Pascal

“ Ah, Pascal, my friend Pascal, your star of gold, for a moment hidden, shines at last in all its brilliancy. And she comes here under the pretext of a letter of credit. Come, come, Pascal, my friend, keep calm; one does not find such an opportunity twice in his life. Think now, if you are sly, you can take the mistress of the prince and the wife of the blond youth in the same net. ”

“ Pascal's essential grandeur consists in the fact hat he tore himself clear of all those peddling and pitiful compromises, those half humorous concessions, those lazy conventionalisms, with which most people cover their brains as if with wool, and ballast their imagination as if with heavy sand. ”

“ It was on one of those bad days that Pascal, approaching a window, saw his neighbor, M. Bellombre, the retired professor, making the round of his garden to see if his fruit trees were well covered with blossoms. The sight of the old man, so neat and so erect, with the fine placidity of the egoist, on whom illness had apparently never laid hold, suddenly put Pascal beside himself.
“Ah!” he growled, “there is one who will never overwork himself, who will never endanger his health by worrying!” ”

“ Pascal is not a systematic philosopher; but his acute intellect was united to an inner restlessness of soul. Neither science nor philosophy could bring him peace, for his needs were far deeper than any merely rational systematisation of ideas could satisfy. ”

“ During the month which followed, Pascal took refuge in furious and incessant work. He now remained obstinately, for whole days at a time, alone in the study, sometimes passing even the nights there, going over old documents, to revise all his works on heredity. It seemed as if a sort of frenzy had seized him to assure himself of the legitimacy of his hopes, to force science to give him the certainty that humanity could be remade—made a higher, a healthy humanity. He no longer left the house, he abandoned his patients even, and lived among his papers, without air or exercise. ”

“ Significance of Pascal.—It is not as a systematic thinker that Pascal is of importance to the historian of thought. He typifies that more or less inarticulate and unreasoned revolt which the arrogance and optimism of a new science or a new philosophy arouse against themselves. He voices the eternal protest that it is not by bread alone that men live. As is [Pg 41] generally the case with such protests, the pessimism of Pascal was no doubt exaggerated; but exaggeration is necessary if minds are to be impressed; and those who feel strongly see only one side of a question. ”

“ Pascal grew still paler; he remained motionless, in an attitude of utter dejection. But in a far-away voice, as if he were talking to himself, he murmured:
“I have so much work to do! I should like to go over my envelopes, my manuscripts, my notes, and complete the work of my life. If I were alone perhaps I might be able to arrange everything. I would sell La Souleiade, oh! for a crust of bread, for it is not worth much. I should shut myself and my papers in a little room. I should work from morning till night, and I should try not to be too unhappy.” ”

“ Those who think of Pascal in his final sanctity, his detachment of soul from all but the greatest matters, may be surprised, when they turn to the "Letters," to find him treating questions, as serious for the friends he was defending as for their adversaries, ironically, with a but half-veiled disdain for them, or an affected humility at being unskilled in them and no theologian. He does not allow us to forget that he is, after all, a layman; while he introduces us, almost avowedly, into a world of unmeaning terms, and unreal distinctions and suppositions that can never be verified. ”

“ Crimson with anger and assailed by the strangest suspicions, Pascal turned from Madame d’Argeles and hastened into the dining-room. The conversation ceased entirely on his arrival there. He could not fail to understand that he had been the subject of it. A secret instinct warned him that all the men around him were his enemies—though he knew not why—and that they were plotting against him. ”

“ And if Pascal’s creed was the logical deduction from the whole work, the eternal question of the Beyond, which she still continued to put to heaven, reopened the door of the infinite to humanity marching ever onward. ”

“ A sacred serenity pervaded the obscurity; the two tapers burned with a pure, still, unwavering flame. Then she saw that Pascal’s face, framed in his flowing white hair and beard, had become very white. He slept with the light falling upon him, surrounded by a halo, supremely beautiful. She bent down, kissed him again, felt on her lips the cold of the marble face, with its closed eyelids, dreaming its dream of eternity. Her grief at not being able to save the work which he had left to her care was so overpowering that she fell on her knees and burst into a passion of sobs. ”

“ Thus Pascal's prose, like the verse of Malherbe and Corneille, is based upon reason; it is primarily intellectual. But, with Pascal, the intellect expresses itself even more exactly. The last vestiges of medieval ambiguities have been discarded; the style is perfectly modern. So wonderfully did Pascal master the resources of the great instrument which he had forged, that it is true to say that no reader who wishes to realize once for all the great qualities of French prose could do better than turn straight to the Lettres Provinciales. ”

“ Faith and reason may equally claim Pascal for their own. If they appear sometimes to conflict in his soul, it is because he lacked time not only to complete the work which he meditated, but above all to finish his own interior work—that sort of creation which genius performs within ifself—and to fuse into an harmonious whole the diverse elements of his thought. ”

“ Pascal is one of the great men whose minds have been fascinated by the eternal riddle of existence, and have carried to a logical conclusion one typical mode of meeting if not of answering it; and who have also had the gift of coining thought into language so terse and vivid as to be part of the intellectual currency of all future generations. ”

“ In addition, one hears the intimate voice of Pascal, speaking upon the profoundest problems of existence—the most momentous topics which can agitate the minds of men. Two great themes compose his argument: the miserable insignificance of all that is human—human reason, human knowledge, human ambition; and the transcendent glory of God. Never was the wretchedness of mankind painted with a more passionate power. The whole infinitude of the physical universe is invoked in his sweeping sentences to crush the presumption of man. ”

“ Those who have once imagined themselves in direct communication with that which lies behind appearances cannot resume unaltered the conditions of human society. Pascal in the full glory of scientific discovery—and is there any human emotion to compare with that of the man who suddenly sees enlarged the very boundaries of Nature?—in the passion of scientific debate, knew that abrupt revulsion of the mind, that withdrawal from finite things, that unique absorption in spiritual perfection which drove a Charles V. to quit the affairs of Europe for a monk’s cell in Estramadura. ”

“ And thus, in all humility, we despair of penetrating the recesses of Pascal's mind, while solving mathematical problems that baffled all Europe; writing works replete with wit and wisdom, close reasoning and sublime eloquence; and the while believing that he pleased the Creator by renouncing all the blessings of life; by spending his time in the adoration of relics, and shortening his life by self-inflicted privation and torture. His works, replete with energy and eloquence as they are, present many of the same difficulties. ”

“ For an instant Clotilde looked at her child, now a big boy of three months. She had been wearing mourning for Pascal for almost ten months—a long and simple black gown, in which she looked divinely beautiful, with her tall, slender figure and her sad, youthful face surrounded by its aureole of fair hair. And although she could not smile, it filled her with sweet emotion to see the beautiful child, so plump and rosy, with his mouth still wet with milk, whose gaze had been arrested by the sunbeam full of dancing motes. ”

“ All was designed to lead the thoughts from all human things up to God. With Pascal, therefore, it was philosophy upon which his conversation fell, to try the depths of his mind, and see what special direction he needed. “Pascal told him that the two books most familiar to him were Epictetus and Montaigne, and he lavished great praise on both. M. de Saci had always wished to read these two authors, and asked M. Pascal to explain them fully.”
“Epictetus,” said Pascal, “is one of the philosophers of the world who have best known the duties of man. ”

“ It is sufficient to notice that the next occupation of Pascal, after his conversion, was to write these eighteen "Letters," which as prose are of capital importance in the foundation of French classical style, and which as polemic are surpassed by none, not by Demosthenes, or Cicero, or Swift. They have the limitation of all polemic and forensic: they persuade, they seduce, they are unfair. But it is also unfair to assert that, in these Letters to a Provincial, Pascal was attacking the Society of Jesus in itself. ”

“ Why should he be constantly and irremediably wretched? "At for me," he continues, "when I look at either London or Paris, I see no reason for that misery which M. Pascal talks of; I behold a city which in no wise resembles a desert island; it is peopled, opulent, governed by good laws, and its inhabitants are as happy as human nature can be. What wise man is there who will be full of discouragement, because he does not know the nature of his thoughts, and because he is acquainted with only a few of the attributes of matter?" ”

“ It is quite impossible to vindicate his consistency, and it is not in the least necessary to do this, as already explained; while we feel bound to maintain that his higher mood is his true mood, and that the Pascal of the ‘Pensées’—the veritable Pascal—is to be judged, not by his weakness but by his strength; by his moments of clear mental sanity and insight, and not by his moments of despair or of derisive mockery of all human philosophy. ”

“ In the sad and quiet room Pascal began to speak again, with the courageous tranquillity of a dying philosopher giving his last lesson. He now reviewed his personal observations; he said that he had often cured himself by work, regular and methodical work, not carried to excess. Eleven o’clock struck; he urged Ramond to take his breakfast, and he continued the conversation, soaring to lofty and distant heights, while Martine served the meal. The sun had at last burst through the morning mists, a sun still half-veiled in clouds, and mild, whose golden light warmed the room. ”

“ But it is impossible for anyone who takes Pascal’s Pensées simply as he finds them in connexion with the facts of Pascal’s history to question his theological orthodoxy, understanding by theological orthodoxy the acceptance of revelation and dogma; it is equally impossible for any one in the same condition to declare him absolutely content with dogma and revelation. It is of the essence of an active mind like Pascal’s to explore and state all the arguments which make for or make against the conclusion it is investigating. ”

“ Pascal is said to have divined, by the force of his own genius, so large a number of Euclid’s propositions, as to appear almost miraculous to his admirers, and wholly incredible to his aspersers. Yet that number did not exceed eighteen. In fact, art and science have their meeting-point in method. ”

“ There is indeed a happiness enjoyed by those who with firm conviction yield to some truths an assent more undoubting than any to which reason alone would lead, and to which none but they can attain. Thus it was that Pascal followed his scientific pursuits, with no solicitude as to the conclusions to which they would conduct him, safe in the ‘more sure word of prophecy’ to which it behoved him to take heed. ”

“ To sum up, the Pensées are excursions into the great unknown made with a full acknowledgment of the greatness of that unknown. From the point of view that belief and knowledge, based on experience or reasoning, are separate domains with an unexplored sea between and round them, Pascal is perfectly comprehensible, and he need not be taken as a deserter from one region to the other. To those who hold that all intellectual exercise outside the sphere of religion is impious or that all intellectual exercise inside that sphere is futile, he must remain an enigma. ”

“ During the reading of the will Clotilde had remained in the notary’s garden, sitting on a bench under the shade of an ancient chestnut tree. When Pascal and Félicité again appeared, there was a moment of great embarrassment, for they had not spoken to one another for some months past. The old lady, however, affected to be perfectly at her ease, making no allusion whatever to the new situation, and giving it to be understood that they might very well meet and appear united before the world, without for that reason entering into an explanation or becoming reconciled. ”

“ During all this time Pascal suffered terribly, without making any complaint. He had sunk into a dull distrust, imagining that he was still being watched, and that if they seemed to leave him at peace it was only in order to concoct in secret the darkest plots. His uneasiness increased, even, and he expected every day some catastrophe to happen—the earth suddenly to open and swallow up his papers, La Souleiade itself to be razed to the ground, carried away bodily, scattered to the winds. ”