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 Pascals friends. What is known as the Peace of the Churcha period of temporary quiet and prosperity to Port Royalhad 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 stylethe 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 alterationalteration 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. Pascals 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 Pascals 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 Condorcets 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 Pascals 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 Bossuts 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 Sacis 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 Pascals 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. Faugères pages, I own still a preference for this edition, while admitting the admirable perspicuity and intelligence of many of M. Havets 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 Pascals 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 Pascals 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 authors 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. Rochets 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 Pascals ideas.

It is unnecessary for us to attempt to hold the balance between Pascals 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, arbitrarythe 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 Pascals ideas, and the method which appeared to him the true one of meeting the irreligion of his day, and vindicating the divine truth of Christianitypoints which shall afterwards come before us.

The special question raised by M. Cousin as to Pascals scepticism will also be best discussed in its true order, in connection with such passages as have suggested it. Considering Pascals 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 Pascals 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 Pascals 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 (lesprit 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 Condorcets edition of the Pensées. It appeared for the first time in its complete form, and under its proper title, in Faugères edition, along with its natural pendant, the closely-allied fragment, entitled LArt de Persuader. We give a few passages from the first fragment:

We may have three principal objects in the study of truthone 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 explanationand 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 eyesit 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 principlesa 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 principlesthis is the observant and accurate mind; the other embraces a great multitude of principles, without confounding themand 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 Pascals 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 thronesthey 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 mannerfirst, 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 placethe assemblyexcites 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 subjectseven 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 natureit may be weak or strong, but such as it isand 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 triflethe 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 mannerexcuse 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 actionsdesire 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 lifeWe 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 mans 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 troublesomenay, 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 hours 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 paperas the very form of many we have quoted clearly indicates they wereto 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 someperhaps in manycases 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 sayswhich 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 Pascals 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 qualitiesthose 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 Pascals 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 Pascals spiritSainte-Beuve, Faugère, and Havet alikehave 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 handthe 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 Fontaines 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 objectto be persuaded that He governs all things with righteousnessto 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 perfectknow God perfectly, love Him, obey Him, please Himvanquish 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 errorssuch 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 Montaigneof whom you wish me also, my dear sir, to speakbeing 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 lightall faith set asidehe 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 whateverif 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 elsenot as a philosopherbecause 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 Redeemerthis leads to the height of pride; the other, sensible of mans 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 endowmentsthe 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 sentenceswhich we have been obliged, for the sake of brevity, to compresswe have the suggestion of Pascals 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 soulsa 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 miserablethe 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 mans condition. They have sought on the other hand to inspire sentiments of mere baseness; but neither is this mans 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 truePyrrhonism, 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 Pascals 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 sensiblethe intellectual, or the exercise of reason left to itselfand 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 willthe 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 cur); and it is in this latter manner that we discover first principlesand 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 Pascals mode of expression in the above passage. Cousin has made the most of his confusion of reason and reasoningla raison and le raisonnement. The expression le cur, by which he designates the higher faculty of intuition, may be inadequate and misleadingcomplex 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 mans 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 mans 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 thingsbut 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 beingthe 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 bitterand hopeful, if stern.

Pascals 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 faiths 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 Penséesthe veritable Pascalis 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 Pascalswith deep spiritual intuitions and yet a craving for scientific certainty constantly mocking these intuitionshave 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 gamesters 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 Apologyto be woven into the plan of a treatise in defence of the Christian religionseems 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 methodsrepresented by the diverse philosophies and religions of the worldhe 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 manhis primitive innocence and fall. The idea of the fall, which was a central one in all Pascals thoughts, was to be fully expounded, in its own character and as the source not only of whatever is most inexplicable in mans 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 considerationsof the nature of prolegomena or preparation for the readers mindhe 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 Pascals 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. Pascals genius was in no degree historical, and but slightly criticalnot 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 Pascals mind pre-eminently fitted him. He sees in the Gospel a Divine Power which is capable of ministering to mans higher wantsa 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 mans 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 sensualitythe two sources of all vice. . . . If, in one case, they recognised mans 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 Redeemers 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 Pascals 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 problemthe 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. Mans 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 lifethe 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 strainthat the present condition of man is only intelligible in the light of the Christian revelation, and that this revelation alone answers to all mans 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 twothe 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 itvia, veritas.

Jesus Christ has spoken great things so simply that they seem to have cost Him little thoughtand 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 beto 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 Stephens 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 extremesto 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 divineas 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 philosophyto 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 contemporariesArnauld, 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, Surs 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, LAmulette 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 PascalMadame Périersays, in her life of her brother, 1626. Marguerite Périer, her daughter, Pascals 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 jai 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 lexil mon misérable père.

{13} Cousin, Jacqueline Pascal, pp. 7275.

{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. 7880.

{17} M. Léluts volume (already referred to) deserves special attention in its bearing on Pascals health, and the character of his sufferings. He lays great stress on Pascals 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 Pascals 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. 134137.

{26a} Jacqueline Pascal, p. 73.

{26b} uvres 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, uvres, t. iv.

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

{31} uvres, t. iv. pp. 160,161.

{33} Sir D. Brewster, in an article on Pascals Writings and Discoveries in North Brit. Rev., Aug. 1844. Sir Davids account is almost literally translated from M. Périers letter to Pascal, of date September 22, 1648, and embodied in Pascals Récit de la grande Expérience de lÉquilibre 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. uvres, 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 Descartess favour.

{43b} Récit de la grande Expérience de lÉquilibre des Liqueurs. uvres, t. iv. p. 301Je méditai des lors lexpérience 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, Chamberss Encyclopedia.

{45b} These further researches are expounded in two treatises, De lÉquilibre des Liqueurs, and De la Pesanteur de lAir, supposed to have been written in 1653, but not published till 1663, after the authors death.

{46a} North British Review, August 1844. Sir David in the main translates from M. Bossuts Discours.

{46b} uvres, 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} Cousins Jacqueline, p. 189.

{60} Cousins Jacqueline, p. 161.

{61} Relation de la Sur Jacqueline de Sainte-Euphémie Pascal à Port Royal, 10 Juin 1653a long narrative, extending to about 50 pages of Cousins volume. See also Lettres, Opuscules, etc., ed. by Faugère, pp. 177222.

{63a} Relation de la Sur 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 Roannezs, 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 Kitchins 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, cest-à-dire de prendre une charge et se marier.Faugère, p. 453.

{76} Dhorribles attachesan expression already alluded to, which has given rise to a good deal of speculation.Jacqueline Pascal, Cousin, p. 237.

{77} Cousin, Jacqueline Pascal, pp. 236241.

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

{89} See Beards Port Royal, vol. i. pp. 207, 208.

{90} Recueil dUtrecht, quoted by Maynard, vol. i. p. 78.

{91}

Lan 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 dAbraham, Dieu dIsaac, 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 lEvangile. Grandeur de lâme humaine. Père juste, le monde ne ta point connu, mais je tai connu. Joie, joie, joie, pleurs de joie. Je men suis séparé Dereliquerunt me fontem aquæ vivæ. Mon Dieu me quitterez-vous? Que je nen sois pas séparé éternellement! Cette est la vie éternelle quils te connaissent seul vrai Dieu et celui que tu as envoyé, J.-C. Jésus Christ Jésus Christ Je men suis séparé; je lai fui, renoncé, crucifié. Que je nen sois jamais séparé! Il ne se conserve que par les voies enseignées dans lEvangile. 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 dUtrecht, 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 Pascals well-known friends. It bears below an inscription by Domats sonPortrait de M. Pascal fait par mon pèreand 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} Beards Port Royal, vol. i. p. 243.

{116a} Recueil dUtrecht, 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 (15351600), whose Scientia Media, akin to the Arminian doctrine of Divine foreknowledge, was very famous in its day.

{132} Beards Port Royal, vol. i. p. 271. Founded on Recueil dUtrecht, 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-Beuves statement (t. iii. p. 138), repeated by Mr Beard, and founded apparently on Nicole.

{156} Nicoles 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 Kittos Journal of Sacred Literature, April-October, 1849.

{165} In his Mémoires de Littérature et dHistoire.

{166} Faugère, i. pp. 123129.

{168} Faugère, i. pp. 149152.

{171} See p. 66.

{174} Chiefly from Pensées Diverses.Faugères ed., vol. i. pp. 177242.

{176} The following passage from Fontaines 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.

THE END