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 B1903 .G19 1907 
 
 Studv on Pascal : three lectures / by Jo 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 015 366 
 
A STUDY ON PASCAL. 
 
TKIlorfts bB tbe same autbor. 
 
 St. PAUL 
 Tempi,e Handbooks. 
 
 DENT & CO. 
 
 CHRIST & CRITICISM 
 
 WAI,TER SCOTT PUBUSHING CO. 
 
A STUDY ON PASCAL. 
 
 THREE LECTURES 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN GAMBLE, M.A., 
 
 Vicar of S, Mary's^ Leigh Woods, Cli/ton, Bristol. 
 
 1907: 
 
 J. BAKER & SON, CLIFTON. 
 SiMPKiN, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., Ltd., London, 
 
1. Efie Hife oi ^a^cal 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924029015366 
 
THE LIFE OF PASCAL. 
 
 "X^^yE read that an inquirer once put to Jesus the 
 fundamental question, Are there jew that he 
 saved ?— and that His only answer was to put aside the 
 query and turn the thoughts of the questioner to his own 
 undeniable duty : Strive to enter in at the strait gate, 
 for many shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able. 
 
 To the question which the Lord thus left unanswered, 
 His Church has not given any distinct and authorita- 
 tive reply. Particular teachers have arisen from 
 time to time who have returned a direct answer, but 
 we shall not find in the formulas either of the Church 
 of Rome or the Church of England any statements 
 which lift the question out of the obscurity in which 
 Jesus left it. 
 
 Although, however, the Church in her corporate 
 capacity has thus kept silent, we can see the reappearance 
 
4 PASCAL 
 
 in different ages of two radically different conceptions of 
 the scope of salvation. Sometimes the way of salvation 
 has been pictured as a narrow, and sometimes as a broad 
 way. Access to it has been thought of as easy, attainable 
 without serious sacrifice by ordinary men, or again as 
 difficult and actually found by only a few. The arms 
 of the crucified Saviour have been represented now as 
 opened wide, and now as able to receive but a small 
 number within their sheltering embrace. 
 
 The two views, when they are examined, are seen to 
 have each its own necessary antecedents and also its 
 own practical consequences. To believe that the way 
 of salvation is narrow, is to believe in the depravity of 
 the human heart. This belief leads us back to an original 
 fall of man in which the whole human race was involved. 
 Nor can we stop here. We are compelled to pass behind 
 the Fall to the Divine Counsels in which it was decreed 
 or sanctioned. Thus we are driven ultimately to the 
 conclusion that man is not a free agent, that he is 
 predestined to weal or woe, and that he cannot stand 
 upright without the Divine assistance. 
 
 On the other hand, the disciples of the broad way 
 believe in the natural goodness of the human heart. They 
 
HIS LIFE 5 
 
 minimize the consequences of the Fall of which they read 
 on the page of inspiration. Their minds recoil from the 
 predestination by the Most High of any of His creatures 
 to sin and misery, and they believe that man can, if he so 
 will, at every moment choose the right. They may hope 
 that many to whom the name of the Redeemer is unknown 
 may be among the saved, and they may even anticipate 
 the ultimate happiness of the whole human race. 
 
 But it is in their attitude towards the practical conduct 
 of life that the representatives of the two opinions differ 
 most markedly. While those on the one side are ready 
 to tolerate many compliances with the customs and 
 fashions of the world, and to accept from men a very 
 general fulfilment of the demands of Christ, their 
 opponents separate the Church from the society around 
 it by the sharpest line of division. The separation may 
 take the form of monasticism, an ascetic warfare against 
 the flesh, or it may take the form given to it by Calvin 
 in Geneva. In either case the Church is as effectually 
 separated from the great world around it as it was when 
 that world was not Christian even in name. Thus on 
 both sides there are dangers. The disciples of the broad 
 way run the risk of confounding the Church with the 
 
6 PASCAL 
 
 world, of destroying the savour of the purifying salt, 
 of depriving the leaven of its virtue. Their antagonists 
 have often alienated the world by demands which are 
 too severe for human nature. 
 
 While the Church Catholic has never pronounced 
 authoritatively in favour of either view, and thus both 
 are compatible with loyalty to her obedience, in theory 
 she has upheld the more severe opinion, and repudiated 
 those who at different times would have committed 
 her definitely to the broad way. One such attempt is 
 associated with the great name of Origen, who combined 
 a fondness for heathen wisdom and an admiration of 
 heathen virtue, with a dread of the flesh and a desire to 
 subdue it by forcible means. Another effort to secure 
 the same result was that of Pelagius, who virtually denied 
 the existence of original sin. The mind of a new-born 
 child was in his view as a blank page, equally open to 
 receive any kind of writing. There was no antecedent 
 influence biassing the will towards evil. Acts well- 
 pleasing to God might at any moment be done by all 
 men alike. 
 
 These doctrines aroused the antagonism of the great 
 teacher whose name is the symbol for everything that is 
 
HIS LIFE 7 
 
 severe in Christianity — of Augustine. Although it may 
 not be possible to extract from his writings any distinct 
 declaration that the saved will be few in number, or that 
 the disciples of the Crucified form more than a small 
 minority in any generation, there can be no doubt that 
 these are the conclusions to which his writings point. 
 And although the pre-Reformation Church may not : 
 have formally adopted all the implications of the ■ 
 Augustinian teaching, she yet endorsed this teaching as a : 
 whole with her emphatic approval, and she has ever ■ 
 ascribed to Augustine an authority second only to that j 
 of S. Paul. 
 
 The question thus raised, although it may appear at 
 first sight to belong to abstract theology, is really 
 fundamental and intensely practical. It is a question at 
 once of belief and of conduct. Upon the view we take 
 our practical interpretation of both the two great 
 commandments will depend. Happily the majority of 
 men are under no obligation to face these tremendous 
 alternatives. We rightly devote our energies to the ( 
 fulfilment of present duty, which is generally unmistak- 
 able. But from time to time there arise those to whom 
 these profound questions are as near and as urgent as 
 
8 PASCAL 
 
 the practical conduct of life is to ordinary men. And 
 although we may not think of accepting all their 
 conclusions, still less of making the conduct in which 
 these conclusions issued a model for our own imitation, 
 yet their thoughts and their lives remain in the highest 
 degree fruitful and stimulating. If it were not for such 
 the history of the Church would be as a pool of stagnant 
 water. 
 
 In the first half of the 17th century, and in the midst 
 of French Catholicism, the great problem of which I have 
 spoken was once again forced upon the attention of men. 
 During the preceding century the French nation, if it 
 thought at all of religion, can hardly have thought of it 
 except as a source of strife and an occasion of blood- 
 shed. Now that the wars of religion had ceased, and 
 the Reformation been virtually effaced from the land, 
 thought began once more upon the practical claims of 
 religion and upon its intellectual problems. The period 
 was marked by the reformation of many existing monastic 
 houses and by the foundation of several new orders. It 
 embraced a large part of the working life of two men 
 whose names are held in the highest honour by the French 
 Church. S. Francis of Sales, some of whose devotional 
 
HIS LIFE 9 
 
 writings are believed to have attained at the time of his 
 death to a more widespread diffusion than any rehgious 
 book since the Imitation, died in 1620. S. Vincent of 
 Paul, of whom it has been said that he could console 
 himself on his death-bed by the thought of having 
 mitigated the sufferings of a larger number of his 
 fellows than any one then living, died at an advanced 
 age in 1660. 
 
 Thus these fifty years are marked by numberless 
 tokens as a period when religion was not only a matter 
 of widespread intellectual interest, but was also made 
 the motive of a renewal of life and of an active charity. 
 It is not wonderful that in such an age repeated efforts 
 should have been made to reconcile the operations of ^':: 
 Divine Grace with the freedom of the human will, and so 
 to answer the fundamental question. Was the mixed 
 multitude of professing Christians on the way of salvation? 
 or was it only a few who were actually treading this 
 uphill path ? 
 
 These were the issues really in debate in the controver- v.'. 
 sies regarding Grace. The sterner view was vehemently 
 upheld by the Dominican Order, whose great doctor, 
 Thomas Aquinas, held closely to the Augustinian ' 
 
10 PASCAL 
 
 teaching. The opposition came principally from the 
 Jesuits, who must be regarded in this matter as 
 innovators and assailants of the established tradition. 
 
 Rome was appealed to for an authoritative decision. 
 We hear of eighty- two Convocations held on the subject 
 in the eternal city between 1596 and 1607. The Papacy 
 was placed in a most difficult situation. If it decided 
 in favour of the Jesuits, it repudiated Augustine and 
 allowed the Protestants to count this great luminary 
 as one of themselves. If it decided against them, it was 
 disbanding the ilite of its army in the presence of the 
 enemy. Ultimately Rome refused to pronounce, and on 
 August 29th, 1607, the discussion was indefinitely 
 . adjourned. " Grave and novel incident," comments 
 the French historian, " this abdication of responsibility 
 in the presence of so fundamental a question ! " * ' 
 
 Perplexed by this uncertainty, two friends undertook 
 to repair the Church's omission, and to expose to view 
 the mind of the great teacher to whom all alike appealed. 
 One of these was of Flemish, the other of French extrac- 
 tion. The younger of the two, the Fleming, bore the 
 name of Cornelius Jansen. His parents were peasants 
 ♦Martin, Histgire 4e France, 
 
HIS LIFE II 
 
 of a grade of society so humble as not to be distinguished 
 by a surname. His father was Jan Ottosen — John the 
 son of Otto, and he in his turn was known as Cornelius 
 the son of John. The elder of the two by four years 
 bore the more high-sounding name of Duverger de 
 Hauranne, and is known in history as Saint Cyran, from 
 the obscure abbey of which he soon afterwards became 
 abbot. 
 
 The two friends, who had both been students at Louvain, 
 but appear to have first met in Paris, retired to a property 
 belonging to the family of De Hauranne, near Bayonne, 
 and there for six years devoted themselves to the close 
 study of the Fathers, and especially of Augustine. The 
 result of these studies was what is known as Jansenism. ' 
 The 'students came to the conclusion that the real 
 teaching of Augustine had been buried for centuries, and 
 that its recovery would involve a great change in the 
 Church's belief as well as in her practice. Yet they held 
 that the safety and health of the Church depended upon 
 this recovery, and to this end they both, in their several 
 spheres, consecrated their lives. 
 
 Jansen, after holding for some years a professorship 
 in the University of Louvain, became bishop of the 
 
12 PASCAL 
 
 Flemish ^ee of Ypres. The book, the fruit of a life's 
 study, which contained his interpretation of Augustine, 
 and which became the recognised exposition of Jansenism, 
 was only given to the world after his death. Saint 
 Cyran accepted the obscure abbey of this name on the 
 borders of Touraine, but resided for the greater part of 
 his life in Paris. High ecclesiastical office was repeatedly 
 pressed upon him. No less than five times the episcopal 
 dignity was offered to him. He desired, however, no 
 other power than that which belongs to the director of 
 consciences, and to a commanding position here he 
 speedily attained. The name of Saint Cyran is one of 
 the great names of French Catholicism. He seems to 
 have combined in an eminent degree the love of souls 
 with learning, unworldliness, and practical wisdom. 
 Stern as his theology was, exacting as were his demands 
 upon his penitents, he was fuU of tenderness, and won 
 from his pupils not only unbounded veneration but also 
 the strongest personal love. 
 
 His influence in Paris became so marked as to arouse 
 the suspicions of Richelieu, who is said to have pronounced 
 Saint Cyran to be more dangerous than six armies. The 
 precise grounds of the powerful Cardinal's hostility 
 
HIS LIFE 13 
 
 towards the simple priest living in humble seclusion in 
 the midst of the city are not plainly visible. Not long 
 before his death, Saint Cyran said that the narrow way 
 had compelled him " to choose between a prison and a 
 bishopric : for it was at that time easy to see that under 
 a government which was willing to rule only over slaves 
 the refusal of one must necessarily lead to the other." 
 
 At the same time, special causes of animosity existed, 
 or were believed to exist. Great man as Richelieu was, 
 he appears to have been wanting in magnanimity, and 
 to have been unable to despise little things. Amidst 
 his many titles to honour, he hungered for the fame of a 
 theologian, and he had once published a catechism, some 
 of whose teachings were challenged at the time. The 
 adverse criticisms were ascribed by the Cardinal, although 
 it would appear wrongly, to Saint Cyran, who thus gave 
 the powerful minister unpardonable offence. Whatever 
 the reasons of Richelieu's dislike may have been, it was 
 strong enough to lead to the imprisonment of Saint 
 Cyran. He was committed in 1638 to the solitary prison 
 of Vincennes, where he was kept in confinement for 
 nearly five years. He was liberated only after the 
 Cardinal's death, on the 6th of February, 1643. His 
 
14 PASCAL 
 
 health had, however, been broken down by his long 
 captivity, and he died in October of the same year. 
 
 Such was the background to the life of the extra- 
 ordinary man who made the controversy regarding 
 Grace a matter of the most lively interest to his con- 
 temporaries, and whose writings possess such importance 
 that they constrain posterity to revive incidents and 
 conflicts which they might otherwise be content to forget. 
 
 There are in all spheres of knowledge men whose 
 names stand out as landmarks, indicating the beginning 
 of a new stage of progress. Their thoughts possess 
 such value that they speedily become absorbed in the 
 general stream of opinion, and few remember their 
 original source. Such in the region of religious thought 
 is Blaise Pascal. He holds in his own sphere a position 
 similar to that which Newton occupies in science or 
 Spinoza in philosophy. If knowledge has received such 
 immense additions since these men lived that they have 
 become as rocks covered by the waves, it is equally true 
 that without their help we should not have left them 
 behind. If we see farther than they did, it is because 
 we stand upon their shoulders. 
 
HIS LIFE 15 
 
 The controversy about Grace represents, as we have 
 seen, the precise point which rehgious thought had 
 reached in the first half of the seventeenth century. It 
 presented the issue which at that moment seemed of all 
 to be the nearest and the most urgent. This question 
 pressed itself with peculiar force upon the mind of Pascal. 
 He saw it in both its aspects, both as a question of 
 conduct and also as a question of belief. 
 
 How did the current practice of the Christian world 
 accord with the requirements of the Gospel ? Searching 
 for an answer, he saw an attempt made by the most 
 powerful of the religious orders to accommodate the 
 claims of Christ to the practice of the world. An 
 elaborate system met his eyes by which it was sought to 
 soften or undo the Christian law whenever it comes in 
 conflict with men's inclinations. The exposure of this 
 system was the purpose of one of the two writings by 
 which he is chiefly remembered: " Letters written to 
 a dweller in the provinces by one of his friends on the 
 subject of the present disputes in the Sorbonne." In 
 the other book, The Thoughts, Pascal takes part in the 
 controversy of his time by endeavouring to show that 
 ^ the actual facts of human nature, its greatness and its 
 
l6 PASCAL 
 
 littleness, its sublimity and its meanness, are only 
 explicable on the assumption that the history of 
 humanity contains some great primaeval catastrophe 
 which has been only partially repaired. Thus the two 
 books, however widely they may differ in style, do really 
 present two different aspects of the same subject. They 
 both presuppose the distinctive view of Jansenism, viz., 
 i^-that the way of salvation is narrow and difficult, and 
 that they are few who find it. None the less do both 
 books repay the most careful study. They bring us into 
 contact with a mind of the highest power, possessed, to 
 the exclusion of all else, by the love of God and the 
 longing for perfection. 
 
 A short biography of Pascal was written after his 
 death by his sister, Madame Perier, who did her utmost 
 to mitigate the sufferings of his closing years, -and in 
 whose house in Paris he died. These few pages, which 
 are to be found prefixed to all good editions of The 
 Thoughts, tell us all, or nearly all, of their subject which 
 it is essential to know. 
 
 From the very beginning it is evident that we are about 
 to follow the course of an exceptional life. Astonishing 
 evidences of unusual endowment present themselves at 
 
HIS LIFE 17 
 
 the outset and continue to the end. Pascal, Uke John 
 Stuart Mill, lost his mother at an early age, and never 
 had any other teacher than his father. Unlike the 
 English philosopher, however, his education seems to 
 have inspired him, not only with veneration, but also 
 with love for his teacher. His father's maxim, we are 
 told, Wcis to keep his pupil always above his work, and 
 he appears from the very outset to have appealed to the 
 child's reasoning faculties rather than to his memory, 
 encouraging him to ask the reasons why things should 
 be as they are. Thus we hear of the boy, not yet twelve 
 years of age, struck by the resonance of a plate when 
 touched by a knife, and the cessation of the sound when 
 the hand is laid upon the plate, inquiring into the nature 
 of sound, and even writing an essay on the subject. It 
 is not necessary to repeat the anecdote of his discovery 
 at the same age, without any assistance from book or 
 teacher, of the first thirty-two of Euclid's propositions, 
 an almost incredible, but apparently indubitable instance 
 of precocity. At nineteen he invented an arithmetical 
 machine. At the age of twenty-three he appears to have 
 added to the scientific knowledge of his time by experi- 
 ments upon the weight of the atmosphere. It is plain 
 
1 8 PASCAL 
 
 that he possessed mathematical ability of the highest 
 order. 
 
 Equally plain are evidences of an unusual command 
 of language. " My brother," Madame P^rier tells us, 
 " had a natural eloquence, which gave him a wonderful 
 facility in saying what he wished : but he had' also 
 framed for his own guidance certain rules whose 
 propriety had not at that time been perceived, and these 
 he observed with such advantage that not only did he 
 say what he wished, but he said it in the way he wished, 
 and his words had the effect he intended." Pascal is 
 believed by French writers to have given to the language 
 the definite form by which it is still characterized. 
 Previous to him the language was still in a fluid state. 
 It had ceased to be Latin while it had not yet become 
 French. His use of it gave it that fixity which it has 
 ever since retained. The French would still regard him, 
 I believe, as the greatest of their prose writers. We 
 must not, however, expect to find his language distin- 
 guished by any qualities except lucidity, sincerity and 
 precision. It is quite free from ornament. Its charm 
 resides in its ease. Thus it is an excellent model for us 
 all in our use of words, provided always that we observe 
 
HIS LIFE 19 
 
 M. Havet's caution. Pascal, he says, is the most excellent 
 of models provided that we take care in studying him 
 to remain ourselves, and not to copy him. " To give 
 our minds to discern truth and to love it : to say nothing 
 except what we clearly perceive and feel ; to value an 
 expression only in proportion to its luminousness and 
 sincerity ; to labour to make our ideas clear, and to 
 strive after this until we are assured that others also 
 grasp them and that they are affected by our feelings ; 
 to persevere in this painful toil through zeal, through 
 the love of the good we can do, and the cause we can 
 serve ; this is what we can all learn from Pascal, not 
 doubtless to do it as he did, but to do it each according 
 to his measure and his ability." 
 
 This command of language is, as we have seen, the 
 result partly of exceptional endowment, and partly of 
 assiduous application. He gained it, as we are told in 
 the preface to the first edition of The Thoughts, by a toil 
 so obstinate that he would often recast as many as ten 
 times a paragraph which any one else would have 
 thought admirable at the beginning. " If Pascal wrote 
 but little, and never anything of wide compass," says 
 the critic already quoted, "it was not merely that his 
 
20 PASCAL 
 
 health failed, but that he subjected his thought to a 
 criticism so severe that it made him too hard to please, 
 and the execution of an extensive work became a labour 
 beyond human strength." 
 
 Such is the toil lying beneath these writings which 
 seem so facile. Many of the Provincial Letters were 
 begun many times before the form finally adopted was 
 reached. It was of one of these letters that its author 
 used the phrase which has been ascribed to so many 
 others, and said that the letter was as long as it is because 
 he had not had time to make it shorter. 
 
 This surprising intellectual vigour was, however, 
 balanced by one great disability. Pascal died at the 
 age of thirty-nine, and like Calvin and Richard Baxter 
 lived with death never far out of sight. He used to say, 
 his sister tells us, that from the age of eighteen he had 
 never passed a day without pain. His sufferings seem 
 to have quite baffled the medical skill of his time, and to 
 have increased in severity with his age. The last four 
 years of his life, in which most of the Thoughts were 
 written, are described as one continuous weariness. 
 The beginnings of these ailments are attributed by his 
 sister to over-application in his early years. This 
 
HIS LIFE 21 
 
 account does not seem, as has been observed, a quite 
 adequate explanation of sufferings so great and prolonged. 
 Perhaps these sufferings could now have been averted 
 or greatly mitigated. That they were much aggravated 
 by Pascal's self-chosen austerities cannot be doubted. 
 In any case we observe that he had in his own person 
 an instance ever with him of the truth which evidently 
 held a central place in his mind — that of the simultaneous 
 greatness and littleness of the human lot. He reached 
 with ease the highest intellectual eminences while his 
 body was indeed one of humihation, and strove ever to 
 quench the spirit. 
 
 We cannot expect the religion of a man so placed to 
 show the joyousness by which the lives of many whom 
 we might compare with him have been characterized. 
 Legend represents him as seeing, from the moment 
 of the accident to which his conversion is usually, 
 but perhaps wrongly ascribed, an abyss ever at his 
 side. This is true in the spirit if not in the letter. 
 The abysses which yawn around us were visible to 
 him, and he looked with steady gaze into their depths. 
 Many of his thoughts are like the Psalmist's cry from 
 the deep. 
 
22 PASCAL 
 
 The conversion of Pascal is, as has been said, generally 
 ascribed to an accident which befeLhim as he was driving 
 a carriage drawn — some say by four and some by six 
 horses — across one of the bridges that form the exits of 
 what is now the Bois de Boulogne. The bridge had no 
 side wall, and the two foremost horses plunged into the 
 river. The destruction of the entire equipage seemed 
 inevitable, when the reins by which the two leaders were 
 connected with the rest of the team gave way and left the 
 carriage and its occupant in safety on the bridge. The 
 catastrophe that seemed so certain made a deep impres- 
 sion upon Pascal, and it is apparently to it that the 
 strange confession of faith refers which he composed 
 at this time and ever afterwards wore within the lining 
 of his vest. Here the paper was discovered after his 
 death. It has been thus translated : — 
 
HIS LIFE 23 
 
 t 
 
 The Year of Grace 1654, 
 Monday, November 23rd, day of St. Clement, pope 
 
 AND MARTYR, AND OTHERS IN THE MaRTYROLOGY, 
 
 Eve of Saint Chrysogonus, martyr, and others ; 
 
 From about half-past ten at night, to 
 
 about half after midnight, 
 
 Fire. 
 
 God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of JaCob, 
 
 Not of the philosophers and the wise. 
 
 Security, security. Feeling, joy, peace. 
 
 God of Jesus Christ 
 
 Deum meum et Deum vestrum. 
 
 Thy God shall be my God. 
 
 Forgetfulness of the world and of all save God. 
 
 He can be found only in the ways taught 
 
 IN the Gospel. 
 
 Greatness of the human soul. 
 
 O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee, 
 
 BUT I have known thee. 
 
 Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy. 
 
 I have separated myself from him. 
 
 Derelinquerunt me fontem aquis Vivce. 
 
 My God why hast thou forsaken me ? . . . . 
 
 That I be not separated from thee eternally, 
 
 This is life eternal : That they might know thee the 
 
 only true God, and him whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ, 
 
 Jesus Christ, 
 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 I have separated myself from him ; I have fled, renounced, 
 
 crucified him, 
 
 may i never be separated from him. 
 
 He MAINTAINS HIMSELF IN ME ONLY IN THE WAYS TAUGHT 
 
 IN THE Gospel. 
 Renunciation total .\nd sweet. 
 
 ETC. 
 
24 PASCAL 
 
 This was no doubt the definite moment in the life of 
 Pascal of which Dean Church was thinking when he said : 
 " The religion of Pascal is the religion of a converted 
 man — of a man, I mean, who at a definite time of his 
 life had felt himself touched and overcome by the great- 
 ness and the reasonableness of things unseen, and had 
 consciously turned to God, not from vice, but from 
 bondage to the interests of time, from the fascination 
 of a merely intellectual life, from the frivolity which 
 forgets the other world in this." 
 
 It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that 
 Pascal had ever committed himself deliberately even to 
 worldliness, much less to unbelief. He says that his 
 father had early inspired him with that respect for 
 religion by which he was himself characterized. When 
 Pascal was twenty-three his attention was drawn for 
 the first time to the writings of Saint Cyran and to a 
 small work of Jansen entitled The Reformation of the 
 Inner Man. These books impressed him deeply, so 
 that, in the words of his sister, he renounced from 
 this time forward all other knowledge, to apply him- 
 self exclusively to the one thing which Jesus Christ calls 
 needful. 
 
HIS LIFE 25 
 
 To this resolution he did not, indeed, at all literally 
 adhere, but the fact that he made it shows the promptings 
 of his nature. A year afterwards we find his health so 
 broken that his physicians enjoin entire rest from study, 
 and send him to Paris that he may find relief in the 
 distractions of the ca:pital. Here he lived for a period of 
 seven years in what afterwards seemed to him glaring 
 worldliness. There is, however, no evidence to show 
 that the worldliness was worse than the fulfilment of 
 the demands which society makes upon a man of rank 
 and fashion. His sister assures us that vice never had 
 any attractions for him. Perhaps an improvement in 
 his health at this time made a lengthened life seem more 
 probable. In any case we now hear of him contemplating 
 marriage, and proposing to buy some office which would 
 yield him a permanent income. 
 
 The gleam of sunshine was, however, of short duration. 
 In 1654 occurred the carriage accident described 
 above, which was the occasion of his second and final 
 conversion. 
 
 He sought the solitude of Port Royal, the monastery 
 twenty miles from Paris which Saint Cyran had directed, 
 and where his spirit still lived in a company of men and 
 
26 PASCAL 
 
 women of whom some had taken life-long vows, while 
 some were merely temporary guests. Pascal's younger 
 sister had entered the convent of Port Royal eight years 
 before with her brother's full consent, and we can readily 
 understand the delight with which she welcomed back 
 to the severe joys of the religious life the brother whom 
 she had thought of as lost to the world. 
 
 The last years of Pascal's life, which were spent mostly 
 in Paris, are years of continuous suffering, and present 
 to our minds one very persistent perversion of the Gospel 
 message. It was his conviction that the whole-hearted 
 service of God required him to desist from those pursuits 
 which we should call secular. This conviction was 
 probably unquestioned, in theory at least, in his age. 
 The Church and the world were universally looked upon 
 as separate and antagonistic organizations. Friendship 
 with the world was regarded as enmity with God, without 
 any heed to the change of meaning which had passed 
 over the term " world " since the Apostle's days. 
 
 Thus Pascal, when he first became sensible of the 
 claims of religion, felt constrained to abandon his 
 scientific studies. So the years subsequently in which 
 he shared the ordinary social life of his time seemed to 
 
HIS LIFE 27 
 
 him now, after his final conversion, years not only of 
 worldliness but of sin. So too now, when his health 
 irreparably failed and the end was obviously drawing 
 near, he deliberately refused the solaces he might have 
 enjoyed because these seemed to belong to the world 
 he had abandoned. He made his sick-bed as hard as 
 a rigorous asceticism could make it. He besought his 
 sister, shortly before his death, to allow him to be 
 conveyed to the Incurable Hospital, so that he might 
 be able to die among the poor. 
 
 These austerities, as they are related by Mme. Perier, 
 may seem to some of us, as they seemed to Voltaire and 
 Condorcet, the sad symptoms of insanity. We may 
 think that the recesses of a diseased mind are opened 
 out before us. Our misgivings may even resist the 
 extraordinary evidence of spiritual vigour furnished by 
 the fact that the dj^ing man was able to find distraction 
 from his sufferings in the unravelling of hitherto unsolved 
 mathematical mysteries. 
 
 Deeper reflection rebukes these hasty conclusions. 
 If we make the opinions and doings of ordinary men 
 the measures of sanity, we shall be led to some strange 
 results. In truth it is the very divergence of conspicuous 
 
28 PASCAL 
 
 lives from the ordinary standard which makes their 
 study especially profitable. We are constrained to think 
 and to learn when we see these striking departures frorti 
 ordinary living, this outrageous violation of the laws of 
 prudence. 
 
 tt may be, as has been urged,* that Pascal, " had he 
 allowed himself to feel the love of God in his life in the 
 love of wife and children, had he pressed on with swift 
 step into the mysteries of the physical universe, and 
 been content to live a faithful and God-fearing life amidst 
 the license of court and city," would have learned secrets 
 of Divine wisdom and human possibility of which, as it 
 was, he remained ignorant. In that case, however, there 
 would hardly be in his life that startling and arousing 
 power we find in it now. It is precisely because he 
 differs at so many points from ourselves that he attracts, 
 and interests, and moves us. 
 
 Even the austerities of Pascal's closing years may 
 teach us that life is only a desirable possession when we 
 propose to ourselves some end beyond it. If we make it 
 its own end it ceases to profit. He may have misconceived 
 
 ♦ Beard, Port Royal. 
 
HIS LIFE 29 
 
 this truth from a failure to see that the eternal is wrapped 
 up in the temporal, yet he does show us that the love and 
 service of God can alone satisfy the human soul. He 
 shows us, too, that though flesh and heart may fail, God 
 may yet remain the strength of the heart and its portion 
 for ever. 
 
2. €it ^X0i)inml Hitters. 
 
THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 "PVERY human institution is in some degree changed 
 and modified by the progress of time. New needs arise 
 to which it must adapt itself. Unthought-of obstacles 
 turn it out of its original course. Indeed, if an institution 
 does not possess this self-adapting power, its very rigid- 
 ness impairs its usefulness, and threatens its life. 
 
 That the Company of Jesus had come, in the 17th 
 century, one hundred years after its foundation, to pursue 
 a pohcy which its original founder had not foreseen, would 
 not be denied by its own historians. The declared 
 intentions of the founder, however, seem, to our minds 
 at least, dangerously susceptible of the policy by which 
 it was afterwards sought to give them effect. 
 
 Ignatius Loyola, when he became fully conscious of 
 his task, proposed to establish a society which in aim 
 and constitution should differ essentially from the 
 existing religious orders. Its purpose was not to be the 
 
34 PASCAL 
 
 acquisition or the diffusion of learning ; nor was it to be 
 a contemplative order interceding perpetually for the 
 world it had quitted ; nor again was it to devote itself 
 to works of mercy, such as the care of the sick or the 
 instruction of the poor. The founder, in establishing 
 his society, wished simply to put an instrument of perfect 
 efficiency into the hands of the Supreme Pontiff, to be 
 used by him as he might determine. 
 
 To the three general vows of poverty, chastity, and 
 
 obedience, the members of the order added a fourth, by 
 
 which they pledged themselves to execute, without 
 
 objection and without delay, the behests, whatever these 
 
 i might be, of the Supreme Pontiff. 
 
 The perfect efficiency of the instrument was to be 
 secured by one simple but far-reaching expedient. 
 Ignatius said that although the other orders might 
 surpass his society in this or that respect, he desired 
 that it should surpass them in the virtue of obedience. 
 He explained that there were in the religious life two 
 kinds of obedience, one which was imperfect and the 
 other which was perfect. The imperfect form had eyes 
 by which it saw amiss, the other was wisely blind ; the 
 one retained its own judgment upon the behests given ; 
 
THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 3$ 
 
 the other had no judgment, it submitted its judgment to 
 the judgment, its will to the will, of the superior. 
 
 A few years before his death he dictated some maxims 
 which may be regarded as his last testament. All are 
 concerned with obedience : 
 
 " Entering upon the religious life, I must be entirely 
 resigned (i.e., stripped of my own will and dependent 
 upon the will of others) in the presence of God our Lord 
 and him who has been placed over me in the place of 
 God." 
 
 " I must allow myself to be handled like liquid wax, 
 which obeys the hand that shapes it." 
 
 " I should make myself like a corpse, which has neither 
 will nor feeling ; like an automaton, which turns where 
 we wish to make it ; like a stick in an old man's hand, 
 who makes what use of it he pleeises." 
 
 Nor was this obedience to be limited even by the 
 misgivings of conscience : — 
 
 " If it should appear to me that piy superior orders me 
 to do something which is against my conscience, I shall 
 trust him rather than my own judgment, unless, indeed, 
 the evidence should forbid me. But if I cannot reconcile 
 my mind to the command of my superior, let me at least 
 
36 PASCAL 
 
 abandon my own judgment and feeling, and let me submit 
 the whole matter to the judgment of one, two, or three 
 of my superiors, so as to follow what they shall determine : 
 if I refuse to do this, I am far from the perfection and 
 from the duties of the true religious." 
 
 Thus the obedience of the Jesuit was to be limitless. 
 Even the protests of conscience were not allowed to 
 restrain it. The system could hardly fail to confuse the 
 moral sense, to make the boundaries between righf and 
 wrong shifting and uncertain. Nor can we wonder that 
 those accustomed thus to put their own conscience in 
 fetters should not hesitate to allow still greater liberties 
 to others : that they should tamper with the moral law 
 in the interest of others, as they had tampered with it 
 in their own. 
 
 These evils inherent in the system did not show them- 
 selves at first. The first years of the Company of Jesus 
 have surrounded it in the minds of members of the Roman 
 Church with a halo which its subsequent history has 
 hardly been able to efface. It was these early glories 
 which led Pascal to say that the original spirit of 
 order no longer, in his day, animated its existing 
 representatives. 
 
THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 37 
 
 At the beginning of the 17th century devout Roman 
 Catholics might well feel that the Church's very existence 
 was threatened. Germany and England had repudiated 
 the Roman obedience, and in France what was then 
 known as libertinism was widely prevalent. By this 
 name, which is of frequent occurrence in Pascal's writings, 
 we must understand, not one form of moral obliquity, 
 but a general laxity of belief and practice. A libertine 
 was one who took liberties with the Church's creed and 
 with her precepts when these came in conflict with his 
 own interests or prepossessions. Libertinism was thus 
 essentially the equivalent of what we know as worldliness. 
 
 This spirit was then, as perhaps it has ever been, the 
 most dangerous foe to faith, and war with it was the 
 task to which the Jesuit Order felt itself to be most 
 imperatively called. The Society, during the century 
 which followed its foundation, had found its vocation and 
 its work. It had recognized its mission to be the direction ' 
 of consciences, and especially the consciences of the great, \ 
 and, as closely allied to this, the education of the young. \ 
 
 This spiritual direction had, however, come to be 
 animated by a pohcy which, although it may have been 
 adopted in good faith, has none the less incurred the 
 
38 PASCAL 
 
 emphatic condemnation of history. The problem, let us 
 remember, was to retain for the Church the allegiance of 
 a libertine or worldly society. This allegiance had become 
 in France merely nominal, and outside there was the fer- 
 ment of opinion which the Lutheran revolt had occasioned. 
 We can well understand that the heads of the Society, 
 contemplating this dangerous situation, should have 
 thought that the French world would be lost to the 
 Church if she attempted to subject it to a law which was 
 too strict. It seemed to them disastrous to make upon 
 men demands with which it was certain they would not 
 comply. Thus there had arisen a large number of 
 treatises in which the attempt was made so to soften the 
 Church's law that she might still retain men of the world 
 within her obedience. These treatises were intended 
 primarily for the use of confessors, but many of them 
 came to be very widely diffused. They were of course 
 all written in Latin, but the knowledge of Latin was then, 
 it need hardly be said, much more general than it is now. It 
 is impossible to suppose that an acquaintance with these 
 books was confined to the learned or the clergy. One of 
 them is mentioned as being, in the year 1656, in its forty- 
 first edition, 
 
THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 39 
 
 A further relaxation of the Christian law resulted from 
 the general acceptance by the Society of the principle 
 known as probabilism. By this was meant that it was 
 lawful, on any disputed point of conduct, to accept the 
 opinion of any recognized teacher. Thus if one guide 
 would not grant the required indulgence, appeal might 
 be made to another. And inasmuch as there was hardly 
 a question on which some authoritative teacher could 
 not be found who had taken the laxer view, evasion was 
 , rendered always possible. " How wrong they are," 
 exclaims one of these writers, " who complain that the 
 doctors in matters of conduct give so many and so varied 
 decisions. They should rather rejoice at this, seeing in it 
 new grounds for consolation and hope. For it is this 
 variety of opinion in matters of conduct which renders 
 the yoke of the Lord easier and milder." 
 
 It was this lowering of the Christian standard which 
 aroused the indignation of Pascal. One who owed his 
 conversion to Saint Cyran or his pupils, and had committed 
 himself so definitely to the doctrine of the narrow way, 
 could not fail to be scandalized by the Jesuit casuistry. 
 
 His feelings found expression in a series of letters which 
 are the best illustrations in modem literature of what has 
 
40 PASCAL 
 
 been called dialectic irony, " where the writer effects 
 his purpose by placing the opinion of his adversary in 
 the foreground, saluting it with every demonstration of 
 respect, while he is busy in withdrawing, one by one, all 
 
 , the supports on which it rests, and he never ceases to 
 approach it with an air of deference until he has com- 
 pletely undermined it, when he leaves it to sink by the 
 
 I weight of its own absurdity."* 
 
 These Letters are supposed to be addressed to a 
 provincied by a friend in Paris, who writes with the object 
 of giving his correspondent an account of the recent 
 disputes in the Sorbonne. It is only, however, the 
 first four and the last three of the eighteen letters which 
 actually deal with these disputes. The remaining eleven 
 are an exposure of the Jesuit casuistry. 
 
 To unfold the whole intricate chain of circumstances 
 which led to the Provincial Letters would be a most 
 difficult and wearisome task. The essential facts, how- 
 ever, can be easily stated. The work to which the 
 Flemish bishop Jansen had devoted his life, and in which 
 he endeavoured to recall to a forgetful world the teaching 
 of Augustine, the Augustinus, was only published after 
 * Thirwall's Essay on the Irony of Sophocles. 
 
THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 4I 
 
 his death. The book, lengthy and dull as it is to our 
 minds, became at once an object of the most lively 
 interest, and provoked vehement hostility. Foremost 
 among its opponents were, as was natural, the avowed 
 disciples of the broad way — the Jesuit Order. On their 
 representations the book was examined at Rome and 
 formally condemned in a Papal bull. The bull, however, 
 confined itself to a general condemnation of certain 
 propositions contained in the book, without any definite 
 enumeration of these propositions. 
 
 This result was too vague to satisfy the French op- 
 ponents of the Jansenist doctrines — as they now began 
 to be called. They were anxious to have the objectionable 
 propositions distinctly set forth and formally repudiated 
 throughout the length and breadth of France. By this 
 means it would be possible to draw up a distinct formula 
 of renunciation which every suspected person might be 
 called upon to sign. 
 
 With this end in view the five famous propositions \ 
 were extracted in France from the book. We are most 
 forcibly reminded by these propositions of the fact that 
 the language of religion waxes old as doth a garment, and 
 changes from age to age. To us they have almost ceased 
 
42 PASCAL 
 
 to be intelligible. They sound in our ears as one speaking 
 in an unknown tongue. They are as follows : — 
 
 I. Some commandments of God are impossible of 
 performance to just men, according to their present 
 strength, even though they be willing and striving to 
 perform them : and the grace which would make these 
 commandments possible is also wanting to them. 
 
 II. In the state of fallen nature, no resistance is ever 
 made to internal grace. 
 
 III. In order to produce merit or demerit in the state 
 of fallen nature, liberty from necessity is not required in 
 man, but liberty from constraint is sufficient. 
 
 IV. The Semi-Pelagians admitted the need of pre- 
 venient internal grace for all actions, even for the 
 beginning of faith; and they were heretics, inasmuch 
 as they would have this grace to be such as the will of 
 man could either resist or obey. 
 
 V. It is a Semi-Pelagian error to say that Christ died 
 or shed his blood for all men, universally. 
 
 Although the propositions, however, may at first sight 
 appear to involve us in a maze of profitless speculation, 
 
THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 43 
 
 they do really represent a very simple and familiar view 
 of the Christian life. They imply that mere membership 
 of the visible Church is not a guarantee of salvation, that 
 there are Divine requirements with which the majority 
 of those calling themselves Christians do not comply. 
 They trace this failure on the part of men back to 
 a hidden source, and ascribe it to God's inscrutable 
 counsels. The important fact, however, is not this 
 inference, but the experiences which warrant the in- 
 ference. Is it, or is it not, true that membership in ! 
 the Church places and keeps a man in the way of ) 
 salvation ? 
 
 To this question the Jesuit theologians returned an i 
 afi&rmative, while Jansen and his followers returned a 
 negative answer. 
 
 After prolonged controversies and intriguings, the 
 reigning Pontiff was induced to condemn these five 
 propositions. The bull of condemnation did not 
 positively affirm that the propositions were to be found 
 in Jansen's book, but the language leaves us in no doubt 
 that such affirmation was intended. 
 
 The bull was received and accepted by the French 
 Church. Opposing voices one by one ceased to make 
 
44 PASCAL 
 
 themselves heard, and it seemed as if the Jesuits had 
 
 obtained their desire. 
 
 Underneath the surface, however, the fires continued 
 
 to smoulder. The most conspicuous member of the 
 
 Arnauld family, the great doctor, as he was called, had 
 
 occasion to write two letters to one of his friends, a 
 
 nobleman who had consulted him on an ecclesiastical 
 
 difficulty. The letters, like most of the documents of 
 
 that age, were very lengthy. The second is described as 
 
 extending to 250 quarto pages. 
 
 ' / Their publication fanned into fresh flame the smoulder- 
 
 (' - 
 
 - - ing fires of controversy. They were denounced to the 
 
 Sorbonne as containing two distinct heretical propositions. 
 
 The writer was charged with temerity, as it was called, 
 
 because he had hinted that the five famous propositions 
 
 were not really to be found in Jansen's book. This came 
 
 to be known as the question of fact. The other question 
 
 was one of faith. Arnauld had asserted that Divine 
 
 grace had failed the Apostle Peter when he fell. 
 
 These two statements were submitted to the Sorbonne 
 
 as deserving of censure, and the expulsion of Arnauld 
 
 from the faculty of which he was a member was demanded. 
 
 These were the recent disputes which the writer of the 
 
THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 45 
 
 Provincicd Letters makes it his object to explain to his 
 friend. 
 
 While the issue was still pending, Pascal happened 
 to be discussing the proceedings with Arnauld himself 
 and two or three friends. One of the company spoke 
 of the propriety of informing the public regarding the 
 matters in dispute. The letters themselves were read 
 only by the learned, and ordinary men might readily 
 believe that the very foundations of the faith were being 
 threatened. Arnauld admitted, the truth of these 
 representations, and thereupon at once set to work to 
 prepare a popular pamphlet. When he had finished he 
 read it in the hearing of the same company of friends. 
 
 His pen, however, never a light one, had been made 
 doubly heavy by the anxieties through which he was 
 passing, and the pamphlet was received without any 
 expression of approval. Perceiving his want of success, 
 he turned to Pascal, then 33 years of age, and said, " You 
 are young — you should do it." 
 
 Pascal, who had never at that time written anything 
 except on scientific subjects, replied that he had an idea 
 how the desired pamphlet should be written, but that he 
 could only undertake to make a rough draft and submit 
 
46 PASCAL 
 
 it to the judgment of his friends. This rough draft was 
 the first Provincial Letter, as we now read it. It begins 
 as follows : — 
 
 Paris, the zyd, Jan., 1656. 
 
 Sir, — 
 
 We have ieen seriously misinformed. It was only 
 yesterday I learned the truth. Till then I was under the 
 impression that the subject in dispute in the Sorbonne was 
 one of great importance and of extreme consequence to 
 religion. So many meetings of a body so celebrated as the 
 Faculty of Paris, at which so many extraordinary and 
 unparalleled incidents took place, awaken such lofty ideas 
 in our minds that we can only suppose the subject in debate 
 to have been equally extraordinary. 
 
 You will be much surprised when you learn from this 
 narrative what is the outcome of this vehement agitation. 
 This I have inquired into fully, and now propose to tell 
 you in a few words. 
 
 Two questions are under discussion, one of fact and the 
 other of faith. 
 
 The question of fact is to determine whether Dr. Arnaidd 
 is guilty of temerity in saying in his second letter : that he 
 had read the book of Jansen, that he did not find in it the 
 
THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 47 
 
 '-propositions condemned by the late Pope, but that, inasmuch 
 as he condemned these propositions wherever they were to 
 be met with, he condemned them in Jansen if they were to 
 be found there. 
 
 The question is whether he could thus without temerity 
 suggest a doubt that these propositions might not be Jansen' s 
 when their lordships the bishops had declared that they were. 
 
 The matter is brought before the Sorbonne. Seventy-one 
 doctors undertake his defence, and maintain that he could 
 make no other reply to those who asked him if he believed 
 the propositions to be in this book except that he had not 
 seen them there, and that nevertheless he condemned them if 
 they were there. 
 
 Some even went further and affirmed that in spite of every 
 search for these propositions in the book, they could never 
 find them, and that they even found others altogether opposed 
 to them. Thus they urgently demanded that if there were 
 any doctor who had seen them, he would be good enough to 
 point them out, as this was a most simple way of reducing 
 all, and Dr. Arnauld himself, to silence. Such was the 
 action of the defenders. 
 
 On the other side were eighty secular doctors and 
 some mendicant monks who condemned Dr. Arnauld's 
 
48 PASCAL 
 
 proposition without being willing to inquire whether what he 
 said was true or false, and who even declared that it was 
 not a question of the truth, but only of the temerity of his 
 proposition. 
 
 The successful translation of the letters is admittedly 
 difficult — perhaps impossible. But even this rendering of 
 the opening paragraphs of the first letter will show us the 
 unusual character of this work of genius, and can hardly 
 fail to awaken reflections and perhaps misgivings in our 
 minds. 
 
 In the first place we may well be surprised to find a 
 work such as this emanating from one who had so recently 
 been brought to the edge of the abyss, who had in a very 
 rigid sense abandoned the world, who wore on his person 
 a paper descriptive of the awfulness of his conversion 
 and the deep peace which had followed it, and who died 
 a few years after this date the death of a Christian saint. 
 
 We are surprised to find a man such as this employing 
 raillery in the service of religion. The Provincial Letters 
 are the first instance of the attempted consecration of this 
 worldly weapon. Sacred things are here dealt with in 
 the light, graceful, well-bred fashion which conveys the 
 
THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 49 
 
 impression, whether intended or not, that the speaker is 
 not deeply in earnest and does not regard his subject as 
 one of paramount importance. This may well seem a 
 doubtful and dangerous innovation. The door which 
 Pascal thus opened was entered by many imitators in 
 the succeeding century whose approach he never 
 contemplated. If the greatest issues could be dealt with 
 thus cavalierly by the saint and the ascetic, there was 
 no longer any barrier to put them beyond the reach of 
 the satirist and the scoffer. 
 
 Pascal is said to have been asked towards the close of 
 his life whether he regretted having written the Letters, 
 and to have replied that if he had it to do again he would 
 make them still stronger. It can hardly be doubted, 
 however, that Saint C5n:an, had he been living, would 
 have thought otherwise. The first two letters are believed 
 to have been actually written in the monastery of Port 
 Royal in the fields. But already the best and purest 
 days of Port Royal were past, the days of perfect 
 simplicity and sincerity, when there was no thought of 
 fighting the world with its own weapons. 
 
 In truth, however, these first three and last two letters 
 awaken a more serious misgiving than is raised even by 
 
50 PASCAL 
 
 the raillery in which they abound. They are intended 
 to suggest that no serious and vital difference divided 
 the two parties in these disputes, that the controversy 
 was one regarding words rather than things. They could 
 thus hardly fail to obscure still further the fundamental 
 question from which the whole strife had arisen. 
 
 That question was by no means a verbal one. Jansen's 
 book represented one conception of Christianity, while 
 its opponents represented another conception. Whether 
 the five propositions condemned by the Pope were to 
 ' be found in the book or not, there is no doubt that they 
 really expressed Jansen's opinion. The question was not 
 whether they could be found verbally in his pages, but 
 whether they were true. 
 
 Two consistent interpretations of the Christian message 
 were here in conflict. The French Church Wcis being 
 called upon to decide between the disciples of the broad 
 and those of the narrow way. It would have been a 
 nobler, although a more dangerous, policy to keep the 
 attention of the disputants riveted upon this great issue, 
 instead of diverting them from it by what was little better 
 than a verbal quibble. This Pascal himself seems to 
 have recognized a few years later. 
 
THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 51 
 
 " The method of defence," he wrote in 1661, " adopted 
 against the decisions of the Pope and the Bishops, was so 
 subtle, so timid, and so wanting in precision, that it does 
 not appear worthy of real defenders of the Church."* And 
 he goes on to blame the policy of distinguishing between 
 the question of fact and that of faith, and to express the 
 opinion that it would have been better to accept the five 
 propositions as accurate, but to maintain that the views 
 expressed in them were not those of the Flemish bishop 
 alone, but those also of S. Augustine and S. Paul. 
 
 To the same effect, the simple biographer of S. Cyran, 
 who had, as St. Beuve puts it, " known Joseph," wrote 
 in memorable words : 
 
 " Perhaps, too, this method chosen of defending 
 the truth was not pure enough, or the means em- 
 ployed were too precipitate, or were not sufficiently 
 considered, or were even too human. We often harm 
 God's cause more by too much action than if we remained 
 in a humble repose, endeavouring to maintain our 
 confidence in Him by frequent prayer." 
 
 " It may also be added that the lines marked by 
 
 * Quoted by Sainte-Beuve, Port Royal, 5th Ed., iii., p. 62. 
 
52 PASCAL 
 
 M. de St. Cyran were not observed, and that effort was 
 not restricted to showing that the doctrine followed was 
 not that of Jansen but that of S. Augustine."* 
 
 Thus, whatever the literary merits of these five letters, 
 we may believe that they would have long since been 
 forgotten had not Pascal, from the fourth letter onwards, 
 addressed himself to a subject of abiding interest. This 
 subject arose naturally out of the questions with which 
 he had hitherto been dealing. It might have been 
 suggested by the Scripture saying, " Every tree is known 
 by its fruits." 
 
 From the very beginning, the Christian morality has 
 been the most persuasive advocate of the Christian 
 creed. And again and again, laxity of life has been in 
 the Church as the breath of corruption, summoning 
 the destroying eagles. Thus Pascal's attention was 
 most naturally drawn to the morality actually taught by 
 his opponents. 
 
 " There is nothing — so he begins his fourth Letter — like 
 the Jesuits. I have seen Jacobins, Doctors, and all sorts of 
 people, but a visit such as I have just paid was still wanting 
 
 * Sainte-Beuve, Port Royal, 5th Ed., iii., p. 86. 
 
THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 53 
 
 to my education. The others only copy them. Things are 
 always better observed at their source." 
 
 The letters from this point to the seventeenth are 
 occupied with an exposure of the maxims and policy of 
 the Jesuit casuists. The concessions which the Society's 
 theologians were prepared to make to human passions 
 or human weakness on such matters as duelling, usury, 
 simony, theft, are unfolded in a series of illustrations 
 which are so laughable that indignation gives way to 
 amusement. Our first impulse is to doubt whether anyi 
 Christian teachers could ever have deliberately com- 
 mitted themselves to these scandalous eveisions. On 
 this point, however, doubt does not seem permissible. 
 The various passages quoted by Pascal may be found 
 in any good edition of the Provincial Letters, and show 
 plainly that the maxims were no inventions of his own. 
 " If the author of the Provincial Letters has not always 
 felt obliged to translate or reproduce literally the texts 
 he quoted, still it has not been possible to convict him of 
 carelessness or serious forgetfulness on more than two 
 or three occasions at the most, and never of deliberate 
 deception." Such are the words of an impartial cyritic 
 (F. Brunetiere). 
 
54 PASCAL 
 
 The following are a few examples of these evasions, 
 taken almost at random from the Letters VI. and VII. : 
 The accepted interpretation of the precept enjoining 
 almsgiving in Luke xi. 41, in the Roman Church of that 
 day seems to have been, " Give alms of your superfluous 
 goods." Thus the question naturally arose. What con- 
 stitutes superfluity ? This question the casuist Vasquez 
 answers as follows : "What people of the world keep to 
 improve their position and that of their kinsmen cannot 
 be called superfluity. This is why we shall hardly ever 
 find that people of the world or even kings have any 
 superfluity." 
 
 The sin of simony was defined by the Church as the 
 giving of a temporal good for a spiritual one. Upon this 
 definition Escobar, a Spanish Jesuit, comments as 
 follows : "If money be given as the price of a benefice, 
 it is manifest simony. But if it be given as the motive 
 to induce the holder of the benefice to resign it, it is 
 not simony, even although the holder may regard the 
 money as his principal object." 
 
 The following is the interpretation put by Reginaldus 
 upon S. Paul's precept, " Render to no man evil for 
 evil," and upon the passages in the Gospels which urge 
 
THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 55 
 
 the forgiveness of injuries : "It seems that a man of war 
 may at once attack one who has wounded him, not indeed 
 with the intention of returning evil for evil, but with 
 that of preserving his honour." 
 
 A still more incredible decision is the following : " The 
 holder of a benefice can without mortal sin desire the 
 death of one to whom he is obliged to pay part of his 
 income, and a son may desire the death of his father and 
 rejoice when it occurs, provided it be only for the 
 property which accrues to him, and not from any per- 
 sonal hatred." 
 
 It was Voltaire who said in an oft-quoted passage, that 
 there was as much salt in the first provincials as in 
 Moliere, and that Bossuet contained nothing more 
 subhme than the last. Often in these later letters Pascal 
 abandons his ordinary tone of raillery and appears as the 
 earnest and indignant champion of outraged righteousness. 
 The following is the conclusion of the tenth letter, which 
 deals with the terms on which sin should be absolved. 
 Pascal at last breaks out as follows : — 
 
 my father, there is no patience which you would not 
 tire ! It is impossible to hear without horror the things I 
 
56 PASCAL 
 
 have just heard I They are not mine, you say. I know it 
 well, my father. But you have no abhorrence of them, and 
 far from detesting the authors of these maxims, you esteem 
 them. Do you not fear that your consent may make you 
 a partaker of their crime ? And can you he ignorant that 
 it is not merely the authors of offences whom St. Paul 
 judges to he worthy of death, but also those who consent to 
 them. 
 
 Was it not enough to have made so many forbidden things 
 permissible by the falliatives you have brought to them ? 
 Was it necessary also to give men the opportunity of com- 
 mitting the very crimes you have not been able to excuse by 
 the facility and the certainty of absolution you offer them, 
 when you destroy with this object the power of priests, and 
 oblige them to absolve, rather as slaves than judges, sinners 
 the most inveterate — to absolve them without any love of 
 God, without any amendment of life, when they have given 
 no sign of regret save promises such as they have already 
 broken a hundred times ; without penance, if they do not 
 wish to submit to it, and without forsaking the occasions 
 of sin, if it is inconvenient to them to do so.'' . . . But you 
 go further. . . . You violate the great commandment which 
 comprehends the law and the prophets. You attack piety 
 
THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 57 
 
 within the heart ; you remove the spirit that giveth life ; you 
 say thai the love of God is not necessary for salvation ; you 
 even go so far as to pretend that the removal of the obligation 
 to love God is the benefit which Jesus Christ has brought to 
 the world. This is the height of impiety: . . . You dare 
 to withdraw the anathema which S. Paul pronounces upon 
 those who do not love the Lord Jesus. You destroy what 
 S. John says, that he who loveth not abideth in death, and 
 what Jesus Christ Himself says, that he who loveth not doth 
 not keep His sayings. . . . Here indeed is the mystery of 
 iniquity accomplished. . . . Open your eyes at last, my 
 father, and if you have not been moved by the other false 
 teachings of your casuists, let these last take you away from 
 them by their excesses. I wish it with all my heart for you 
 and for all your fathers, and I pray God that He may deign 
 to make them understand how false the light is which has 
 led them to such precipices, and that He may fill with the 
 love of Himself those who release men from the obligation 
 of loving Him. 
 
 These are the unmistakable accents of real religion. 
 In such passages Pascal stands in the true succession 
 of the Apostles and Prophets, recalling once more to a 
 
58 PASCAL 
 
 forgetful world the claims of the commonplace virtues. 
 And it is this, as M. Brunetiere has said, which gives 
 alike to The Thoughts and to these Provincial Letters 
 their permanent value. Both alike teach us that no 
 religious observances can release us from the necessity 
 of striving continually to make ourselves better and more 
 disinterested, because there is no absolution and no 
 communion which can take the place of the effort we 
 must for ever make against ourselves. Pascal teaches 
 this old and yet ever-needed lesson with a sincerity and 
 an eloquence that have never been surpassed. " Never," 
 says the critic I have just named, " will there be in the 
 French language a more eloquent invective than the 
 Provincial Letters : never a finer book than the 
 mutilated fragments of The Thoughts : never a greater 
 writer, or one whom we ought to re-read with more 
 assiduity, to love more passionately and respect more 
 profoundly than Pascal." * 
 
 Brunetidre, Etudes Critiques. 
 
3. EU EftDUfiSts. 
 
THE THOUGHTS OF PASCAL. 
 
 OOME eight years before his death in 1662, Pascal, 
 deeply affected by the sudden recovery of his niece from 
 a painful bodily affliction, conceived the intention of 
 writing a defence of the Christian religion. It was his 
 habit, however, to keep his compositions a long time 
 in his mind before he began to commit them to writing, 
 so that his ideas might have time, so to speak, to settle, 
 and thus be able to produce the effect he intended. 
 
 Thus, when his health finally broke down four years 
 before his death, the proposed work still existed only in 
 his own mind. His illness, whatever its nature may 
 have been, was such as peremptorily to forbid mental 
 application. While it did not confine him to his bed, 
 nor even to his room, it precluded all literary composition. 
 The utmost the sick man was able to do was to 
 jot down as they occurred to him the detached thoughts 
 which he still hoped to combine one day into a harmonious 
 
62 PASCAL 
 
 whole. This he did on any stray piece of paper which 
 might at the moment be available. As these memoranda 
 were intended only for his own use, he took no trouble 
 to make them intelligible, or even legible, to any eye but 
 his own. 
 
 These carelessly written memoranda are the Thoughts 
 of Blaise Pascal, reflections upon the nature of God and 
 the nature of man which are universally recognized to 
 possess the highest originality, and have thus won a place 
 in religious literature by the side of the Confessions of 
 Augustine, the Imitation, and the Pilgrim's Progress. 
 
 The slips of paper were pasted on a large note-book 
 after Pascal's death by some unknown hand, apparently 
 quite at random and without any regard to their subject 
 matter. 
 
 The difficulty even of deciphering this autograph is 
 forcibly brought home to us by M. Brunetiere's description 
 of its appearance : " It consists," he tells us, " of a large 
 folio containing on its pages scraps of yellowish paper 
 of all forms and sizes, pasted at random, we know not 
 by what hand, but in any case by a hand singularly 
 negligent or pitiably unskilful. Some of these have 
 holes as if they had been previously filed ; some are 
 
 1/ 
 
THE THOUGHTS 63 
 
 smeared on the margin or in one of the comers, or on 
 the opposite side, with marks of all kinds or with 
 geometrical figures. All, or nearly all — for Pascal 
 dictated some of the notes, we must suppose, not being 
 able himself to hold the pen — are covered with a painful, 
 irregular, hurried handwriting, of which the letters are 
 hardly formed, and the lines are turned in all directions, 
 sometimes stopping abruptly in the middle of a page, 
 and sometimes with half their length hidden beneath 
 additions and erasures."* 
 
 No wonder that a book originating in such a MS. 
 should have had an eventful literary history. We are 
 not surprised to learn that the first inspection of the 
 fragments resulted in an opinion adverse to their 
 publication. They appeared too unformed to be 
 submitted to the public eye. Pascal's contemplated 
 work had, however, become widely known, and his 
 representatives were pressed to make public any attempts 
 he might have made towards its execution. 
 
 Thus at length, seven years after his death, the revision 
 and publication of the notes was entrusted to a small 
 
 * Etudes Critiques. 
 
64 PASCAL 
 
 group consisting of seven or eight persons, of whom 
 some had been intimate friends of Pascal, while all held 
 the religious opinions identified with Port Royal. The 
 relatives of Pascal were represented by his nephew, 
 Etienne P6rier, who was then twenty-six years old. 
 
 Three courses, as Etienne Perier tells us, were open 
 to these executors of so valuable a legacy. They might 
 publish the MS. exactly as it was. To do this, however, 
 they decided, and no doubt rightly, would be merely to 
 waste their labour, for few could or would read such a 
 book. Rejecting this course, they might in the next 
 place take upon themselves Pascal's unfulfilled design 
 and incorporate the detached fragments into a finished 
 treatise. This they attempted to do, but speedily found, 
 as we might expect, that the treatise, when it came to be 
 finished, would be their own and not Pascal's. The only 
 other alternative was to print, without addition or 
 alteration, as many of the fragments as possible, and 
 leave out those which were obviously incomplete or 
 unintelligible ; and upon this course they decided. 
 
 The book appeared in 1670, with a preface written by 
 Etienne Perier, in which he describes the course chosen 
 as follows : " From the total number of thoughts only 
 
tHE THOUGHTS 65 
 
 those have been taken which seemed most clear and 
 most finished, and they have been presented as they 
 were found, without additions or changes, except that 
 they have been brought into some kind of order, and 
 those of them which bear upon the same subject have 
 been grouped under the same titles, whereas in the 
 original MS. they were without sequence or connection, 
 and scattered here and there. All the rest which were 
 either too obscure or too imperfect have been suppressed." 
 
 This seems the best plan the circumstances admitted 
 of, if only it had been adhered to. Unfortunately it was 
 not. Pascal's memoranda were repeatedly and seriously 
 altered by their editors, and no intimation of these 
 changes was given. 
 
 The alterations must be ascribed to two motives, one 
 arising from the circumstances of the moment, and the 
 other from our human nature. 
 
 In the year 1670, when the book appeared, the Jansenist 
 
 controversy had subsided into a temporary peace. The 
 
 five propositions extracted from Jansen's book had been 
 
 condemned, and a formulary endorsing this condemnation 
 
 had been signed, with whatever misgivings of conscience, 
 
 by the nuns and recluses of Port Royal. Pascal's editors 
 
 s 
 
66 PASCAL 
 
 were naturally very careful that nothing in the new book 
 should endanger the peace of the Church,- and this 
 anxiety led to many softenings and excisions of the actual 
 words of the MS. 
 
 A still more potent motive, however, was the desire 
 that the book should really fulfil and not defeat its 
 author's intention, which was to defend the Christian 
 religion. Pascal, possessed as he was of a mind of the 
 utmost strength and precision, fully realized the nature 
 of his proposed task. He was quite alive to the strength 
 of the arguments he had to meet, and he knew the points 
 in his own position which especially invited attack. 
 Thus many of these memoranda may be most reasonably 
 regarded as objections or arguments which Pascal noted 
 down in order that he might answer them. And like 
 Newman, with whom he has been often compared, he 
 would state the objection so as to do it full and perfect 
 justice. He would make it as plausible as the opponent 
 himself would have done. At the same time, the 
 memoranda of course did not distinguish Pascal's own 
 conclusions from those which he desired to overthrow. 
 It may also well be that some of these notes are con- 
 cessions which Pascal knew that he could safely make, 
 
THE THOUGHTS 67 
 
 but which seemed in the highest degree dangerous to his 
 editors. 
 
 In any case, the desire for edification prevailed over 
 fidelity to the MS., and the editors altered freely wher- 
 ever they thought it likely that Pascal's actual words 
 would perplex or mislead the reader. In every such 
 case they brought the words into the form which, as 
 they expressed it, Pascal himself would have given them 
 had he lived. 
 
 How many parallels to their action present themselves 
 in the history of Christian literature, even in the vicis- 
 situdes through which the words of Christ Himself have 
 passed ! The alterations when they are discovered seem 
 to later ages quite unwarrantable, and are pronounced 
 by them to be forgeries. They are really the outcome 
 of a situation where the right course is exceedingly 
 difficult to discover, or rather where there is no abso- 
 lutely and indisputably right course, but only a choice 
 between evils. 
 
 Had these men given Pascal's Thoughts to the world 
 in their authentic form, the Thoughts would have un- 
 doubtedly produced the effect they dreaded. We feel 
 sure of this, because the Thoughts, as it was, and in spite 
 
68 PASCAL 
 
 of the alterations, produced this effect. Pascal, like 
 Newman, has often been represented as a sceptic at heart, 
 and for the same reason, because of the intellectual 
 detachment which enables him, for the time being, to 
 cease to be himself, and to become the very person he 
 is opposing. A man may however do this, as I am 
 convinced both these writers did, without being really 
 visited by doubt. 
 
 In any case, the Thoughts of Pascal remained for 
 more than 170 years in the form given to them by the 
 Port Royalist editors, and no one suspected the process 
 to which they had been subjected. Edition followed 
 edition. New thoughts and other remains of the 
 illustrious writer were added from time to time, and 
 stiU the printed text of the first edition was accepted 
 without question by all subsequent editors. 
 
 At length, in 1844, it occurred to Victor Cousin, the 
 well-known philosopher, to compare the printed editions 
 with the autograph MS. in the National Library in Paris. 
 He found, to use his own words, that " analysis cannot 
 invent a way of altering the style of a great writer which 
 that of Pascal has not suffered at the hands of Port 
 Royal. He has come down to us mutilated and 
 
THE THOUGHTS 69 
 
 disfigured in every way." " We have given," he proceeds 
 to say, " numerous examples of every kind of alteration : 
 alterations of words, alterations of terms, alterations of 
 phrases ; suppressions, substitutions, additions ; arbitrary 
 compositions, sometimes of a paragraph, sometimes of a 
 whole chapter, by help of phrases and paragraphs foreign 
 to one another ; and what is worse, decompositions, more 
 arbitrary still and quite inconceivable, of chapters 
 which in Pascal's MS. were profoundly elaborated, and 
 perfectly connected in all their parts."* 
 
 Of the recent editions of the Thoughts in which 
 Cousin's discoveries have been utilized, may be named 
 that of Faugere, 1844, in which the words of the original 
 MS. are accurately given, but the thoughts are arranged 
 in a somewhat inconvenient order ; that of E. Havet 
 (5th ed., bears the date 1897) ; that of Molinier, and that 
 published during the past year in the series of " Les 
 Grands Ecrivains Francais." The Thoughts have been 
 excellently translated into English by Mr. Kegan Paul. 
 
 Any of these editions will show us the great import- 
 ance of the Thoughts in the history of Christianity and 
 
 * V, Cousin, 'Etudes sur Pascal. 
 
70 PASCAL 
 
 of religion. The method of defence adopted by Pascal 
 was then unknown, however familiar we ourselves may 
 be with its recent developments. It endeavours to 
 establish the truth of Christianity by showing that it 
 alone gives a satisfactory account of human nature. 
 
 In studying the Thoughts of Pascal we must keep 
 ever in mind the nature of the book we are reading. 
 We are in a position similar to that of the student of 
 architecture when he endeavours to construct some 
 vanished building from the scattered ruins of it which 
 survive. Many of the fragments of stone-work which 
 lie around are susceptible of various interpretations. 
 What he is looking at may once have been a refectory, 
 or a room in the abbot's house, or a part of the school 
 buildings. Thus it is impossible to tell to what portion 
 of the projected treatise many of these detached thoughts 
 were intended by their author to belong. And in actual 
 fact they are arranged under different titles by different 
 editors. 
 
 We have, however, for their elucidation, one important 
 statement which Etienne P6rier informs us was made 
 by Pascal himself to a small company of friends. Some 
 two years before his death, being questioned upon the 
 
THE THOUGHTS 7I 
 
 plan of his contemplated treatise, he traced in outline 
 the general course of his argument, i^-' 
 
 The argument starts, not from proofs of the existence 
 of the Deity, but from an enumeration of some of the 
 surprising phenomena presented by human nature. 
 The extraordinary contradictions observable in human 
 beings are exhibited in a series of illustrations. Men 
 are at some moments surprisingly noble, at other 
 moments surprisingly base. The history of the race 
 and of each of its members is made up of inconsistencies. 
 The general colouring of the resulting picture is neither 
 uninterruptedly sombre nor uninterruptedly bright. It 
 is the strangest blending of these two opposite colours. 
 Our wonder is that man being as good as he is should 
 not be better, that being as bad as he is he should not be 
 worse. How are these contradictions to be explained ? 
 
 The supposed inquirer first consults the philosophers, 
 but finds that they all fix their attention upon one only 
 of the two sets of phenomena that call for explanation. 
 Some, like Epictetus and the Stoics, base their conception 
 of human nature upon man as he is in his best moments, 
 and thus make the exceptional virtue of a few favoured 
 individuals the measure of attainment for the whole 
 
72 PASCAL 
 
 race. While others, of whom Montaigne was for Pascal 
 the representative, solve the difficult problem by treating 
 the noblest human aspirations as illusions, discrediting 
 the reason, and recommending us to desist from what is 
 plainly beyond us, and, in Voltaire's famous phrase, 
 " Cultivate our garden." 
 
 Disappointed with the philosophers, the inquirer 
 next turns to the various religions of mankind, but 
 finds none of them worthy of serious attention until he 
 reaches that of the Jews. In the sacred book of this 
 nation he finds for the first time a plausible account of 
 the contrarieties which have hitherto baffled him. Here 
 he learns that man was originally created in his Maker's 
 image, but by his own choice involved himself in ruin 
 and misery. His original character, however, the book 
 assures him, has not been entirely effaced, nor has he 
 been left by his Maker without the opportunity of 
 recovery. Such an opportunity has been offered to him 
 in a great Deliverer, and it has been embraced by a 
 limited section of mankind. 
 
 There is no need to dwell further upon the later stages 
 of the arguments, where Pascal endeavours to show that 
 the view which thus at first sight commends itself to the 
 
THE THOUGHTS 73 
 
 intelligence is really true. To establish this he appeals 
 to the familiar attestations given by Jewish prophecy 
 and by miracles, and here he is not beyond his age. His 
 observations upon the books of Moses and the miracles 
 of the Old and New Testaments are like many pages in 
 the earlier geographers or physicians, and have become, 
 as we say, out of date. 
 
 The explanation, however, of the facts of human nature 
 which approved itself to Pascal must not be confounded 
 with his reflections upon prophecy and miracles. This 
 explanation seemed to a great writer of our own, dis- 
 tinguished by gifts not unlike Pascal's, to be the only 
 one possible. 
 
 " To consider the world in its length and breadth," 
 wrote Newman in 1864, " its various history, the many 
 races of men, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual 
 alienation, their conflicts ; and then their ways, habits, 
 governments, forms of worship ; their enterprises, their 
 aimless courses, their random achievements and acquire- 
 ments, the impotent conclusion of long-standing facts, 
 the tokens, so faint and broken, of a superintending 
 design, the blind evolution of what turn out to be great 
 powers and truths .... the greatness and littleness 
 
74 PASCAL 
 
 of man, his short duration, the curtain hung over his 
 futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, 
 the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the 
 prevalence and intensity of sin ... . aU this is a vision 
 to dizzy and appal, and inflicts upon the mind a sense 
 of a profound mystery, which is absolutely beyond human 
 solution. 
 
 " What shall be said to this heart-piercing, reason- 
 bewildering fact ? I can only answer that either there 
 is no Creator, or this living society of men is in a true 
 sense discarded from His presence. Did I see a boy of 
 good make and mind, with the tokens upon him of a 
 refined nature, cast upon the world without provision, 
 unable to say whence he came, his birthplace or family 
 connections, I should conclude that there was some 
 mystery connected with his history, or that he was one 
 of whom, from one cause or another, his parents were 
 ashamed. Thus only should I be able to account for 
 the contrast between the promise and the condition of 
 his being. And so I argue about the world ; if there be a 
 God — since there is a God — the human race is implicated 
 in some terrible aboriginal calamity. This is a fact, a 
 fact as true as the fact of its existence ; and thus the 
 
THE THOUGHTS 75 
 
 doctrine of what is theologically called original sin 
 becomes to me almost as certain as that the worid exists, 
 or as the existence of God."* 
 
 This assurance regarding the existence of what is here 
 called original sin would, I suppose, be shared by all 
 moralists. They might use a different terminology, but 
 ■they would not dispute the fact. That there are inherited 
 forces within us swaying us towards evil, would not be 
 denied by any accredited teacher. It was indeed denied 
 by Rousseau in the famous treatise on education in which 
 he attempted to trace all the evils of the human lot to 
 our own interference with the course of nature. The 
 commentary on this theory, however, supplied by the 
 French Revolution was, we may believe, too striking 
 ever to be forgotten. We know that passion is ever at 
 work, striving to pervert the judgment, and to make our 
 best impulses the instruments of mischief. 
 
 It is not the fact of original sin, but the inference 
 from it to a terrible aboriginal calamity which has been 
 made uncertain by the advance of knowledge since 
 Pascal's time. We do not find that the most conservative 
 theologians now represent the fall of man as anything 
 * Newman, Apologia. 
 
76 PASCAL 
 
 more than the first wrong choice made by a creature 
 who may have stood on a very low rung of the ladder of 
 life. We do not feel that the early narratives of Genesis 
 warrant us in speaking with much confidence about the 
 beginnings of human life upon the earth. It may be 
 that man is being slowly transformed from a savage or 
 even from a brute into a spiritual being, as S. Paul seems 
 to argue in his famous chapter : " That is not first which 
 is spiritual, but that which is natural ; then that which 
 is spiritual." 
 
 The existence of the double nature in man is of much 
 greater moment than the ultimate explanation of it 
 which may be beyond our reach. The brute has not 
 been entirely extinguished even in the noblest members 
 of the race. You see it reappearing on battlefields and 
 at shipwrecks, at gaming-tables and on racecourses ; 
 and yet on the very same field your eyes will be arrested 
 and your heart touched by the noblest heroism and the 
 most complete self-surrender. However the inconsis- 
 tencies came to be, there they are. There is an earthly 
 and there is a divine element in human nature, and it 
 is their warfare which gives rise to the bewildering 
 phenomena upon which Pascal dwells. 
 
THE THOUGHTS 'J^ 
 
 Let US listen to him as he brings some of the phenomena 
 before us : — 
 
 We rightly respeci the human spirit because it is the 
 superior and divine part of our being. But into what 
 follies and extravagances do we allow this respect to lead us ! 
 
 We are not content with the life we have in ourselves and 
 in our own being : we wish to live an imaginary life in the 
 idea of others, and to this end we strive to make a show. 
 We labour incessantly to embellish and preserve this 
 imaginary being, and we neglect the true. . . . It is a great 
 mark of the nothingness of our own being that we are not 
 satisfied with the one without the other, and that we often 
 renounce one for the other, (p. 59. Kegan Paul.) 
 
 Vanity is so anchored in the heart of man that a soldier, 
 a camp-follower, a cook, a porter, makes his boasts, and is 
 for having his admirers : even philosophers wish for them. 
 Those who write against it yet desire the glory of having 
 written well : I who write this have, may be, this desire, 
 and perhaps those who will read it. 
 
 Again, how strangely does our pursuit of happiness 
 beUe our professed beliefs on the subject ! We profess 
 
78 PASCAL 
 
 to believe that the seat of happiness is within : that 
 external things have no absolute influence upon 
 happiness : that our minds can on the contrajy transform 
 external things, and make a hell of heaven and a heaven 
 of hell. Our duty thus is to make ourselves masters 
 of that inner world which we can control, since the world 
 outside is obviously not within our power. We should 
 retire within ourselves and there seek that happiness 
 which has been admirably defined as interest in the 
 midst of tranquillity. Our conduct is, however, one 
 continual protest against this supposition. 
 
 Nothing is so insupportable to man as to be completely 
 at rest, without passion, without business, without diversion, 
 without study. He then feels his nothingness, his loneli- 
 ness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his 
 emptiness. At once, from the depth of his soul, will arise 
 weariness, gloom, sadness, vexation, disappointment, 
 despair. Were our condition truly happy, we need not 
 turn our minds from it in order to be happy. 
 
 A little matter consoles us because a little matter afflicts us. 
 
 Strife alone pleases us, and not the victory. We like to 
 see beasts fighting, not the victor furious over the vanquished. 
 
THE THOUGHTS 79 
 
 We wish only to see the victorious end, and as soon as it 
 comes we are surfeited. It is the same in flay and in the 
 search for truth. In all disputes we like to see the clash 
 of opinions, but care not at all to contemplate truth when 
 found. If we are to see truth with pleasure, we must see 
 it arise out of conflict. 
 
 A man passes his life without weariness in playing 
 every day for a small stake. Give him each morning, on 
 condition he does not play, the money he might possibly 
 win, and you make him miserable. It will be said perhaps 
 that he seeks the amusement of play, and not the winnings. 
 Make him then play for nothing, he will find no excitement 
 in it, and will soon be wearied. Mere diversion then is not 
 his pursuit : a languid and passionless amusement mil 
 weary him. He must grow warm in it, and cheat himself 
 by thinking that he is made happy by gaining what he 
 would despise if it were given him not to play. 
 
 Take heed to this. What is it to be superintendent, 
 chancellor, first president, but to be in a condition wherein 
 from early morning a vast number of persons flock in from 
 every side so as not to leave them an hour in the day in 
 which they can think of themselves ? And if they are in 
 disgrace and dismissed to their country houses, though 
 
8o PASCAL 
 
 they want neither wealth nor retinue at need, they yet are 
 miserable and desolate, because no one hinders them from 
 thinking of themselves. 
 
 Man is thus full of antitheses and contrarieties. 
 
 Man is but a reed, weakest in nature, but a reed which 
 thinks. It needs not that the whole universe should arise 
 to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill 
 him. But were the universe to crush him, man would 
 still be more noble than that which has slain him, because 
 he knows that he dies. The universe knows nothing of 
 this. 
 
 All our dignity, therefore, consists in thought. By this 
 must we raise ourselves. . . . Then let us make it our 
 study to think well, for this is the starting-point of morals. 
 
 The greatness of man is so evident that it is even proved 
 by his littleness. . . . For what man ever was unhappy 
 at not being a king save a discrowned king. . . . No man 
 was ever grieved at not having three eyes, but any man is 
 inconsolable if he have none. 
 
 We are fools if we rest content with the society of those 
 like ourselves : miserable as we are, powerless as we are. 
 
THE THOUGHTS Si 
 
 they will not aid us. We shall die alone. (On mourra 
 seul.) The last act is tragic, how pleasantly soever the 
 flay may have run through the others. 
 
 Having exhibited these inconsistencies, it was Pascal's 
 intention to show how they were dealt with by the 
 philosophers. Upon this part of his proposed work 
 the surviving notes throw but little light. Prefixed, 
 however, to the Thoughts in many recent editions may 
 be found an important conversation on philosophy 
 between Pascal and one of the recluses of Port Royal. 
 Pascal here takes the two writers who represented in 
 his mind the two schools, to one or other of which all 
 philosophers belonged, and subjects them to a very 
 penetrating criticism. 
 
 " Epictetus," he said to his interlocutor, " is among 
 the philosophers of the world he who has best known 
 the duty of man. He wishes that man should above 
 all things look upon God as his supreme object : that 
 he should be persuaded that He governs all things with 
 justice : that he should submit himself to Him with aU 
 his heart, and that he should follow Him willingly in 
 everything, acting only with the greatest wisdom. This 
 
82 PASCAL 
 
 disposition will check all complaints and murmurs, and 
 will prepare the spirit to suffer resignedly experiences the 
 most painful. Epictetus," he continued, " wishes that 
 a man should be humble, that he should hide his good 
 resolutions and fulfil them in secret ; nothing ruins 
 them more than to display them. He never wearies 
 of repeating that man's whole study and desire should 
 be to discern the will of God and to follow it." 
 
 This exalted morality seemed to Pascal to be vitiated 
 by one serious defect. Epictetus, he said, would have 
 deserved to be worshipped had he known man's weakness 
 as well as he knew his strength. He assumed that 
 man was capable of discharging his obligations towards 
 God, that such fulfilment was within his power, that it 
 was possible for him to cure himself of every vice and 
 acquire every virtue, and so make himself the companion 
 of God. Thus the Stoic appeal was essentially addressed 
 to human pride. It was a call to man to put forth his 
 strength and win the virtue which was always within his 
 reach. 
 
 Montaigne, on the other hand, although he had been 
 born in a Christian State, and was a member of the 
 Catholic Church, represented to Pascal those — a large 
 
THE THOUGHTS 83 
 
 class in every age — who, having convinced themselves 
 that the deepest questions are incapable of a positive 
 answer, turn away from them to a life of refined, amiable 
 even beneficent worldliness. This philosophy is well 
 typified by Montaigne's motto and device, which consisted 
 of a pair of scales in perfect equilibrium, and underneath 
 the words, " Que sais-je ? " 
 
 Thus the two great systems, to one or other of which 
 every human philosophy seemed to Pascal to belong, 
 had each its fatal flaw. The one stimulated the growth 
 of the deadly vice of pride, while the other, by discrediting 
 and discouraging every attempt to reach the heavens, 
 whether on the wings of thought or aspiration, con- 
 demned men to a contented and cowardly evasion of 
 their highest responsibilities. 
 
 From both of these defects the Christian character 
 appeared to Pascal to be free, inasmuch as it resulted 
 from a recognition both of a man's strength and his 
 weakness. The Christian is saved from pride by the 
 sense of sin — ^his own and that of others. He is roused 
 from the selfish lethargy of worldliness by the inspiriting 
 call to die and rise with Christ, and ascend with Him 
 into the heavens. 
 
84 PASCAL 
 
 It is hard to see wherein the lapse of two and a half 
 centuries has deprived this argument of its essential 
 force. If the distinguishing feature of the human lot 
 be found in the contradictions where Pascal sought it, 
 the faith which fully allows for these contradictions 
 must be held to possess in this the strongest mark of 
 truth. Not only are they formally recognized by 
 Christianity, they enter into its inmost texture, and 
 show that they do so by issuing in a character which, 
 like the facts determining it, is complex and many-sided, 
 and could only be described by one of its greatest 
 representatives in terms of which each seems in succession 
 to undo the effect of its predecessor : " dying, and behold 
 we live," " chastened, and not killed," " sorrowful, yet 
 alway rejoicing," " poor, yet making many rich," " having 
 nothing, and yet possessing all things." 
 
 Here we see a much more than verbal recognition 
 of the contrarieties which riveted the attention of Pascal. 
 They are expressed in an experience which is as contra- 
 dictory as they are themselves. Thus while we may 
 hesitate to follow Pascal in tracing the inconsistencies 
 back to a primaeval calamity, we may yet find in the 
 treatment of them by Christianity an irresistible evidence 
 
THE THOUGHTS 85 
 
 of its truth. It is the conspicuous representatives of 
 Christian virtue who have returned, not in word, but in 
 deed and experience, the most adequate answer to the 
 question pressed home upon us by the Thoughts of 
 Pascal. 
 
 Realizing this, the devout spirit may make his cry of 
 gratitude its own, and say with him : — 
 
 " Therefore I stretch forth my arms to my DeUverer, 
 who, after having been foretold for four thousand years, 
 hath come at last to suffer and to die for me .... 
 and by His grace I wait for death in peace, in the hope 
 bf being united to Him for ever ; and I live meanwhile 
 rejoicing, whether in the good things which it pleaseth 
 Him to give me, or in the evils which He sends me for 
 my good, and which He has taught me to endure by 
 His example." 
 
J. Baker & Son, 
 Clifton.