PASCAL.* THIS edition of the great authors of France is
splendid in every respect. The Pascal, of which the first volume only has appeared, is edited by M. Faugere, who knows more about the great author than any one else, and it contains his very valu- able introduction. Pascal, the illustrious writer and thinker, whom all cultured and religious people hold in the highest estimation for his character, genius, and works, is always a wel- come guest. His style is not equalled either by French or any other authors of modern Europe ; by it, the language of his country was fixed, and it seems as if he had skipped over two centuries and foreseen in what style his own countrymen would and ought to write in these days. His sarcasm made his opponents the laughing-stock of the world, though they had regenerated the Church by their learning, self-sacrifice, and their education of the members of that Church. He is, moreover, a great psycho- logical phenomenon, especially for us at a time when the belief in modern miracles is being so greatly revived among the numerous converts to his Church. He is also a gigantic agnos- tic, and a good example to all those who, pretending to be ag- nostics, yet know everything. Had he not been led by the Holy Spirit, what an atheist he would have been ! he would certainly have known that there is no God who created the world, even more decidedly than those of our country who have established this fact to their own satisfaction.
Pascal's life, though uneventful, is most interesting, es- pecially because it was written by his devout, sweet, and admir- ing sister, Gilberte, a beautiful woman both in body and mind. This biography leaves out some important facts ; perhaps, as Cousin suggests, in his life of Jacqueline Pascal, because it was tampered with by the members of Port Royal. He was born at Clermont, but educated in Paris. His father began wisely by teaching him grammar, natural history, and history, and the French language. He left out Euclid till his son's mind became mature, knowing that a boy of fifteen will understand with the greatest facility what, as a boy of eleven, he would scarcely grasp at all. However, Pascal taught himself Euclid, and at the age of sixteen com. posed a treatise on Conic Sections, which he did not think worth printing, although good judges thought it surpassed all works of the kind since Archimedes. He then invented a
* Las !hands Earl:mins de is France. Pascal; (Euvree. Vol. I. Paris : Hachette et Oic.
calculating machine with which a boy could not only make all calculations without a pen or counters, but even without having learned a single rule of arithmetic. How glad boys and girls, now going in for those fearful examinations, would be to get hold of this wondrous machine; but how sorry we all are to learn that the two years' labour of its invention cost him his health ! Some time after he stopped his scientific life, and at the age of twenty-four began to live with the author and inspirer of Science and Religion. We have now to do with him as a Jansenist, a mystic, a writer of evidences, a satirist, as one suspected by the Church, as one of the most powerful,. the most weak, the most wonderful of men ; in a word, with a miracle.
Marie Arnaud, " la Were Angelique," was seven years old when it was proposed to her to take the veil, and eventually to be abbess. "I will be abbess, grandpapa, and will take care that my nuns do their duty;" and she did, under the greatest difficulties and trials. After the age of fifteen she became a permanent inmate of Port Royal, where she did not find an adequate director of her conscience, but a monk so ignorant as not to be able to repeat the Lord's Prayer or a word of the Catechism. The nuns mixed up prayers with cards, masquerades, and other pleasures. She was so young that she mounted on pattens to conceal her age, and contrived to introduce order and devotion notwithstanding. After re forming this convent, she was transferred to that of Maubisson, where the Abbess, the mistress of some noble- man, was surrounded by her illegitimate daughters, one of whom was to be her successor. She did not give up her charge to "la Mere Angelique " without furious resistance and many ridiculous scenes, one hundred archers being called in to set all right. St. Francis de Sales here worked wonders by his• preaching and example. " La Mere," having cleaned out these Augean stables, returned to Port Royal, and there intro- duced sanitary order, from lack of which so many nuns had died. Now was introduced another kind of reform—Jansenism —for Jansen had written his book, which had attracted the eyes of all Europe, and caused him and their convent great discredit with the authorities of the Church, who persisted in looking upon the Jansenists as Calvinists. St. Cyran, the head of the Convent, was imprisoned ; and Pascal, who lived there, died from anxiety, abstinence, and self-torture.
It is interesting to know something of the doctrines which caused so much stir, and which are to be found in the book,. Augustinus of Jansen, Bishop of Ypres. The two principal propositions which were condemned are :—(1.) Some com- mandments of God are impossible of performance to man, and the grace to make them possible is wanting; (5.) It is a semi. Pelagian error to say that Christ died for all men, universally. Cardinal Mazarin took the side of the Church, because his great adversary, Cardinal de Rots, took the other side. Both were thoroughly worldly men, and made their opinions follow their interest, and it is not likely that they should be able to decide upon such profound doctrines when men of the greatest learning and piety have differed about them, though in these times they, one after another, seem to agree with the Catholic Church rather than with Jansen and Pascal. That Church has always shown great discretion in her treatment of these doctrines, as well as of that of election and predestination, and even of justification by faith. She regards man's image of God as having been soiled but not spoiled by the Fall, that the Saviour died for all men, and that good works followed by a right faith are the salvation of man through Christ. The Calvinists have held the opposite opinions, and in carrying them out have acted with the greatest tyranny and cruelty towards their opponents, especially towards Arminius and his followers, Barneveldt and others. Luther regarded justification by faith in such an extreme light, and expressed himself in such uncompromising language, that he gave occasion to his adversaries to accuse him of ignoring works altogether. He is to be excused, as he had to fight against the sale of indulgences, which ignored both faith and works done in a right spirit altogether. But the Jesuits, who were the chief opponents of Jansen's book, cared less for these matters than for the expression in the book : St. Peter and St. Paul are the two heads of the Church who are yet but one,"—because it insinuated that the supremacy of St. Peter was here distinctly impugned. Pascal's first Pro- vincial letter caused dismay to the Jesuits, and the Chancellor of France had a fit, and was bled seven times. Pascal rewrote one of his letters thirteen times, but another only once—the 'sixteenth—which "was long, because he had not time to make it shorter." The Sorbonne, the Bishops, and, finally, the Pope, 'condemned them. How many good men have not condemned 'them, and how many have regarded and used them as models of style ! Gibbon says : "From these letters I learned to manage the weapons of grave and temperate irony, even on subjects of ecclesiastical solemnity." Madame de Sevign4 says " Sometimes to amuse ourselves we read them ; bon 'den I how charming they are ! " Bourdaloue told a Jesuit 'that to keep awake all night he would prefer them to all other books,—naturally to the Jesuit's disgust ; for the Jesuits condemned everything of Pascal's, and even when the holy thorn cured an eye, they attributed falsehood to him, though his sister lived many years after to prove 'the truth of his assertion to them, and though flocks crowded to adore the thorn,—indeed, fifty carriages were 'drawn up in one line, and windows were hired for sightseers. In 1660, the first blow was struck at Port Royal, and M. de Bernieres was banished to his estate, where four hundred carriages were ready to receive him. And all this was about a few metaphysical words. Pascal's conversion was brought about partly by a vision, and Voltaire therefore said that his intellect had suffered by his conversion. Everybody was en- gaged in criticising the letters,—Popes, Kings, Cardinals ; but Queens are not mentioned. One Queen was engaged in bearing "the invincible child of an invincible father, which moved in its mother's womb, and therefore is already more powerful than the God of War. His slightest movement is an earth- quake to the enemies of France." So wrote Jacqueline Pascal of Anne of Austria.
Pascal's Pensees, written on small slips of paper, afterwards recovered by Cousin, were intended for the " Evidences of Christianity." He begins with man in his normal state of agnosticism, intends to go on with natural and then with revealed religion, but it is impossible to arrange them in order. Here is the question:of a true agnostic : " There is only one indivisible point from which to look at a picture; all others are too high, too low, too far. Perspective fixes it in painting, but in truth or in morals, who shall fix it P " For sarcasm oommendZus:to :—" Why do you want to kill me ? " " Why ! don't you live on the other side of the water P If you livedloathisTside, I should be an assassin ; but, as you live on the other side, I am a brave fellow." Vinet, who often writes in the style of Pascal, says that he was not a Catholic ; but the contrary is proved by his belief in the holy 'thorn and by the words, " Suffer my pains to appease Thine anger." Vinet more appropriately defines the style of the Fences : "It does not come between you and the thought, but is the thought itself. He despised poetry ; but did not know that he was despising his own poem." We are sorry 'to differ at all with so great a saint and genius as Pascal; but we are consoled by the fact that the saint differs from the .genius in the sentence, " Man is a worm that thinks."
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