Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/358

336 PASCAL This rifacimento remained the standard text with a few unimportant additions for nearly two centuries, except that by a truly comic revolution of public taste Condorcet in 1776 published, after study of the original, which remained accessible in manuscript, another garbling, con ducted this time in the interests of unorthodoxy. It was not till 1842 that Victor Cousin drew attention to the absolutely untrustworthy condition of the text, nor till 1844 that M. Faugere edited that text from the MS. in something like a condition of purity, though, as subse quent editions have shown, not with absolute fidelity. But even in its spurious condition the book had been recognized as remarkable and almost unique. Its contents, as was to be expected, are of a very chaotic character of a character so chaotic indeed that the reader is almost at the mercy of the arrangement, perforce an arbitrary arrangement, of the editors. But the subjects dealt with concern more or less all the great problems of thought on what may be called the theological side of metaphysics : the sufficiency of reason, the trustworthiness of experience, the admissibility of revelation, free will, foreknowledge, and the rest. The peculiarly disjointed and fragmentary condition of the sentiments expressed by Pascal aggravates the appearance of universal doubt which is present in the Pensees, just as the completely unfinished condition, from the literary point of view, of the work constantly causes slighter or graver doubts as to the actual meaning which the author wished to express. Accordingly the Pensees have always been a favourite exploring ground, not to say a favourite field of battle, to persons who take an interest in the problems. Speaking generally, their tendency is towards the combating of scepticism by a deeper scepticism, or, as Pascal himself calls it, Pyrrhonism, which occasionally goes the length of denying the possi bility of any natural theology. Pascal explains all the contradictions and difficulties of human life and thought by the doctrine of the fall, and relies on faith and reve lation alone to justify each other. Comparison of the Pensees with the Provinciates is, considering the radical differences of state (the one being a finished work deliber ately issued from the master s hands, the other not even a rough draught, scarcely even "heads" or "outlines," but a collection of loose and uncorrected notes settled neither as to the exact form of each nor as to the relation of each to any whole), impossible. But it may be said that no one can properly perceive how great a man of letters Pascal was from the Pensees alone, and that no one can perceive how deep if not wide a thinker he was from the Provinciates alone. An absolute preference of either argues a certain onesidedness in the relative estimate of matter and form. The wiser mind distinctly prefers both, and recognizes that if either were lacking the greatness of Pascal would fail to be perceived, or at least to be per ceived fully. Excluding his scientific attainments, which, as has been noted above, will be the subject of separate notice, Pascal presents himself for comment in two different lights, the second of which is, if the expression be permitted, a com posite one. The first exhibits him as a man of letters, the second as a philosopher, a theologian, and a man. If this last combination seems to be audacious or clumsy, it can only be said that in hardly any thinker are theological thoughts, and thoughts more strictly to be called philo sophical or metaphysical, so intimately, so inextricably blended as in Pascal, and that in none is the colour of the theology and the philosophy more distinctly personal. This latter fact adds to the difficulty of the problem ; for, though Pascal has written not a little, and though a vast amount has been written about him, it cannot be said that his character as a man, not a writer, is very distinct. The accounts of his sister and niece have the defect of all hagiology (to use the term with no disrespectful inten tion) ; they are obviously written rather with a view to the ideas and the wishes of the writers than with a view to the actual and absolute personality of the subject. Except from these interesting but somewhat tainted sources, we know little or nothing about him. Hence conjecture, or at least inference, must always enter largely into any estimate of Pascal, except a purely literary one. On that side, fortunately, there is no possibility of doubt or difficulty to any competent inquirer. The Provincial Letters are the first example of French prose which is at once considerable in bulk, varied and important in matter, perfectly finished in form. They owe not a little to Descartes, for Pascal s indebtedness to his predecessor is unquestionable from the literary side, whatever may be the case with the scientific. But Descartes had had neither the opportunity, nor the desire, nor probably the power, to write anything of the literary importance of the Provinciates. The unanimity of eulogy as to the style of this wonderful book has sometimes tempted foreigners, who feel or affect to feel an inability to judge for them selves, into a kind of scepticism for which there is abso lutely no ground. The first example of polite contro versial irony since Lucian, the Provinciates have continued to be the best example of it during more than two centuries in which the style has been sedulously practised, and in which they have furnished a model to generation after generation without being surpassed by any of the works to which they have shown the way. The unfailing freshness and charm of the contrast between the import ance, the gravity, in some cases the dry and abstruse nature, of their subjects and the lightness sometimes almost approaching levity in its special sense of the manner in which these subjects are attacked is a triumph of literary art of which no familiarity dims the splendour, and which no lapse of time, affecting as that lapse has already done to a great extent the attraction of the sub jects themselves, can ever impair. The tools of phrase and diction by which this triumph is achieved were not in all cases of Pascal s invention Descartes and Corneille had been beforehand with him to some extent but many of them were actually new, and all were newly and more skilfully applied. Nor perhaps is this literary art really less evident in the Pensees, though it is less clearly dis played, owing to the fragmentary or rather chaotic condi tion of the work, and partly also to the fact that the subject here for many readers and in many places claims attention almost to the disregard of the form. The vivid ness and distinction of Pascal s phrase, his singular faculty of inserting in the gravest and most impassioned medita tion what may be almost called quips of thought and diction without any loss of dignity, the intense earnestness of meaning weighting but not confusing the style, all appear here, and some of them appear as they have no chance of appearing in at least the earlier Provinciates. No such positive statements as these are, however, possible as to the substance of the Pensees and the attitude of their author towards "les grands sujets." In the space and circumstances of the present notice nothing more can be attempted than a summary of the opinions hitherto advanced on the subject, and an indication of the results which may seem most probable to unprejudiced inquirers who possess a fair knowledge of and interest in the problems concerned. Hitherto the widest differences have been manifested in the estimate of Pascal s opinions on the main questions of philosophy, theology, and human conduct. He has been represented as a determined apolo gist of intellectual orthodoxy animated by an almost fanatical " hatred of reason," and possessed with a purpose