letter:—
+
+    “I went straight,” adds the writer, “to the Jacobins, at whose door I
+    found a good friend of mine, a great Jansenist—for you must know I
+    have friends amongst all parties—who was inquiring for another
+    father, different from the one I wanted.  But I persuaded him to
+    accompany me, and asked for one of my New Thomist friends.  He was
+    delighted to see me again.  ‘Ah, well,’ I said to him, ‘it seems it
+    is not enough that all men have a _proximate power_ by which they can
+    never act with effect; they must also have a _sufficient grace_, with
+    which they can act just as little.  Is not this the opinion of your
+    school?’  ‘Yes,’ said the good father, ‘and I have this very morning
+    been maintaining this in the Sorbonne.  I spoke my full half-hour;
+    and had it not been for the sand-glass, I bade fair to reverse the
+    unlucky proverb which circulates in Paris—“He votes with his cap
+    [merely by nodding his assent, without speaking] like a monk of the
+    Sorbonne.”’  ‘And what about your half-hour and your sand-glass?’
+    said I.  ‘Do they shape your discourses by a certain measure?’
+    ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘for some days past.’  ‘And do they oblige you to
+    speak half an hour?’  ‘No, we may speak as shortly as we like.’  ‘But
+    not,’ I said, ‘as much as you like.  What a capital rule for the
+    ignorant—what an excellent excuse for those who have nothing worth
+    saying!  But to come to the point, my father—this grace which is
+    given to all, is it sufficient?’  ‘Yes,’ said he.  ‘And yet it has no
+    effect without _efficacious_ grace?’  ‘Quite true,’ said he.  ‘And
+    all men have the _sufficient_, but not all the _efficacious_?’
+    ‘Exactly so.’  ‘That is to say,’ I urged, ‘that all have enough
+    grace, and yet not enough—that there is a grace which is
+    _sufficient_, and yet does not _suffice_.  In good sooth, my father,
+    that is subtle doctrine.  Have you forgotten, in quitting the world,
+    what the word _sufficient_ means?  Do you not remember that it
+    includes everything necessary for acting? . . .  How, then, do you
+    leave it to be said, that all men have _sufficient_ grace for acting,
+    while you confess that another grace is absolutely necessary for
+    acting, and that all have not this? . . .  Is it a matter of
+    indifference to say that with sufficient grace we can really act?’
+    ‘Indifference!’ said he; ‘why, it is _heresy_—formal _heresy_.  The
+    necessity of efficacious grace for effective action is a point of
+    _faith_.  It is heresy to deny this.’  ‘Where, then, are we now? and
+    what side must I take?  If I deny sufficient grace, I am a Jansenist.
+    If I admit it, like the Jesuits, so that efficacious grace is no
+    longer necessary, I shall be a heretic, you say.  And if I admit it,
+    as you do, so that efficacious grace is still necessary, why I sin
+    against common-sense, I am a blockhead, say the Jesuits.  What can I
+    do in this dilemma, of being a blockhead, a heretic, or a Jansenist?
+    To what a strait are we come, if it is only Jansenists, after all,
+    who are at variance with neither faith nor reason, and who preserve
+    themselves both from folly and error?’”
+
+The Dominican, in short, is made to appear very ridiculous in his union
+with the Jesuits.  Clearly he fights on their side against the Jansenists
+at the expense of his honesty and consistency.  He is confounded by a
+parable representing the absurdity of his position.
+
+    “‘It is all very easy to talk,’ was all he could say in reply.  ‘You
+    are an independent and private person; I am a monk, and in a
+    community.  Do you not understand the difference?  We depend upon
+    superiors; they depend upon others.  They have promised our votes,
+    and what would you have me to do?’  We understood his allusion, and
+    remembered how a brother monk had been banished to Abbeville for a
+    similar cause.”
+
+The writer is disposed to pity the monk as he relates with a melancholy
+tone how the Dominicans, who had from the time of St Thomas been such
+ardent defenders of the doctrine of grace, had been entrapped into making
+common cause with the Jesuits.  The latter, availing themselves of the
+confusion and ignorance introduced by the Reformation, had disseminated
+their principles with great rapidity, and become masters of the popular
+belief; while the poor Dominicans found themselves in the predicament of
+either being denounced as Calvinists, and treated as the Jansenists then
+were, or of falling into the use of a common language with the Jesuits.
+What other course was open to them in such a case than that of saving the
+truth at the expense of their own credit! and while admitting the name of
+sufficient grace, denying, after all, that it was sufficient!  That was
+the real history of the business.
+
+This pitiful story of the New Thomist awakens a respondent pity in the
+writer.  But his Jansenist companion is roused to indignant
+remonstrance:—
+
+    “Do not flatter yourselves,” he exclaims, “that you have saved the
+    truth.  If it had no other protector than you, it would have perished
+    in such feeble hands.  You have received into the Church the name of
+    its enemy, and this is to receive the enemy itself.  Names are
+    inseparable from things.  If the term _sufficient_ grace be once
+    admitted, you may talk finely about only understanding thereby a
+    grace insufficient; but this will be of no avail.  Your explanation
+    will be held as odious in the world, where men speak far more
+    sincerely of less important things.  The Jesuits will triumph.  It
+    will be their sufficient grace, and not yours—which is only a
+    name—which will be accepted.  It will be theirs, which is the reverse
+    of yours, that will become an article of faith.”
+
+In vain the New Thomist proclaims his readiness to suffer martyrdom
+rather than allow this, and to maintain the great doctrine of St Thomas
+to the death.  His allusion to the importance of the doctrine only calls
+forth more severely the indignant eloquence of the Jansenist, and he
+brings the Letter to a close in a passage which forestalls the graver and
+loftier tone of the later Letters.
+
+    “Confess, my father, that your order has received an honour which it
+    ill discharges.  It abandons that grace which has been intrusted to
+    it, and which has never been abandoned since the creation of the
+    world.  That victorious grace which was expected by patriarchs,
+    predicted by prophets, introduced by Jesus Christ, preached by St
+    Paul, explained by St Augustine, the greatest of the Fathers,
+    embraced by his followers, confirmed by St Bernard, the last of the
+    Fathers, sustained by St Thomas, the Angel of the Schools,
+    transmitted by him to your order, maintained by so many of your
+    fathers, and so gloriously defended by your monks under Popes Clement
+    and Paul—that efficacious grace which was left in your hands as a
+    sacred deposit, that it might always, in a sacred and enduring order,
+    find preachers to proclaim it to the world till the end of time—finds
+    itself deserted for interests utterly unworthy.  It is time that
+    other hands should arm themselves in its quarrel.  It is time that
+    God should raise up intrepid disciples to the Doctor of Grace, who,
+    strangers to the entanglements of the world, should serve God for the
+    sake of God.  Grace may no longer count the Dominicans among her
+    defenders; but she will never want defenders, for she creates them
+    for herself by her own almighty strength.  She demands pure and
+    disengaged hearts, nay, she herself purifies and delivers them from
+    worldly interests inconsistent with the truths of the Gospel.
+    Consider well, my father, and take heed lest God remove the
+    candle-stick from its place, and leave you in darkness and dishonour
+    to punish the coldness which you have shown in a cause so important
+    to His Church.”
+
+The first two Letters are closely connected.  They deal with the special
+question between Arnauld and the Sorbonne.  A short “Reply from the
+Provincial” is interposed between the second and third.  This reply may
+be supposed to be a part of the device employed by Pascal to arouse
+public attention and circulate the Letters.  The friend in the country
+tells how they have excited universal interest.  Everybody has seen them,
+heard them, and believed them.  They are valued not merely by
+theologians, but men of the world, and ladies, have found them
+intelligible and delightful reading.  This is no exaggerated picture of
+the sensation which they produced.  Their success was prodigious, and
+increased with every successive Letter.  In an atmosphere charged with
+the theological spirit, yet wearied with the dulness of theological
+controversy, Pascal’s mode of treating the subject came as a breath of
+new life.  Here was one who was evidently no mere theologian—who knew
+human nature as well as Divine truth.  His clear and penetrating
+intellect saw at once the many aspects of the dispute lying deep in the
+human interests and passions engaged; and as he touched these one by one,
+and by subtle and vivid strokes brought them to the front—as Molinist,
+New Thomist, and Jansenist appeared upon the scene, and showed in their
+natural characters what play of dramatic life was moving under all the
+dulness of the debate at the Sorbonne—there was a universal outcry of
+welcome.  The Letters passed from hand to hand.  The post-office reaped a
+harvest of profit; copies went through the whole kingdom.
+
+    “‘You can have no idea how much I am obliged to you for the Letter
+    you sent me,’ writes a friend to a lady; ‘it is so very ingenious,
+    and so nicely written.  It narrates without narrating.  It clears up
+    the most intricate matters possible; its raillery is exquisite; it
+    enlightens those who know little of the subject, and imparts double
+    delight to those who understand it.  It is an admirable apology; and
+    if they would take it, a delicate and innocent censure.  In short,
+    the Letter displays so much art, so much spirit, and so much
+    judgment, that I burn with curiosity to know who wrote it.’”
+
+This is the report of the Provincial; and if it is Pascal himself who
+speaks, he had little idea that his own _badinage_ would be echoed by
+grave critics, in after-years, as not in excess of the actual merit of
+his productions.  “The best comedies of Molière,” says Voltaire, “have
+not more wit than the first Provincial Letters.”  It must be admitted
+that the brightness of the wit is somewhat dimmed after the lapse of two
+centuries.  Even the genius of Pascal fails to lighten all the tortuous
+absurdities of controversies so purely verbal, and there is an occasional
+baldness in the clever device of pitting Molinist, New Thomist, and
+Jansenist against one another.  The professed artlessness of the speeches
+is at times too apparent.  But nothing, upon the whole, can be finer than
+the address with which this is done; the changes of scene and the turns
+of the dialogue are managed with admirable felicity; there is an
+exquisite fitness and Socratic point in all the evolutions of the
+argument, which we feel even now when we see so clearly behind the
+scenes, and know that Molinist and New Thomist must have had a good deal
+more to say for themselves.  We have only to imagine the atmosphere of
+the Sorbonne, or the wider social atmosphere throughout France in the
+seventeenth century, impregnated to its core by a subtle controversial
+ecclesiasticism, to realise the impression made by “the Small Letters.”
+The question everywhere was, Who could have written them?  There seems at
+first to have been no suspicion of Pascal.  He had previously only been
+known as a scientific writer; and the secret was, of course, jealously
+guarded.  Although planned at Port Royal des Champs, he did not remain
+there while engaged in their composition.  He repaired, as we have
+already said, to Paris, and after a while took up his abode “at a little
+inn opposite to the Jesuit College of Clermont, just behind the
+Sorbonne.”  Here he lodged with his brother-in-law, M. Périer, who had
+lately come to Paris; and here, too, the latter was visited by Père
+Defrétat, a Jesuit and distant relative, who came to tell him that the
+suspicions of the Society were beginning to point to Pascal.  All the
+while Pascal was busy in the room below; and, “behind the closed curtains
+of the bed by the side of which they were talking, a score of fresh
+impressions of the seventh Letter were laid out to dry.” {132}
+
+Pascal rejoiced in his incognito.  It was not till the controversy had
+somewhat advanced that he assumed the pseudonym Louis de Montalte.  The
+third Letter he closed mysteriously with the letters E. A. A. B. P. A. F.
+D. E. P., which have been interpreted to mean “Et ancien ami Blaise
+Pascal, Auvergnat, fils de Étienne Pascal.”  There can be no doubt that
+he took a distinct pleasure in the anonymous wounds which he inflicted.
+He had a certain love of controversy from the beginning, a feeling of
+self-assertion when he took up a cause, and a personal ambition to
+triumph in it, which carried him forward, and which come out with almost
+painful vividness in the closing letters.
+
+The rage of the Jesuits may be imagined.  At first they hardly knew
+whether to laugh with the world or to be indignant.  The first Letter was
+read in the dining-hall of the Sorbonne itself.  Some were amused, others
+greatly provoked.  But, as the Letters proceeded, there was no room for
+any feeling but indignation.  It was so difficult to set forth any direct
+reply to productions mingling such a subtle irony with grave attack.
+They could only say of them, as they afterwards more formally did—_Les
+menteurs immortelles_.  Of the first Letters it is said that 6000 copies
+were printed; but, as they were easily passed from hand to hand, this
+gives no idea of the numbers who actually read them.  Their fame grew
+with each successive issue.  More than 10,000 copies were printed of the
+seventeenth Letter; and editions of the earlier ones were so frequently
+reprinted, that it can no longer be told which belonged really to the
+first edition.
+
+It is impossible, and would be useless, for us to attempt any description
+of the whole series of Letters.  We have thought it right to dwell at
+some length on the first two, because they enter so directly into the
+controversy betwixt Pascal’s friends and the Sorbonne, and because they
+are really, in some respects, the cleverest, if not the most valuable.
+The third Letter, on the “Censure of M. Arnauld,” and again, the three
+concluding Letters, {133} are closely connected with the first two.
+Their object, in one form or another, is the defence of the Jansenist
+doctrine, and of the Port Royalists, as its supporters.  The intervening
+twelve Letters stand quite by themselves.  They open up the whole subject
+of the moral theology of the Jesuits, and constitute the most powerful
+assault probably ever directed against it.  The subject is one which, in
+a volume like this, we can only touch upon, and this more with the view
+of drawing out the marked literary features of Pascal’s assault, than of
+meddling with the merits of the controversy which he waged so
+relentlessly.  In the meantime, we must wind up, as briefly as possible,
+the more personal aspects of the controversy.
+
+Between the date of the second and the third Letter, the process before
+the Sorbonne had been finished, and M. Arnauld’s censure pronounced.  The
+third Letter deals with this censure.  The writer represents the long
+preparation for it, the manner in which the Jansenists had been denounced
+as the vilest of heretics, “the cabals, factions, errors, schisms, and
+outrages with which they have been so long charged.”  Who would not have
+thought, in such circumstances, that the “blackest heresy imaginable”
+would have come forth under the condemning touch of the Sorbonne?  All
+Christendom waited for the result.  It was true that M. Arnauld had
+backed up his opinions by the clearest quotations from the Fathers,
+expressing apparently the very things with which he had been charged.
+But points of difference imperceptible to ordinary eyes would no doubt be
+made clear under the penetration of so many learned doctors.  Thoughts of
+this kind kept everybody in a state of breathless suspense waiting for
+the result.  “But, alas! how has the expectation been balked!  Whether
+the Molinist doctors have not deigned to lower themselves to the level of
+instructing us, or for some other secret reason, they have done nothing
+else than pronounce the following words: ‘This proposition is rash,
+impious, blasphemous, deserving of anathema, and heretical!’”
+
+It was not to be wondered at, in the circumstances, that people were in a
+bad humour, and were beginning to think that after all there may have
+been no real heresy in M. Arnauld’s proposition.  A heresy which could
+not be defined, except in general terms of abuse, seemed at the least
+doubtful.  The writer is puzzled, as usual, and has recourse to “one of
+the most intelligent of the Sorbonnists” who had been so far neutral in
+the discussion, and whom he asks to point out the difference betwixt M.
+Arnauld and the Fathers.  The “intelligent” Sorbonnist is amused at the
+_naïveté_ of the inquiry.  “Do you fancy,” he says, “that if they could
+have found any difference they would not have pointed it out?”  But why,
+then, pursues the ingenuous inquirer, should they in such a case pass
+censure?—
+
+    “‘How little you understand the tactics of the Jesuits!’ is the
+    answer.  ‘How few will ever look into the matter beyond the fact that
+    M. Arnauld is condemned!  Let it be only cried in the streets, “Here
+    is the condemnation of M. Arnauld!”  This is enough to give the
+    Jesuits a triumph with the unthinking populace.  This is the way in
+    which they live and prosper.  Now it is by a catechism in which a
+    child is made to condemn their opponents; now by a procession, in
+    which Sufficient Grace leads Efficacious Grace in triumph; and
+    by-and-by by a comedy, in which the devils carry off Jansen;
+    sometimes by an almanac; and now by this censure.’  The truth is,
+    that it is M. Arnauld himself, and not merely his opinions, that are
+    obnoxious.  Even M. le Moine himself admitted ‘that the same
+    proposition would have been orthodox in the mouth of any other; it is
+    only as coming from M. Arnauld that the Sorbonne have condemned it.’
+    . . .  Here is a new species of heresy,” concludes the writer.  “It
+    is not the sentiments of M. Arnauld that are heretical, but only his
+    person.  It is a case of personal heresy.  He is not a heretic for
+    anything he has said or written, but simply because he is M. Arnauld.
+    This is all they can say against him.  Whatever he may do, unless he
+    cease to exist he will never be a good Catholic.  The grace of St
+    Augustine will never be the true grace while he defends it.  It would
+    be all right were he only to combat it.  This would be a sure stroke,
+    and almost the only means of establishing it and destroying Molinism.
+    Such is the fatality of any opinions which he embraces.”
+
+In the three concluding Letters, as we have said, Pascal reverts to the
+special subject of Jansenism and Port Royal.  These Letters are
+considerably longer than the opening ones.  It is of the sixteenth, in
+fact, that he makes the well-known remark, that “it was very long because
+he had no time to make it shorter.”  Upon the whole, also, these Letters
+are less happy in style and manner.  It is evident that Pascal, if he
+gave blows which made his opponents and the opponents of Port Royal
+wince, also received some bruises in return.  The shamelessness of the
+attacks made upon his friends and himself, contemptible as they were in
+their nature, left scars upon a mind and temper so sensitive and reserved
+as his.  The “insufferable audacity” with which “holy nuns and their
+directors” had been charged with disbelieving the mysteries of the faith
+was “a crime which God alone was capable of punishing.”  To bear such a
+charge required a degree of humility equal to that of the nuns
+themselves—to believe it, “a degree of wickedness equal to that of their
+wretched defamers.”  As for himself, it seemed enough to say of him that
+he belonged to Port Royal, as if it were only at Port Royal that there
+could be found those capable of defending the purity of Christian
+morality.  He knew and honoured the work of the pious recluses who had
+retired to that monastery, although “he had never had the honour of
+belonging to them.”  And in the seventeenth Letter he says:—
+
+    “I have no more to say than that I am not a member of that community,
+    and to refer you to my letters, in which I have declared that ‘I am a
+    private individual;’ and again in so many words that ‘I am not of
+    Port Royal.’ . . .  You may touch Port Royal if you choose, but you
+    shall not touch me.  You may turn people out of the Sorbonne, but
+    that will not turn me out of my lodging.”
+
+These statements, of course, are to be received as so far a part of the
+disguise under which Pascal pursued his task.  It was true that he had no
+official connection with Port Royal, that he was under no rule to live in
+its retirements, and that he was only occasionally found there.  He was
+singularly free, “without engagements, entanglement, relationship, or
+business of any kind.”  All the same he was a Port Royalist in sympathy
+and community of opinion.  The interests of Port Royal were his
+interests, and its friends his friends.  His own sister was one of its
+zealous inmates.  There is a certain force, therefore, in the taunt that
+Pascal, in “unmasking the duplicity of the Jesuits, did not hesitate to
+imitate it.”  His statements are not beyond the licence accorded to those
+who would drive an enemy off the scent, and shelter themselves within an
+anonymity which they have chosen to assume; but they are none the less
+artful and misleading.  They justify themselves as the fence of the
+_littérateur_, hardly as the armour of the moralist.  But the truth is,
+that long before this Pascal had warmed to his work as a
+controversialist.  He was determined to give no advantage, and to spare
+no weapons within the bounds of decency, that might make the Jesuits feel
+the force of his assault.  Their accusation of heresy especially
+exasperated him.
+
+    “When was I ever seen at Charenton?” {138} he says in the seventeenth
+    Letter, addressed to the Jesuit Father Annat.  “When have I failed in
+    my presence at mass, or in my Christian duty to my parish church?
+    What act of union with heretics, or of schism with the Church, can
+    you lay to my charge?  What council have I contradicted?  What Papal
+    constitution have I violated?  You _must answer_, father; else—you
+    know what I mean.”
+
+The Jansenist doctrine of grace, as we have already explained, approached
+indefinitely the doctrine of Calvin.  Both were derived from Augustine;
+and St Thomas, as his interpreter, handed on to the sixteenth and
+seventeenth centuries the precious deposit.  The line of thought was
+continuous, and it was not easy to break it at Calvin, and isolate him as
+a heretic, while holding to other teachers as Catholic and orthodox.
+This was the dilemma of the New Thomists, so pithily expressed by one of
+themselves in the second Letter.  But it was also Pascal’s own dilemma;
+and the consciousness which he and his friends had of the nearness of the
+Jansenist doctrine to that of Calvin, made them all the more sensitive
+under the charge of heresy.  The Jesuits had art enough to see the
+advantages which came from this association.  The Port Royalists and
+Pascal failed in the magnanimity which clung to a truth no less because
+it was identified with an abused name.  They insisted upon distinguishing
+between the tenets of Jansen and Calvinism.  If what the Papal decree
+meant and the Sorbonne meant in the condemnation of the Jansenist
+proposition was that they condemned the doctrines of Calvin, then they
+were all agreed.—Jesuits, Jansenists, and Port Royalists.
+
+    “Was that all you meant, father?” asks Pascal in his concluding
+    Letter.  “Was it only the error of Calvin that you were so anxious to
+    get condemned under the name of ‘the sense of Jansen’?  Why did you
+    not tell us this sooner? you might have saved yourself a world of
+    trouble; for we were all ready without the aid of bulls or briefs to
+    join with you in condemning that error. . . .  Now, when you have
+    come the length of declaring that the error which you oppose is the
+    heresy of Calvin, it must be apparent to every one that they [the
+    Port Royalists] are innocent of all error; for so decidedly hostile
+    are they to this, the only error with which you charge them, that
+    they protest by their discourses, by their books, by every mode, in
+    short, in which they can testify their sentiments, that they condemn
+    that heresy with their whole heart, and in the same manner in which
+    it has been condemned by the Thomists, whom you acknowledge without
+    scruple to be Catholics.”
+
+The professed point of difference stated in the same Letter—namely, that
+the Thomists and Sorbonnists (and of course the Port Royalists with them)
+held that efficacious grace is resistible, while Calvin held that it was
+irresistible—may or may not hold in reference to special expressions of
+Calvin.  But there is nothing, upon the whole, stronger in Calvin than
+there is in Augustine on the subject of grace; and on the other hand, an
+“efficacious grace,” which is “resistible”—which the human heart can
+accept or repel _at will_—seems open to all the ironical play which
+Pascal directs so skilfully in his first Letters against the Jesuit
+doctrine of a _sufficient_ grace which is not yet sufficient.  The truth
+is, that apart from verbal subtleties, which Pascal could handle no less
+familiarly, only far more skilfully, than his adversaries, there is no
+rational position intermediate between the Pelagian doctrine (which is
+also substantially the Aristotelian) of free will and moral habit, and
+the Augustinian doctrine of Divine grace and spiritual inspiration.  The
+source of character is either from within the character itself, which has
+power to choose good and to be good if it will, or it is from a higher
+source—the grace of God, and the power of a Divine ordination.  These are
+the only real lines of controversy.  The Christian thinker may decline
+controversy on such a subject altogether, acknowledging that the mystery
+of character is in its roots beyond our ken,—that we know not, and in the
+nature of the case cannot know, where the Human ends and the Divine
+begins.  In such a case there is no room for argument.  But we cannot
+with consistency step off one line on to the other.  In other words, we
+cannot logically abuse Calvin while we hold with Augustine, or profess to
+revere St Thomas while we abuse Jansen.
+
+But it is more than time to turn from this side of the ‘Provincial
+Letters.’  This was the controversy out of which they sprang—which
+mingles itself most with the personality of Pascal—and hence it has
+claimed a somewhat detailed treatment.  The great subject to which the
+intervening and chief portion of the Letters is directed is not, indeed,
+more important in itself, but it is more diversified, and more
+practically interesting.  Here, however, Pascal was more obviously
+performing a task than in the other Letters.  He was speaking less out of
+his heart.  Having grappled with the Jesuits, and noticed their tactics
+in the affair of the Sorbonne, he is led to look into their whole system.
+He takes up their books and studies them, in part at least; while his
+friends Nicole and Arnauld also study them for him.  And the result is
+the remarkable and memorable assault contained in his thirteen
+Letters—from the fourth to the sixteenth—directed against all the main
+principles of the Jesuit system.
+
+It would lead us quite away from our purpose to enter into the range of
+this great controversy, or to endeavour to estimate its value, or the
+merits of the attack and defence on particular points.  The subject is
+one by itself, more or less entering into the whole question of morals,
+and especially the immense fabric of casuistry or moral theology built up
+by successive teachers in the Jesuit schools.  Trained, as he was, a
+devout disciple of the Roman Church, enthusiastic on behalf of its
+doctrines and preachers, Pascal had apparently no knowledge of the
+details of Jesuit doctrine and morality before he began his task of
+inquiry and assault.  Austere and simple in his own principles of virtue,
+direct and unbending in his modes of action, he was evidently appalled by
+the study of the Jesuit system, and the endless complexities of
+compromise and evasion which it presented.  In seizing, as he did
+everywhere, upon the immoral aspects of the system, and touching them
+with the most graphic colours of exposure, he cannot be said to be
+unfair; for the materials with which he dealt were all abundant in their
+writings.  His quotations may be sometimes taken at random, and may set
+forth, without any of the alleviating shades surrounding them in their
+proper context, special points as parts of a general sequence of thought.
+They were, no doubt, often furnished to him by Nicole or Arnauld, who
+hunted them through the immense volumes of casuistical divinity in which
+they were contained.  But there is no reason to suppose that in any case
+he has been guilty of misquotation, or that he has attributed sentiments
+to the Jesuit doctors not to be found in them.  This is very much his own
+statement:—
+
+    “I have been asked if I have myself read all the books which I have
+    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 have read Escobar
+    twice through, and I have employed some of my friends in reading the
+    others.  But I have not made 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.”
+
+No doubt this is true.  There is all, and more than all, that Pascal
+quoted to be found in the Jesuit writings, and his own language is not
+too strong in speaking of much that he quotes as “abominable.”
+Notwithstanding, it may be said that the effect of his representation is
+a certain unfairness towards the Jesuits.  He presses them at a cruel
+advantage when he insists upon developing from his own point of view, or
+still more from the mouth of some of their too simple followers, all the
+practical consequences of their special rules.  The system of casuistry
+was one not solely of Jesuitical invention.  It was the necessary
+outgrowth of the radical Roman principle of Confession.  Nay, it
+flourished to some extent within the Protestant Church itself in the
+seventeenth century, as the writings of two very different men, Jeremy
+Taylor and Richard Baxter, show.  Once admit the principle of directing
+the conscience by external rather than internal authority, and you lay a
+foundation upon which any amount of folly, and even crime, may be built
+up.  This was the general principle of Jesuitism as a system of
+education; but it came to it from the Church which Pascal, no less than
+the Jesuits, revered.  Nay, it was in its general character a principle
+as characteristic of Port Royal as of Loyola and his followers.  There is
+the enormous difference, no doubt, that the ethics of Port Royal were
+comparatively faithful to the essential principles of morality which
+Nature and the Gospel alike teach—that its practical excesses were quite
+in a different direction from the laxity of the Jesuits.  But two things
+are to be remembered, not in favour of the Jesuits, but in explanation of
+their excesses: 1st, that they aimed, as Pascal himself points out, at
+governing the world, and not merely a sect—that their whole idea of the
+Church in relation to the world was different from that of the Port
+Royalists; and 2d, that their system of morals not merely rested on a
+wrong and dangerous principle (which Pascal’s no less did), but had been
+endlessly developed in their schools by many inferior hands.  This was
+Pascal’s great weapon against them, and so far it was quite a legitimate
+weapon, as he himself claimed.  As none of their books could appear
+without sanction, the Order was more or less responsible for all the
+frightful principles set forth in some of these books.  All the same, it
+is not to be presumed that such a system of moral, or rather immoral,
+consequences was deliberately designed by the Society.  Pascal himself
+exempts them from such a charge.  “Their object,” he says, “is not the
+corruption of manners; . . . but they believe it for the good of religion
+that they should _govern all consciences_, and so they have evangelical
+or severe maxims for managing some sorts of people, while whole
+multitudes of lax casuists are provided for the multitude that prefer
+laxity.” {144a}  The Jesuit system of morality, in short, was the growth
+of the Jesuit principle of accommodation, added on to the Roman principle
+of external authority.  Looking at morality entirely from without, as an
+artificial mode of regulating life and society for the supreme good of
+the Church, the Jesuit casuists were driven, under the necessities of
+such a system, from point to point, till all essential moral distinction
+was lost in the mechanical manipulations of their schools.  Whatever
+happened, no man or woman was to be lost to the Church; the complications
+of human interest and passion were to be brought within its fold and
+smoothed into some sort of decent seeming, rather than cast beyond its
+pale and made the prey of its enemies. {144b}  The task was a hopeless
+one.  In the pages of Pascal the Jesuits too obviously make a deplorable
+business both of religion and morality.  But they were as much the
+victims as the authors of a system which Rome had sanctioned, and which
+came directly from the claims which it made to govern the world not
+merely by spiritual suasion, but by external influence.  Jesuitism may be
+bad, and the Jesuit morality exposed by Pascal abominable, but the one
+and the other are the natural outgrowth of a Church which had become a
+mechanism for the regulation of human conduct, rather than a spiritual
+power addressing freely the human heart and conscience.
+
+Our space will not admit of an analysis of the thirteen Letters dealing
+with the Jesuits, and we can hardly give any quotations from them.
+Suffice it to say, that Pascal passes in the fourth Letter to a direct
+assault upon the Society.  “Nothing can equal the Jesuits,” the Letter
+begins.  “I have seen Jacobins, doctors, and all sorts of people; but
+such a visit as I have made today baffles everything, and was necessary
+to complete my knowledge of the world.”  He then describes his visit to a
+very clever Jesuit, accompanied by his trusty Jansenist friend, and
+gradually unfolds from the mouth of the former the whole system of moral
+theology which had grown up in the Jesuit schools,—their notions of
+“actual grace,” or the necessity of a special conscious knowledge that an
+act is evil, and ought to be avoided, before we can be said to be guilty
+of sin in committing the act; their famous doctrines of _probabilism_ and
+of _directing the intention_, and all the consequences springing out of
+them.  Nothing can be more ingenious than the manner in which the Jesuit
+is led forward to unfold point after point of his hateful system, as if
+it were one of the greatest boons which had ever been invented for
+mankind, until from concession to concession he is plunged into the most
+horrible conclusions, and the Jansenist can stand the disclosures no
+longer, but breaks forth in the end of the tenth Letter into a powerful
+and eloquent denunciation of the doctrines to which he has been
+listening.
+
+Any lighter vein that may have lingered in the Letters is abandoned from
+this point.  Pascal ceases to address his friend in the country; the
+playful interchange that sprang from the idea of a third party, to whom
+Pascal was supposed to be merely reporting what he had heard, occurs no
+more.  He turns to the Jesuit fathers directly, and addresses them, as if
+unable any longer to restrain his indignation, commencing the eleventh
+Letter with an admirable defence of his previous tone, and of the extent
+to which he had used the weapon of ridicule in assailing them, and
+passing on to reiterate his charges, and to repel the calumnies with
+which they had assailed him and his Port Royalist friends.  The reader
+may weary, perhaps, for a little, as he threads his way through the
+successive accusations, and the monotonous train of evil principles which
+underlies them all, more or less.  He may wish that Pascal had gone to
+the roots of the system more completely, and had laid bare its germinal
+falsehood, instead of heaping detail upon detail, and always adding a
+darker hue to the picture which he draws.  But any such mode of treatment
+would not half so well have served his purpose.  His audience were not
+prepared for any philosophy of exposure, still less for any attack upon
+the essential principles of the Church; he himself did not see how the
+successive laxities which he fixes with his poignant satire, or sets in
+the light of his withering scorn, spring from a vicious conception of
+Christianity and of the office of the Church.  He does what he does,
+however, with exquisite effect; and the Jesuit Order, many and powerful
+as have been its opponents, never before nor since felt itself more
+keenly and unanswerably assailed.  Many of them were forced to laugh at
+the picture of their own follies, and the immoral nonsense which
+distilled from the lips of Father Bauny and others, in explanation or
+defence of their practices.  “Read that,” says the confidential Jesuit
+who expounds to Pascal their system: “it is ‘The Summary of Sins,’ by
+Father Bauny; the fifth edition, you see, which shows that it is a good
+book.  ‘In order to sin,’ says Father Bauny, ‘it is necessary to know
+that the _thing we wish to do is not good_.’”  “A capital commencement,”
+I remarked.  “Yet,” said he, “only think how far envy will carry some
+people.  It was on this very passage that M. Hallier, before he became
+one of our friends, quizzed Father Bauny, saying of him ‘_Ecce qui tollit
+peccata mundi_—Behold the man who taketh away the sins of the world.’”
+{147}  Then after an elaborate description of all that goes to make a
+sin—
+
+    “‘O my dear sir,’ cried I, ‘what a blessing this will be to some
+    friends of my acquaintance!  You have never, perhaps, in all your
+    life met with people who have fewer sins to account for!  In the
+    first place, they never think of God at all, still less of praying to
+    Him; so that, according to M. le Moine, they are still in a state of
+    baptismal innocence.  They have never had a thought of loving God, or
+    of being contrite for their sins; so that, according to Father Annat,
+    they have never committed sin through the want of charity and
+    penitence. . . .  I had always supposed that the less a man thought
+    of God the more he sinned; but from what I see now, if one could only
+    succeed in bringing himself not to think of God at all, everything
+    would be peace with him in all time coming.  Away with your
+    half-and-half sinners who have some love for virtue!  They will be
+    damned every one of them.  But as for your out-and-out sinners,
+    hardened and without mixture, thorough and determined in their evil
+    courses, hell is no place for them.  They have cheated the devil by
+    stern devotion to his service!’” {148}
+
+It is in hits like these, everywhere scattered throughout the earlier
+letters, to which no translation can do justice, and which lose half
+their edge by being separated from their context, that the wit of Pascal
+shines.  A more delicate, and at the same time more scathing irony,
+cannot be conceived.  He hits with the lightest stroke, and in the most
+natural manner, yet his lash cuts the flesh, and leaves an intolerable
+smart.  All that could be said in answer was, that his representations
+were lies.  They were conscious exaggerations, no doubt, as all satirical
+representations are.  This is of their very nature.  But the extent to
+which they told, and the bitterness of the feeling which they excited at
+the time, and have continued to excite amongst the Jesuits and their
+friends, show how much truth there was in them.  Nothing can be more
+pitiful and less satisfactory than mere complaints of their falsehood.
+Such complaints were hardly to have been expected from any other quarter
+than the Jesuits themselves.  Yet even Chateaubriand, in his new-born
+zeal for the Church, could say of their author, “Pascal is only a
+calumniator of genius.  He has left us an immortal lie.”
+
+Of the graver part of the Letters, the following are the only extracts
+that our space will permit:—
+
+
+
+JESUIT LAXITY AND CHRISTIAN INDIGNATION.
+
+
+    “Such is the way in which our teachers have discharged men from the
+    ‘painful’ obligation of actually loving God.  And so advantageous a
+    doctrine is this, that our Fathers Annat, Pintereau, Le Moine, and A.
+    Sirmond even, have defended it vigorously when assailed by any one.
+    You have only to consult their answers in the ‘Moral Theology;’ that
+    of Father Pintereau, in particular (second part), will enable you to
+    judge of the value of this dispensation by the price which it has
+    cost, even the blood of Jesus.  This is the crown of such a
+    doctrine.”  (A quotation is then given from Father Pintereau to the
+    effect that it is a characteristic of the new Evangelical law, in
+    contrast to the Judaical, that “God has lightened the troublesome and
+    arduous obligation of exercising an act of perfect contrition in
+    order to be justified.”)  “‘O father,’ said I, ‘no patience can stand
+    this any longer.  One cannot hear without horror such sentiments as I
+    have been listening to.’  ‘They are not my sentiments,’ said the
+    monk.  ‘I know that well; but you have expressed no aversion to them;
+    and far from detesting the authors of such maxims, you cherish esteem
+    for them.  Do you not fear that your consent will make you a
+    participator in their guilt?  Was it not sufficient to allow men so
+    many forbidden things under cover of your palliations?  Was it
+    necessary to afford them the occasion of committing crimes that even
+    you cannot excuse by the facility and assurance of absolution which
+    you offer them? . . .  The licence which your teachers have assumed
+    of tampering with the most holy rules of Christian conduct amounts to
+    a total subversion of the Divine law.  They violate the great
+    commandment which embraces the law and the prophets; they strike at
+    the very heart of piety; they take away the spirit which giveth life.
+    They say that the love of God is not necessary to salvation; they
+    even go the length of professing that this dispensation from loving
+    God is the special privilege which Jesus Christ has brought into the
+    world.  This is the very climax of impiety.  The price of the blood
+    of Jesus, the purchase for us of a dispensation from loving Him!
+    Before the incarnation we were under the necessity of loving God.
+    But since God has so loved the world as to give His only Son for it,
+    the world, thus redeemed by Him, is discharged from loving Him!
+    Strange theology of our time!—to take away the anathema pronounced by
+    St Paul against those “who love not the Lord Jesus Christ;” to blot
+    out the saying of St John, that “he that loveth not abideth in
+    death;” and the words of Jesus Christ Himself, “He that loveth me not
+    keepeth not my commandments!”  In this manner those who have never
+    loved God in life are rendered worthy of enjoying Him throughout
+    eternity.  Behold the mystery of iniquity accomplished!  Open your
+    eyes, my father; and if you have remained untouched by the other
+    distortions of your Casuists, let this last by its excess compel you
+    to abandon them.’” {150a}
+
+
+
+DEFENCE OF RIDICULE AS A WEAPON IN CONTROVERSY.
+
+
+    “What, my fathers! must the imaginations of your doctors pass for
+    faithful verities?  Must we not expose the sayings of Escobar, {150b}
+    and the fantastic and unchristian statements of others, without being
+    accused of laughing at religion?  Is it possible you have dared to
+    repeat anything so unreasonable? and have you no fear that in blaming
+    me for ridiculing your absurdities, you were merely furnishing me
+    with a fresh subject of arousing attack, and of pointing out more
+    clearly that I have not found in your books any subject of laughter
+    which is not in itself intensely ridiculous; and that in making a
+    jest of your moral maxims, I am as far from making a jest of holy
+    things as the doctrine of your Casuists distant from the holy
+    doctrine of the Gospel?  In truth, sirs, there is a vast difference
+    between laughing at religion and laughing at those who profane it by
+    their extravagant opinions.  It were an impiety to fail in respect
+    for the great truths which the Divine Spirit has revealed; but it
+    would be no less impiety of another kind to fail in contempt for
+    falsehoods which the spirit of man has opposed to them. . . .  Just
+    as Christian truths are worthy of love and respect, the errors which
+    oppose them are worthy of contempt and hatred: for as there are two
+    things in the truths of our religion—a divine beauty which renders
+    them lovable, and a holy majesty which renders them venerable; so
+    there are two things in such errors—an impiety which makes them
+    horrible, and an impertinence which renders them ridiculous.” {151a}
+
+Many examples from the Scriptures and the Fathers are then quoted in
+defence of the practice of directing ridicule against error; and he
+closes with a singularly appropriate passage from Tertullian: “Nothing is
+more due to vanity than laughter; it is the Truth properly that has a
+right to laugh, because she is cheerful—and to make sport of her enemies,
+because she is sure of victory.”
+
+    “Do you not think, my fathers, that this passage is singularly
+    applicable to our subject?  The letters which I have hitherto written
+    are ‘only a little sport before the real combat.’  As yet I have been
+    only playing with the foils, and ‘rather indicating the wounds that
+    might be given you than inflicting any.’  I have merely exposed your
+    sayings to the light, without commenting on them.  ‘If they have
+    excited laughter, it is only because they are so laughable in
+    themselves.’  These sayings come upon us with such surprise, it is
+    impossible to help laughing at them; for nothing produces laughter
+    more than surprising disproportion between what one hears and what
+    one expects.  In what other way could the most of these matters be
+    treated? for, as Tertullian says, ‘To treat them seriously would be
+    to sanction them.’” {151b}
+
+
+
+APPEAL AGAINST THE JESUITS.
+
+
+    “Too long have you deceived the world, and abused the confidence
+    which men have put in your impostures.  It is high time to vindicate
+    the reputation of so many people whom you have calumniated; for what
+    innocence can be so generally acknowledged as not to suffer
+    contamination from the daring aspersion of a society of men scattered
+    throughout the world, who, under religious habits, cover irreligious
+    minds; who perpetrate crimes as they concoct slanders—not against,
+    but in conformity with, their own maxims?  No one can blame me,
+    surely, for having destroyed the confidence which you might otherwise
+    have inspired, since it is far more just to vindicate for so many
+    good people whom you have decried, the reputation for piety they
+    deserved, than to leave you a reputation for sincerity which you have
+    never merited.  And as the one could not be done without the other,
+    how important was it to make the world understand what you really
+    are.  This is what I have begun to do; but it will require time to
+    complete the work.  The world, however, shall hear of you, my
+    fathers, and all your policy will not avail to shelter you.  The very
+    efforts you make to ward off the blow will only serve to convince the
+    least enlightened that you are afraid, and that, smitten in your own
+    consciences by my charges, you have had recourse to every expedient
+    to prevent exposure.”  {152}
+
+The effect of the ‘Provincial Letters’ was not only to alarm the Jesuits,
+but the Church.  The scandal of their exposure was so deeply felt, that
+the _curés_ of Paris and Rouen appointed committees to investigate the
+accuracy of Pascal’s quotations, and the result of their investigation
+was entirely in Pascal’s favour.  This led ultimately to the matter being
+carried before a General Assembly of the clergy of Paris, which, however,
+declined to give any formal decision.  In the meantime, an ‘Apology for
+the Casuists’ was published by a Jesuit of the name of Pirot, of such a
+character as to increase rather than abate the scandal, and a new
+controversy gathered around this publication.  The Sorbonne took up the
+question, and, after examination, condemned Pirot’s Apology (July 1658)
+as they had formerly done Arnauld’s propositions, and ultimately it was
+included by Rome in the ‘Index Expurgatorius,’ along with the ‘Provincial
+Letters,’ to which it was designed as a reply.  While the question was
+before the Sorbonne, the _curés_ of Paris published various writings,
+under the name of ‘Facta,’ in support of the conclusions to which they
+had come.  These writings were prepared in concert with Pascal and his
+friends, and the second and fifth are ascribed entirely to his pen.  It
+is even said that he looked upon the latter, in which he drew a parallel
+betwixt the Jesuits and Calvinists (to the disadvantage of the
+Protestants), as the _best thing he ever did_. {153}  Long after Pascal’s
+death (in 1694) an elaborate answer appeared, by Father Daniel, to the
+‘Provincial Letters,’ under the title of ‘Entretiens de Cléandre et
+d’Eudoxe sur les Lettres au Provincial;’ but notwithstanding a certain
+amount of learning and apparent candour, the reply made no impression
+upon the public.  Even the Jesuits themselves felt it to be a failure.
+“Father Daniel,” it was said, “professed to have reason and truth on his
+side; but his adversary had in his favour what goes much farther with
+men,—the arms of ridicule and pleasantry.”  As late as 1851 an edition of
+the ‘Letters’ appeared by the Abbé Maynard, accompanied by a professed
+refutation of their misstatements.  But the truth is, Pascal’s work is
+one of those which admit of no adequate refutation.  Even if it be
+granted that he has occasionally made the most of a quotation, and
+brought points together which, taken separately in their connection, have
+not the offensive meaning attributed to them, this touches but little the
+reader who has enjoyed their exquisite raillery or has been moved by
+their indignant denunciation.  The real force of the Letters lies in
+their wit and eloquence—their mingled comedy and invective.  They may be
+parried or resented—they can never be refuted.
+
+We have already quoted Voltaire’s saying, “The best comedies of Molière
+have not more wit than the first Provincial Letters.”  “Bossuet,” he
+added, “has nothing more sublime than the concluding ones.”  They were
+regarded by him as “models of eloquence and pleasantry,” as the “first
+work of genius” that appeared in French prose.  When Bossuet himself was
+asked of what work he would most wish to have been the author, he
+answered, “The ‘Provincial Letters.’”  Madame de Sévigné writes of them
+(Dec. 21, 1689): “How charming they are! . . .  Is it possible to have a
+more perfect style, an irony finer, more delicate, more natural, more
+worthy of the Dialogues of Plato? . . .  And what seriousness of tone,
+what solidity, what eloquence in the last eight Letters!”  Our Gibbon
+attributed to the frequent perusal of them his own mastery of “grave and
+temperate irony.”  Boileau pronounced them “unsurpassed” in ancient or
+modern prose.  Encomiums could hardly go higher, and yet the language of
+Perrault is in a still higher strain: “There is more wit in these
+eighteen Letters than in Plato’s Dialogues; more delicate and artful
+raillery than in those of Lucian; and more strength and ingenuity of
+reasoning than in the orations of Cicero.”  Their style especially is
+beyond all praise.  It has “never been surpassed, nor perhaps equalled.”
+There may be, as there is apt to be in all such concurrent verdicts, a
+strain of excess.  The duller English sense may not catch all the finer
+edges of a style which it may yet feel to be exquisite in its general
+clearness, harmony, and point; the absurdities of verbal argument and of
+Jesuit sophistry may sometimes pall upon the attention, and hardly raise
+a smile at this time of day.  It is the fate of even the finest polemical
+literature to grow dead as it grows old; yet none can doubt the
+immortality of the genius which has so long given life to such a
+controversy, and charmed so many of the highest judges of literary form.
+It is not for any Englishman to challenge the verdict of a Frenchman in a
+matter of style.
+
+Pascal himself evidently thought highly of his success.  He liked the
+controversy, its excitement, and the applausive echo which followed each
+Letter.  Like every true artist, he felt the joy and yet the gravity of
+his work.  He took up his pen with a pleasurable sense of mastery, and
+yet he wrote some of the Letters six or seven times over.  He spared no
+pains, yet he never wearied.  All his intellectual life for the time was
+thrown into the controversy, and his most finely-tempered strokes made
+music in his own mind, while they carried confusion to his adversaries
+and triumph to his friends.  The sensation made by the Letters was, of
+course, mainly confined to France; but the nervous Latinity of Nicole
+soon communicated something of the same sensation to a wider circle.
+{156}  Pascal has himself told us that he never repented having written
+them, nor “the amusing, agreeable, ironical style” in which they were
+written.  Even the condemnation of the Papal See, abject in some respects
+as was his devotion to his Church, did not move him on this point.  He
+left on record, amongst his Thoughts, the following solemn declaration:
+“IF MY LETTERS ARE CONDEMNED IN ROME, WHAT I CONDEMN IN THEM IS CONDEMNED
+IN HEAVEN.  AD TUUM, DOMINE JESU, TRIBUNAL APPELLO.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+THE ‘PENSÉES.’
+
+
+From Pascal’s finished work we turn to his unfinished Remains.  The one
+will always be regarded as the chief monument of his literary skill, and
+of the executive completeness of his mind.  But the other is the worthier
+and nobler tribute to the greatness of his soul, and the depth and power
+of his moral genius.  Few comparatively now read the ‘Provincial Letters’
+as a whole; fewer still are interested in the controversy which they
+commemorate.  But there are hardly any of higher culture—none certainly
+of higher thoughtfulness—to whom the ‘Pensées’ are not still attractive,
+and who have not sought in them at one time or another some answer to the
+obstinate questionings which the deeper scrutiny of human life and
+destiny is ever renewing in the human heart.  No answer may have been
+found in them, but every spiritual mind must have so far met in the
+author of the ‘Pensées’ a kindred spirit which, if it has seen no farther
+than others, has yet entered keenly upon the great quest, and traversed
+with a singular boldness the great lines of higher speculation that
+“slope through darkness up to God.”
+
+The literary history of the ‘Pensées’ is a very curious one.  They first
+appeared in the end of 1669, in a small duodecimo volume, with the
+appropriate motto, “Pendent opera interrupta.”  Their preparation for the
+press had been a subject of much anxiety to Pascal’s friends.  What is
+known as the “Peace of the Church”—a period of temporary quiet and
+prosperity to Port Royal—had begun in 1663; and it was important that
+nothing should be done by the Port Royalists to disturb this peace.  It
+had been agreed, therefore, that all passages bearing on the controversy
+with the Jesuits and the Formulary should be omitted; but beyond this
+Madame Périer desired that the volume should only contain what proceeded
+from her brother, and in the precise form and style in which it had left
+his hand.  She evidently lacked full confidence in the Committee of
+Editors, of whom the Duc de Roannez was the chief, notwithstanding their
+professions of strict adherence to the manuscripts.  The volume at last
+appeared, with a preface by her own son, and no fewer than nine
+“approbations,” signed amongst others by three bishops, one archdeacon,
+and three doctors of the Sorbonne.
+
+Unhappily Madame Périer had too much cause for alarm.  Editors and
+Approvers alike had claimed the liberty, not only of arranging but of
+modifying both the matter and the style of the ‘Pensées,’ and this
+notwithstanding a statement in the preface that, in giving, as they
+professed to do, only “the clearest and most finished” of the fragments,
+they had given them as they found them, _without adding or changing
+anything_.  “These fragments,” says M. Faugère, “which sickness and death
+had left unfinished, suffered, without ceasing to be immortal, all the
+mutilation which an exaggerated prudence or a misdirected zeal could
+suggest, with the view not only of guarding their orthodoxy, but of
+embellishing their style—the style of the author of the ‘Provincials’!”
+“There are not,” he adds, “twenty successive lines which do not present
+some alteration, great or small.  As for total omissions and partial
+suppressions, they are without number.”  M. Cousin is equally emphatic.
+“There are,” he says, “examples of every kind of alteration—alteration of
+words, alteration of phrases, suppressions, substitutions, additions,
+arbitrary compositions, and, what is worse, decompositions more arbitrary
+still.”
+
+It is impossible to defend the first editors of the ‘Pensées.’  But it
+should be remembered that their task was one not only of theological
+perplexity, but of great literary difficulty.  Pascal’s manuscripts were
+a mere mass of confused papers, sometimes written on both sides, and in a
+hand for the most part so obscure and imperfectly formed as to be
+illegible to all who had not made it a special study.  The papers were
+pasted or bundled together without any natural connection, parts
+containing the same piece being sometimes intersected and sometimes
+widely separated from one another.  If the editors, therefore, did their
+work ill, it was partly no doubt from incompetency, but partly from its
+inherent difficulty, and from the fact that being so near to Pascal they
+could hardly appreciate the feelings of the modern critic as to the
+sacredness of his style, and of all that came from his pen.
+
+The edition of 1669 continued to be reprinted with little alteration for
+a century.  Various additional fragments were brought to light,
+especially the famous conversation between De Saci and Pascal regarding
+Epictetus and Montaigne; but the form of the fragments remained
+unchanged.  It was not till the edition of Condorcet in 1776 that they
+can be said to have undergone any new _rédaction_.  Unhappily Pascal
+suffered in the hands of the Encyclopedists, as he had previously
+suffered in the hands of the Jansenists and the Sorbonne.  The first
+editors had expunged whatever might seem at variance with orthodoxy.
+Condorcet suppressed or modified whatever partook of a too lofty
+enthusiasm or a too fervent piety.  It became a current idea among the
+Encyclopedists that the accident at Neuilly had affected Pascal’s brain.
+We have already seen how Voltaire spoke of this; and he directed an early
+attack (1734) upon the doctrine of human nature contained in the
+‘Pensées.’  Now, in his old age, he hailed Condorcet’s edition, and
+reissued it two years later, with an Introduction and Notes by himself.
+
+In the following year, 1779, appeared the elaborate and well-known
+edition of Pascal’s works by the Abbé Bossut, accompanied by an admirable
+“Discours sur la Vie et les Ouvrages de Pascal.”  In this edition the
+remains are found for the first time in some degree of completeness.  All
+the fragments published by Port Royal, and all those subsequently brought
+to light by Des Molets and others, are included and arranged in a new
+order.  But meritorious as were Bossut’s editorial labours as a whole,
+they did not attempt any restoration of the ‘Pensées’ to their original
+text; and even the new fragments published by him were not left
+untouched.  He embodied, for example, the famous conversation with De
+Saci, but without giving De Saci’s part of the dialogue.  In short, he
+reproduced, as M. Havet says, all the faults of the first editors, and
+made others of his own.  This is the more remarkable that he is said to
+have had in his possession a copy of the original manuscripts.
+Condorcet, however, consulted the original manuscripts themselves,
+without any thought of doing justice to Pascal’s text.
+
+So matters remained till 1842, when M. Cousin published his famous Report
+on the subject to the French Academy.  The French public then found to
+their astonishment that, with so many editions of the ‘Pensées,’ they had
+not the ‘Pensées’ themselves.  While philosophers had disputed as to his
+ideas, and critics admired his style, the veritable Pascal of the
+‘Pensées’ had all the time lain concealed in a mass of manuscripts in the
+National Library.  Such a story, it may be imagined, did not lack any
+force in the manner in which M. Cousin told it; and an eager desire arose
+for a new and complete edition of the fragments.  Cousin had prepared the
+way, but he did not himself undertake this task, which was reserved for
+M. Faugère, whose great edition appeared two years later, in 1844.
+Nothing can deprive M. Faugère of the credit of being the first editor of
+a _complete_ and _authentic_ text of the ‘Pensées.’
+
+Other editions of distinctive merit have since appeared; and it may be
+admitted that, in the natural reaction from the laxity of former
+editions, he gave a too literal transcript of the manuscripts, including
+some things of little importance, and others more properly belonging to
+an edition of the ‘Provincial Letters’ than of the ‘Pensées.’  But,
+whether it be the result of early association or of greater familiarity
+with M. Faugère’s pages, I own still a preference for this edition, while
+admitting the admirable perspicuity and intelligence of many of M.
+Havet’s notes, and the splendour of the edition of M. Victor Rochet, the
+most recent (1873) that has come under my notice.
+
+The principle observed by M. Faugère is strongly defended in his preface.
+He allowed himself no discretionary powers of emendation, because “the
+limits of such a power might,” he says, “be too easily overstepped, and
+would have left room for belief that greater liberties had been taken
+than was actually the case.”  “The manuscripts,” he adds, “have been
+read, or rather studied, page by page, line by line, syllable by
+syllable, to the end; and, with the exception of illegible words (which,
+however, are carefully indicated), they have passed completely into the
+present edition.”
+
+So far, this principle has been adhered to by subsequent editors.  There
+has been no further tampering with Pascal’s words, but more or less
+latitude has been taken in publishing all the manuscript details, and
+especially in the arrangement of the several fragments.  Faugère fancied
+that he could trace in Pascal’s own notes the indication of an interior
+arrangement, into which the several parts of his proposed work in defence
+of religion were intended to fall; and he has grouped the fragments in
+his second volume according to these supposed indications.  M. Havet does
+not think that it is possible any longer to discover the true order of
+the fragments.  He does not believe that any such order existed in the
+author’s own mind.  He had a general design, and certain great divisions;
+a preface was sketched here, and a chapter there; but in throwing his
+thoughts upon paper as they presented themselves to him, he did not stop
+to assort them, or to bring them into any fitting connection.  What
+Pascal himself did not do, M. Havet does not think it possible any editor
+can do.  Accordingly, he recurs to the old, if somewhat arbitrary,
+arrangement of Bossut, as the most familiar and useful.  M. Rochet
+follows an elaborate arrangement, professedly founded on the original
+plan of Pascal, as sketched by himself in the conversation reported by
+his nephew in the preface to the primary edition of the fragments.  He
+considers that all the Thoughts find their natural place in this plan and
+in no other.  But M. Rochet’s classifications are, partly at least,
+inspired by his own ecclesiastical tendencies; and he is far from just to
+the labours of M. Faugère, and the real light and order which these
+labours introduced into the development of Pascal’s ideas.
+
+It is unnecessary for us to attempt to hold the balance between Pascal’s
+several editors, or to say which of them has most justice on his side.
+Of two things there can be no doubt: first, that any special arrangement
+of the ‘Pensées,’ so as to give the idea of a connected book in defence
+of religion, is, so far, arbitrary—the work, that is to say, of the
+editor rather than of the author; and secondly, that there is no
+difficulty, from the original preface and otherwise, of gathering the
+general order of Pascal’s ideas, and the method which appeared to him the
+true one of meeting the irreligion of his day, and vindicating the divine
+truth of Christianity—points which shall afterwards come before us.
+
+The special question raised by M. Cousin as to Pascal’s scepticism will
+also be best discussed in its true order, in connection with such
+passages as have suggested it.  Considering Pascal’s traditionary
+reputation as the defender of religion, there was a character of surprise
+in this question, that forced a lively debate, as soon as it was raised,
+in France and Germany, and even England.  Vinet and Neander both joined
+in it; and the two lectures delivered by the latter before the Royal
+Academy of Sciences in Berlin in 1847, are highly deserving of perusal by
+all students of philosophy. {164}  But the issue is an absurd one, before
+the combatants are agreed as to the meaning of the word Scepticism, and
+before the reader has before him the views of Pascal, and the manner in
+which he defines his own attitude in relation to what he considered the
+two great lines of thought opposed to Christianity.  When we are in
+possession of his own statements, we may find that much of the indignant
+rhetoric of M. Cousin is beside the question, and that, although Pascal
+was certainly no Cartesian, and has used some strong and rash expressions
+about the weakness of human reason, neither is he a sceptic in any usual
+sense.  He has, in fact, defined his own position with singular clearness
+and force.
+
+But before turning to his views on these higher subjects, it will be well
+to present our readers with some of Pascal’s more miscellaneous and
+general Thoughts.  In doing so, it is not necessary, in such a volume as
+this, that we indicate throughout the edition from which we take our
+quotations.  We shall quote from the editions of Faugère or Havet, as may
+be most convenient, and take them in such order as suits our own purpose
+of exhibiting Pascal’s mind as clearly as we can.  For the same reason,
+we shall give such passages as appear to us not always the most just or
+accurate in thought, but the most characteristic or representative of the
+veritable Pascal, whose true words were so long concealed from the world.
+We cannot do better, in the first instance, than note what so great a
+mathematician has to say of geometry and the “mathematical mind,”
+compared with the naturally _acute_ mind (“l’esprit de finesse”), betwixt
+which he draws an interesting parallel.  The fragment on the
+“Mathematical” or “Geometric Mind” was, with the exception of a brief
+passage given by Des Molets {165} in 1728, originally published, although
+with numerous suppressions, in Condorcet’s edition of the ‘Pensées.’  It
+appeared for the first time in its complete form, and under its proper
+title, in Faugère’s edition, along with its natural pendant, the
+closely-allied fragment, entitled “L’Art de Persuader.”  We give a few
+passages from the first fragment:—
+
+    “We may have three principal objects in the study of truth—one to
+    discover it when we seek it, another to demonstrate it when we
+    possess it, and a third and last to discriminate it from the false
+    when we examine it. . . .  Geometry excels in all three, and
+    especially in the art of discovering unknown truths, which it calls
+    _analysis_. . .  There is a method which excels geometry, but is
+    impossible to man, _for whatever transcends geometry transcends us_
+    [in natural science, as he explains elsewhere].  This is the method
+    of defining everything and proving everything. . .  A fine method,
+    but impossible; since it is evident that the first terms that we wish
+    to define, suppose precedent terms necessary for their
+    explanation—and that the first propositions that we wish to prove,
+    suppose others which precede them; and so it is clear we can never
+    arrive at absolutely first principles.  In pushing our researches to
+    the utmost, we necessarily reach primitive words that admit of no
+    further definition, and principles so obvious, that they require no
+    proof.  Man can never, therefore, from natural incompetency, possess
+    an absolutely complete science. . . .  But geometry, while inferior
+    in its aims, is absolutely certain within its limits.  It neither
+    defines everything, nor attempts to prove everything, and must, so
+    far, yield its pretension to be an absolute science; but it sets out
+    from things universally admitted as clear and constant, and is
+    therefore perfectly true, because in consonance with nature.  Its
+    function is not to define things universally clear and understood,
+    but to define all others; and not to attempt to prove things
+    intuitively known to men, but to attempt to prove all others.
+    Against this, the true order of knowledge, those alike err who
+    attempt to define and to prove everything, and those who neglect
+    definition and demonstration where things are not self-evident.  This
+    is what geometry teaches perfectly.  It attempts no definition of
+    such things as _space_, _time_, _motion_, _number_, _equality_, and
+    the like, because these terms designate so naturally the things which
+    they signify, that any attempt at making them more clear ends in
+    making them more obscure.  For there is nothing more futile than the
+    talk of those who would define primitive words. {166}
+
+    . . . . . . . .
+
+    “In geometry the principles are palpable, but removed from common
+    use. . . .  In the sphere of natural wit or acuteness, the principles
+    are in common use and before all eyes—it is only a question of having
+    a good view of them; for they are so subtle and numerous, that some
+    are almost sure to escape observation. . . .  All geometers would be
+    men of acuteness if they had sufficient insight, for they never
+    reason falsely on the principles recognised by them.  All fine or
+    acute spirits would be geometers if they could fix their thoughts on
+    the unwonted principles of geometry.  The reason why some finer
+    spirits are not geometers is, that they cannot turn their attention
+    at all to the principles of geometry; but geometers fail in finer
+    perception, because they do not see all that is before them, and
+    being accustomed to the plain and palpable principles of geometry,
+    and never reasoning until they have well ascertained and handled
+    their principles, they lose themselves in matters of intellectual
+    subtlety, where the principles are not so easily laid hold of.  Such
+    things are seen with difficulty; they are felt rather than seen.
+    They are so delicate and multitudinous that it requires a very
+    delicate and neat sense to appreciate them. . . .  So it is as rare
+    for geometers to be men of subtle wit as it is for the latter to be
+    geometers, because geometers like to treat these nicer matters
+    geometrically, and so make themselves ridiculous; they like to
+    commence with definition, and then go on to principles—a mode which
+    does not at all suit this sort of reasoning.  It is not that the mind
+    does not take this method, but it does so silently, naturally, and
+    without conscious art.  The perception of the process belongs only to
+    a few minds, and those of the highest order. . . .  Geometers, who
+    are only geometers, are sure to be right, provided the subject come
+    within their scope, and is capable of explanation by definition and
+    principles.  Otherwise they go wrong altogether, for they only judge
+    rightly upon principles clearly set forth and established.  On the
+    other hand, subtle men, who are only subtle, lack patience, in
+    matters of speculation and imagination, to reach first principles
+    which they have never known in the world, and which are entirely
+    beyond their beat. . . .
+
+    “There are different kinds of sound sense.  Some succeed in one order
+    of things, and not in another, in which they are simply extravagant.
+    . . .  Some minds draw consequences well from a few principles,
+    others are more at home in drawing conclusions from a great variety
+    of principles.  For example, some understand well the phenomena of
+    water, with reference to which the principles are few, but the
+    results extremely delicate, so that only very great accuracy of mind
+    can trace them.  Such men would probably not be great geometers,
+    because geometry involves a multitude of principles, and because the
+    mind which may penetrate thoroughly a few principles to their depth
+    may not be at all able to penetrate things which combine a multitude
+    of principles. . . .  There are two sorts of mind: the one fathoms
+    rapidly and deeply the consequences of principles—this is the
+    observant and accurate mind; the other embraces a great multitude of
+    principles, without confounding them—and this is the mathematical
+    mind.  The one is marked by energy and accuracy, the other by
+    amplitude.  But the one may exist without the other.  The mind may be
+    powerful and narrow, or it may be ample and weak.” {168}
+
+Few of Pascal’s Thoughts are more interesting than those on “Eloquence
+and Style.”  So great a master of the art of expression had naturally
+something to say on these subjects.
+
+    “Continued eloquence wearies.  Princes and kings amuse themselves
+    sometimes; they are not always upon their thrones—they tire of these.
+    Grandeur must be laid aside in order to be realised.
+
+    “Eloquence is a picture of thought; and thus those who, after having
+    drawn a picture, still go on, make a tableau and not a likeness.
+
+    “Eloquence is the art of saying things in such a manner—first, that
+    those to whom they are addressed can understand them without trouble
+    and with pleasure; and secondly, that they may be interested in them
+    in such a way that their _amour propre_ may lead them gladly to
+    reflect upon them.  It consists, therefore, in a correspondence
+    established between the mind and heart of the hearers on the one
+    side, and the thoughts and expressions used on the other, and so
+    implies a close study of the human heart in order to know all its
+    springs, and to find the due measures of speech to address to it.  It
+    must confine itself, as far as possible, to the simplicity of nature,
+    and not make great what is small, nor small what is great.  It is not
+    enough that a thing be fine, it must be fitting,—neither in excess
+    nor defect.”
+
+    “Eloquence should prevail by gentle suasion, not by constraint.  It
+    should reign, not tyrannise.
+
+    “There are some who speak well, and who do not write well.  The
+    place—the assembly—excites them, and draws forth their mind more than
+    they ever experience without such excitement.”
+
+    “Those who make antitheses by forcing the sense are like men who make
+    false windows for the sake of symmetry.  Their rule is not to speak
+    correctly, but to make correct figures.”
+
+    “There should be in eloquence always what is true and real; but that
+    which is pleasing should itself be the real.”
+
+    “When we meet with the natural style we are surprised and delighted,
+    for we expected to find an author, and we find a man; whilst those of
+    good taste who in looking into a book think to find a man, are
+    altogether surprised to find an author.  _Plus poetice quam humane
+    locutus es_.  They honour nature most who teach her that she can
+    speak best on all subjects—even on theology.”
+
+    “There are men who always dress up nature.  No mere king with them,
+    but an august monarch.  No Paris, but the capital of the kingdom.
+    There are places in which it is necessary to call Paris Paris;
+    others, where we must call it the capital of the kingdom.”
+
+    “When in composition we find a word repeated, and on trying to
+    correct it find it so suitable that a change would spoil the sense,
+    it is better to let it alone.  This stamps it as fitting, and it is a
+    stupid feeling which does not recognise that repetition in such a
+    case is not a fault; for there is no universal rule.
+
+    “The meaning itself changes with the words which express it.  The
+    meaning derives its dignity from the words, instead of imparting it
+    to them.”
+
+    “The last thing that we discover in writing a book is to know what to
+    put at the beginning.
+
+    “When a discourse paints a passion or effect naturally, we find in
+    ourselves the truth of what we hear, which was there without our
+    knowing it, so that we are led to like the man who discovers so much
+    to us.  For he does not show us his own good, but ours; and this good
+    turn makes him lovable.  Besides that, the community of intelligence
+    we have with him necessarily inclines the heart towards him.
+
+    “Let none allege that I have said nothing new.  The arrangement of
+    the matter is new.  When we play at tennis, both play with the same
+    ball; but one plays better than the other.  They might as well accuse
+    me of using old words, as if the same thoughts differently arranged
+    would not form a different discourse; just as the same words
+    differently arranged express different thoughts.
+
+    “There is a definite standard of taste and beauty, which consists in
+    a certain relation between our nature—it may be weak or strong, but
+    such as it is—and the thing that pleases us.  All that is formed to
+    this standard delights us,—house, song, writing, verse, prose, women,
+    buds, rivers, trees, rooms, dress, etc.  All that is not formed by
+    this standard disgusts men of good taste.
+
+    “I never judge of the same thing exactly in the same manner.  I
+    cannot judge of my work in the course of doing it.  I must do as
+    painters do, place myself at a distance from it, but not too far.
+    How then?  You may guess.”
+
+We do not look to Pascal especially for worldly insight, or for that
+sharp knowledge of men that make the sayings of clever social writers
+like Rochefoucauld or Horace Walpole memorable, if not always wise or
+kind.  But there are many of the Thoughts which show that the penitent of
+Port Royal had looked with clear observant eyes below the surface of
+Paris society, and that he had a deep sense not only of the moral but the
+social weaknesses of humanity.
+
+    “When passion leads us towards anything, we forget duty; as we like a
+    book we read it, while we ought to be doing something else.  In order
+    to be reminded of our duty, it is necessary to propose to do
+    something that we dislike; then we excuse ourselves on the ground
+    that we have something else to do, and so we recollect our duty by
+    this means.
+
+    “How wisely are men distinguished by their exterior rather than by
+    their interior qualifications!  Which of us two shall take the lead?
+    Which shall yield precedence?  The man of less talent?  But I am as
+    clever as he.  Then we must fight it out.  But he has four lackeys
+    and I have only one.  That is a visible difference.  We have only to
+    count the numbers.  It is my place then to give way, and I am a fool
+    to contest the point.  In this way peace is kept, which is the
+    greatest of blessings.
+
+    “There is a great advantage in rank, which gives to a man of eighteen
+    or twenty a degree of acceptance, publicity, and respect which
+    another can hardly obtain by merit at fifty.  It is a gain of thirty
+    years without any trouble.
+
+    “Respect for others requires you to inconvenience yourself.  This
+    seems foolish, yet it is very proper.  It seems to say, I would
+    gladly inconvenience myself if you really required me to do so,
+    seeing I am ready to do so without serving you.
+
+    “‘This is _my_ dog,’ say children; ‘that sunny seat is mine.’  There
+    is the beginning and type of the usurpation of the whole earth.
+
+    “This _I_ is hateful.  You, Miton, {171} merely cover it, you do not
+    take it away; you are therefore always hateful.  Not at all, you say;
+    for if we act obligingly to all men, they have no reason to hate us.
+    So far true, if there was nothing hateful in the _I_ itself but the
+    displeasure which it gives.  But if I hate it because it is
+    essentially unjust, because it makes itself the centre of everything,
+    I shall hate it always.  In short, this _I_ has two qualities: it is
+    unjust in itself, in that it makes itself the centre of everything;
+    it is an annoyance to others, in that it would serve itself by them.
+    Each _I_ is the enemy, and would be the tyrant, of all others.
+
+    “He who would thoroughly know the vanity of men has only to consider
+    the causes and effects of love.  The cause is a _je ne sais quoi_, an
+    indefinable trifle—the effects are monstrous.  If the nose of
+    Cleopatra had been a little shorter, it would have changed the
+    history of the world.
+
+    “You have a bad manner—‘excuse me, if you please.’  Without the
+    apology I should not have known that there was any harm done.
+    Begging your pardon, the ‘excuse me,’ is all the mischief.
+
+    “Do you wish men to speak well of you?  Then never speak well of
+    yourself.
+
+    “The more mind we have, the more do we observe men of original mind.
+    It is your commonplace people that find no difference betwixt one man
+    and another.
+
+    “It is the contest that delights us, and not the victory.  It is the
+    same in play, and the same in search for truth.  We love to watch in
+    argument the conflicts of opinion; but the plain truth we do not care
+    to look at.  To regard it with pleasure, we must see it gradually
+    emerging from the contest of debate.  It is the same with passions:
+    the struggle of two contending passions has great interest, but the
+    dominance of one is mere brutality.
+
+    “The example of chastity in Alexander has not availed in the same
+    degree to make men chaste, as his drunkenness has to make them
+    intemperate.  Men are not ashamed not to be so virtuous as he; and it
+    seems excusable not to be more vicious.  A man thinks he is not
+    altogether sunk in the mud when he follows the vices of great men.
+
+    “I have spent much time in the study of the abstract sciences, but
+    the paucity of persons with whom you can communicate on such
+    subjects, gave me a distaste for them.  When I began to study man, I
+    saw that these abstract studies are not suited to him, and that in
+    diving into them I wandered farther from my real object than those
+    who were ignorant of them, and I forgave men for not having attended
+    to these things.  But I thought at least I should find many
+    companions in the study of mankind, which is the true and proper
+    study of man.  I was mistaken.  There are yet fewer students of man
+    than of geometry.
+
+    “People in general are called neither poets nor geometers, although
+    they have all that in them, and are capable of being judges of it.
+    They are not specifically marked out.  When they enter a room, they
+    speak of the subject on hand.  They do not show a greater aptitude
+    for one subject than another, except as circumstances call out their
+    talents. . . .
+
+    “It is poor praise when a man is pointed out on entering a room as
+    being a clever poet; a bad mark that he should only be referred to
+    when the question is as to the merit of some verses. . . .
+
+    “Man is full of wants, and likes those who can satisfy them.  ‘Such a
+    one is a good mathematician,’ it may be said.  But then I must be
+    doing mathematics; he would turn me into a proposition.  Another is a
+    good soldier; he would take me for a besieged place.  Give me your
+    true man of general talents, who can adapt himself to all my needs.
+
+    “If a man sets himself at a window to see the passers-by, and I
+    happen to pass, can I say that he set himself there to see me?  No;
+    for he does not think of me in particular.  But if a man loves a
+    woman for her beauty, does he love _her_?  No; for the smallpox,
+    which will destroy her beauty without killing her, will cause him to
+    love her no more.  And if any one loves me for my judgment or my
+    memory, does he really love _me_?  No; for I may lose those qualities
+    without ceasing to be.  Where, then, is this _me_, if it is neither
+    in soul nor body?
+
+    “How is it that a lame man does not anger us, but a blundering mind
+    does?  Is it that the cripple admits that we walk straight, but a
+    crippled mind accuses us of limping?  Epictetus asks also, Why are we
+    not annoyed if any one tells us that we are unwell in the head, and
+    yet are angry if they tell us that we reason falsely or choose
+    unwisely?  The reason is, that we know certainly nothing ails our
+    head, or that we are not crippled in body.  But we are not so certain
+    that we have chosen correctly.
+
+    “All men naturally hate one another.
+
+    “Desire and force are the source of all our actions—desire of our
+    voluntary, force of our involuntary actions.
+
+    “Men are necessarily such fools, that it would be folly of another
+    kind not to be a fool.
+
+    “To make a man a saint, grace is absolutely necessary; and whoever
+    doubts this does not know what a saint is, nor what a man is.
+
+    “The last act is always tragedy, whatever fine comedy there may have
+    been in the rest of life—We must all die alone.”
+
+    “There can only be two kinds of men: the righteous, who believe
+    themselves sinners; and sinners, who believe themselves righteous.
+
+    “Unbelievers are the most credulous; they believe the miracles of
+    Vespasian to escape believing the miracles of Moses.
+
+    “Atheists should speak only of things perfectly clear, but it is not
+    perfectly clear that the soul is material.
+
+    “Atheism indicates force of mind, but only up to a certain point.”
+
+Some of the foregoing Thoughts {174} may appear to our readers sufficient
+to warrant the charge of scepticism, already adverted to.  Pascal
+certainly speaks at times both of human life and human reason in a
+contemptuous manner.  Even Rochefoucauld could hardly express himself
+more bitterly than he does now and then when he fixes his clear gaze upon
+the folly, the vanity, the weaknesses which make up man’s customary life,
+and the deceits which he practises upon himself and his fellows.  All the
+world seems to him at such times “in a state of delusion.”  If there is
+truth, it “is not where men suppose it to be.”  The majority are to be
+followed, not “because they have more reason, but because they have more
+force.”
+
+    “The power of kings is founded on the reason and on the folly of the
+    people, but chiefly on their folly.  The greatest and most important
+    thing in the world has weakness for its basis, and the basis is
+    wonderfully secure, for there is nothing more certain than that
+    people will be weak. . . .  Our magistrates well understand this
+    mystery. . . .  Save for their crimson robes, ermine, palaces of
+    justice, fleur-de-lis, they would never have duped the world.  Where
+    would the physician be without his ‘cassock and mule,’ and the
+    theologian without his ‘square cap and flowing garments’?  These vain
+    adornments impress the imagination, and secure respect.  We cannot
+    look at an advocate in his gown and wig without a favourable
+    impression of his abilities.  The soldier alone needs no disguise,
+    because he gains his authority by actual force, the others by
+    grimace.”
+
+In such sentences, as well as in some previously quoted, the cynicism of
+both Hobbes and Montaigne seems to speak.  Man is really a fool, and
+society rests upon force.  The further down we go, we come, not to any
+natural rights, or essential principles of justice, which reason is
+capable of judging, but only to a mass of customs built up out of selfish
+instincts, and controlled by external influence.  Pascal repeats
+Montaigne over and over again, and seems to make many of his cynicisms
+his own.  This is not to be denied.  “Montaigne is right.  Custom should
+be followed because it is custom, and because it is found to be
+established, without inquiry whether it be reasonable or not.”  Yet he
+puts in a caveat, as we shall see more fully afterwards, just when he
+seems most to have identified himself with the representative of
+scepticism.  In blindly following custom, he reserves “those matters
+which are not contrary to natural or divine right;” and the root of
+custom, even in the popular mind, he believes to be a dim sense of
+justice.  Again, in a similar vein, he asks, “Why follow ancient laws and
+ancient opinions?  _Are they wiser_?  _No_.  But they stand apart from
+present interests; and _thus take away the root of difference_.”  Here,
+as so often, the moralist supplants the sceptic, and suggests a higher
+thought, while seeming to approve of a superficial Pyrrhonism.
+
+It is easy, in one sense, to make out a case of scepticism against
+Pascal.  He always writes strongly.  There is passion in all his thought.
+He had a strong and deep sense of human weakness, and incapacity to
+attain the highest truth.  He spoke of the philosophy of Descartes
+without respect.  With most of the Port Royalists, indeed, he seems to
+have concurred in the Cartesian doctrine of automata, {176} strangely
+revived in our day by Professor Huxley.  But he repudiated the notion of
+“subtle matter,” and even spoke of it with contempt (_dont il se moquait
+fort_).  “He could not bear,” his niece tells us, in a passage often
+quoted and emphasised, “the Cartesian manner of explaining the formation
+of all things.”  “I cannot forgive Descartes,” he said.  “He would
+willingly in all his philosophy have done without God, if he could; but
+he could not get on without letting him give the world a fillip to set it
+agoing: after that, he has nothing more to do with God.”  Whether he had
+studied Descartes or not, he evidently did not share the enthusiasm of
+Arnauld and others for his philosophy.  He even spoke of it as “useless,
+uncertain, and troublesome—nay, as ridiculous.” {177}  He has added, in
+that brusque, rapid, forceful style characteristic of many of his
+Thoughts, that “he did not think the whole of philosophy worth an hour’s
+trouble.”  Again: “To set light by philosophy is the true philosophy.”
+When we look at such expressions, and many others, it is not to be
+wondered at that Pascal has been accused of scepticism.  As he could not
+forgive Descartes, so Cousin cannot forgive him for his depreciation of
+Descartes.  One who saw nothing in Cartesianism or philosophy in general
+beyond what these rash sentences, freshly restored in all their audacity,
+declare, could be nothing but an “enemy of all philosophy.”
+
+It is impossible not to feel that there is some ground for this
+accusation, and that, if we were to draw our knowledge of Pascal merely
+from such passages, Cousin makes out something of a case against him.
+But many other passages, hardly less emphatic, must make every candid
+reader pause before he comes to any definite conclusion on the subject,
+if it is necessary to come to such a conclusion at all.  It must never be
+forgotten that we have nowhere the complete mind of Pascal; that it was
+of the very nature of thoughts rapidly dashed upon paper—as the very form
+of many we have quoted clearly indicates they were—to be one-sided and
+often extravagant.  Pascal, of all men, is not to be measured by his
+strong expressions.  His intellectual nature, while profound, was narrow
+and intense.  He put his whole soul into what moved him for the time; and
+a certain excess of passionate intellectual emotion evidently speaks in
+some of the most striking of the ‘Pensées.’  We may imagine how in
+some—perhaps in many—cases they would have been toned down had he lived
+to revise and refashion them into a harmonious whole.  That interior
+elaboration,—“a kind of second creation of genius,” as M. Faugère
+says—which no one else may venture upon,—would undoubtedly have come from
+his own masterly hand, if it had been given him to bring fragment to
+fragment, and to fit them together into a complete fabric.  It would be a
+hard thing to judge any student, and especially a student like Pascal, by
+the scattered notes of his library table; and precious as these fragments
+are, we must remember that this is their character, and nothing else.
+The fact that we now have them in all their native _hardiesse_ makes this
+caution not the less but all the more necessary.
+
+In passing on to consider more particularly Pascal’s philosophical and
+religious attitude, we shall see more fully the bearing of these remarks.
+Pascal, in point of fact, embraces many points of view; and, if he leans
+sometimes to scepticism, he sees also the strong side of what he calls
+dogmatism or rational philosophy.  The very exaggerations of his
+language, now on this side and now on that, show that he himself is more
+than either, as his own words bear.  “It is necessary,” he says, “to have
+three qualities—those of the Pyrrhonist, of the geometrician (the
+dogmatist), and of the humble Christian.  These unite with and attemper
+one another, so that we doubt when we should, we aim at certainty when we
+should, and we submit when we should.”  He certainly thought that he had
+found a surer road to truth than either Dogmatism or Pyrrhonism.  Whether
+he succeeded in doing so will appear as we proceed.
+
+The famous conversation with De Saci, when he entered Port Royal, must be
+taken as the chief key to Pascal’s own philosophical attitude.  There is
+nowhere in any of the Thoughts so complete an exhibition of his point of
+view; and all the editors who have most entered into Pascal’s
+spirit—Sainte-Beuve, Faugère, and Havet alike—have recognised its
+importance.  It is really, as Havet says, of the nature of an
+introduction to the ‘Pensées.’
+
+In this conversation Pascal signalises what he believes to be the two
+great opposing systems of human philosophy at all times; the rational,
+dogmatic, or Stoical, on the one hand—the sceptical, or Epicurean, on the
+other.  He takes Epictetus as the representative of the one; Montaigne as
+the representative of the other.  In depicting dogmatism at other times,
+he seems to have Descartes especially in view; but in speaking of
+scepticism and Pyrrhonism (which is his own expression), it is always
+Montaigne that he has before him.  Montaigne is Pyrrhonist _par
+excellence_; and undoubtedly the famous Essays had greatly fascinated
+Pascal, like many others in his generation.  He was constantly drawn to
+them as embodying one, and that a deep, phase of his own experience.  He
+felt his own thought expressed in many pages of Montaigne, and had that
+favour for the Essays that every thoughtful man has for the book that
+makes his own experience alive, and brings it clearly before him.  But he
+has, at the same time, made plainly intelligible his own differences from
+Montaigne, and marked with his usual boldness the limitations of his
+thought.  If Pascal is Pyrrhonist, he is certainly not Pyrrhonist after
+the manner of Montaigne, deeply as he responds to many of the notes of
+the Essays, and at times seems to make them his own.
+
+The conversation with De Saci took place in 1654, when Pascal first went
+to Port Royal des Champs, and De Saci became his spiritual director.  We
+owe its preservation to Fontaine, from whose manuscript ‘Memoirs’ it was
+extracted, and first published in 1728 by Des Molets.  After all the
+labour of Faugère, Havet believes himself to have given for the first
+time the correct text of the conversation from the original print of Des
+Molets, based on Fontaine’s manuscripts, rather than from the text of the
+‘Memoirs’ as afterwards published.  Fontaine describes in his _naïve_
+manner the impression made by Pascal upon De Saci, and how the brilliancy
+of power which had charmed all the world could not be hidden within the
+shades of Port Royal.  Ignorant of the Fathers of the Church, he had
+found by his own mental and spiritual penetration the very truths to be
+met with in them; and De Saci seemed to see another St Augustine before
+him in the wonderful talk of the gifted penitent.  It was his practice in
+dealing with his penitents to adapt his conversation to their peculiar
+powers.  If he spoke with M. Champagne, for example, he talked with him
+of painting.  If he saw M. Hamon, he inquired about the art of medicine.
+If it was the surgeon of the place, he had something to say of surgery.
+All was designed to lead the thoughts from all human things up to God.
+With Pascal, therefore, it was philosophy upon which his conversation
+fell, to try the depths of his mind, and see what special direction he
+needed.  “Pascal told him that the two books most familiar to him were
+Epictetus and Montaigne, and he lavished great praise on both.  M. de
+Saci had always wished to read these two authors, and asked M. Pascal to
+explain them fully.”
+
+    “Epictetus,” said Pascal, “is one of the philosophers of the world
+    who have best known the duties of man.  Above all things, he would
+    have man regard God as his chief object—to be persuaded that He
+    governs all things with righteousness—to submit to Him cordially, and
+    to follow Him willingly, as having made all things with perfect
+    wisdom.  Such a disposition would stay all complaints and murmurs,
+    and prepare the human mind to bear quietly the most troublesome
+    events.  ‘Never say,’ he observes (Enchirid. 11), ‘I have lost that;
+    say rather, I have restored it.  My son is dead; I have surrendered
+    him.  My wife is dead; I have given her up.’  And so of every other
+    good. . . .  While its use is permitted, regard it as a good
+    belonging to others, as a traveller does in an inn.  You should not
+    wish,’ he adds, ‘that things be as you desire, but you should desire
+    them to be as they are.’ . . .  It is your duty to play well the part
+    assigned to you, but to choose the part is the act of Another.  Have
+    always death before your eyes, and the evils which are least
+    supportable, and you would never think meanly of anything, nor desire
+    anything in excess.  He shows in a thousand ways what is the duty of
+    man.  He wishes him to be humble, to conceal his good resolutions,
+    especially in their beginnings, that he may carry them out in secret.
+    Nothing is so ruinous to them as publicity.  He never ceases to
+    repeat that the whole duty and desire of man ought to be to
+    acknowledge the will of God, and to follow it.
+
+    “Such were the lights of this great mind, who has so well understood
+    the duties of man.  I venture to say, that he would have deserved to
+    be adored if he had only known as well human weakness; but in order
+    to do this, he must have been God Himself.  Mere man as he was, after
+    having so well explained human duty, he loses himself in the
+    presumption of human capacity.  He avers that God has given to every
+    man the means of acquitting himself of all his obligations; that such
+    means are always within his own power, that happiness is to be sought
+    by things within our reach, since God has given us them for this very
+    end.  He points out in what our freedom consists: goods, life, esteem
+    are not in our power, and therefore do not lead to God; but none can
+    force the mind to believe what is false, nor the will to love that
+    which will make it miserable.  These two powers are therefore free;
+    and by these we can render ourselves perfect—know God perfectly, love
+    Him, obey Him, please Him—vanquish all vices, acquire all virtues,
+    and so make ourselves holy, and the fellows of God.  These
+    principles, truly diabolic in their pride, lead to other errors—such
+    as that the soul is a portion of the Divine substance, that grief and
+    death are not evils, that we may kill ourselves when we are in such
+    trouble that we may believe God summons us, etc.
+
+    “As for Montaigne—of whom you wish me also, my dear sir, to
+    speak—being born in a Christian country, he makes profession of the
+    Catholic religion, and so far there is nothing peculiar about him.
+    But in the search for a system of morals dictated by reason without
+    the light of faith, he has to lay down his principles on this
+    supposition, and to consider man apart from revelation.  He conceives
+    things in such a universal uncertainty that doubt itself is seized
+    with uncertainty, and doubts whether it doubts.  His scepticism
+    returns upon itself in a perpetual circle without repose, opposing
+    equally those who maintain that all is uncertain, and those who
+    maintain that nothing is, so utterly indisposed is he to any fixity.
+    In this doubt which doubts itself, and this ignorance which is
+    ignorant of itself, is to be found the essence of his thought.  He
+    cannot express it by any positive term; for if he was to say that he
+    doubts, he betrays himself by making it certain that he doubts; and
+    this being formally against his intention, he can only explain
+    himself by an interrogation.  Not wishing to say, I do not know, he
+    can only ask, What do I know?  He has made this his device, putting
+    it under a pair of balances, which, weighted in each scale by a
+    contradiction, hangs in perfect equilibrium.  In other words, he is
+    pure Pyrrhonist.  This is the point round which turn all his
+    discourses and all his essays.  This is the only thing which he
+    leaves fixed, although he may not always keep it before him. . . .
+
+    “It is in this humour, fluctuating and variable as it is, that he
+    combats with an invincible firmness the heretics of his time, who
+    assumed to know the exclusive sense of Scripture.  From the same
+    point of view he thunders vigorously against the horrible impiety of
+    those who dare to be certain that there is no God!  He attacks them
+    especially in the ‘Apology for Raymond de Sebonde.’  Having
+    voluntarily set aside revelation, and abandoned themselves to their
+    natural light—all faith set aside—he asks them on what authority
+    they, who know not the essential reality of anything, dare to judge
+    of that Sovereign Being who is infinite by His very definition.  He
+    demands upon what principles they rest, and presses them to point
+    them out.  He examines all that they bring forward, and so searches
+    them by his wonderful penetration as to show the hollowness of what
+    passes for the most clear and established truths.  He inquires if the
+    soul knows anything whatever—if it knows itself; whether it is
+    substance or accident, body or spirit; what is each of these things,
+    and if there is anything belonging to some order different from
+    either; if the soul knows its own body; if it knows what matter is,
+    or can distinguish the innumerable varieties of body produced from
+    matter; how it can reason if it is material, and how it can be united
+    to a special body, and feel its passions if it be spiritual.  When
+    did it begin to be, with the body or before, and if it ends with it
+    or not? . . . .  The ideas of God and truth are inseparable, and if
+    the one is or is not, if the one is certain or uncertain, the other
+    is necessarily the same.  Who knows if the common sense (_le sens
+    commun_) which we take as a judge of the truth is really this,
+    designed for such a purpose?  Who knows what truth is, and how can we
+    be sure of having it without knowing it?  Who knows even what Being
+    is, since it is impossible to define it; and in trying to do so, it
+    is necessary to presuppose the very idea itself, and say _it is_? . .
+    .
+
+    “I confess, sir, I might look with joy upon the manner in which the
+    author invincibly crumples up proud reason with its own arms.  I
+    could love with my whole heart the minister of so mighty a vengeance
+    if, as a faithful disciple of the Church, he had followed its moral
+    guidance.  But he acts, on the contrary, like a pagan, concluding
+    that we ought to abandon care for others and dwell in peace, gliding
+    lightly over such subjects lest we lose ourselves in them, and taking
+    that to be true and good which at first appears to be so.  This is
+    why he follows everywhere the evidence of the senses and the notions
+    of the community. . . .  In this manner, he says, there is nothing
+    extravagant in his conduct.  He does as others do.  Whatever they do
+    in the foolish thought that they are following the true good, he does
+    from another principle, that as the probabilities (_vraisemblances_)
+    are equally on one side and the other, so example and convenience
+    carry the day with him.  He mounts his horse like any one else—not as
+    a philosopher—because the horse allows him to do so, but without
+    thinking there is any right in the matter, and not knowing whether
+    the horse, on the contrary, may not be entitled to make use of him.
+    He puts constraint to himself in order to shun certain vices; and
+    even guards marriage faithfully, merely on account of the disorder
+    which would otherwise follow. . . .
+
+    “I cannot dissemble that in reading Montaigne, and comparing him with
+    Epictetus, I find in them the two greatest defenders of the most
+    celebrated sects of the world, who profess to follow reason rather
+    than revelation.  We must follow one or other.  Either there is a God
+    and a Sovereign Good, or this is uncertain, and all is
+    uncertain,—whether there is any true good or not. . . .
+
+    “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.
+
+
+
+
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