Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/359

PASCAL 337 to overthrow the appeal to reason ; as a sceptic and pessimist of a far deeper dye than Montaigne, anxious chiefly to show how any positive decision on matters beyond the range of experience is impossible ; as a nervous believer clinging to conclusions which his clearer and better sense showed to be indefensible ; as an almost ferocious ascetic and paradoxer affecting the credo quia impossibile in intellectual matters and the odi quia amabile in matters moral and sensuous ; as a wanderer in the regions of doubt and belief, alternately bringing a vast though vague power of thought and an unequalled power of expression to the expression of ideas incompatible and irreconcilable. In these as in all other matters the first requisite seems to be to clear the mind of prepossession and commonplace. It has already been hinted that far too much stress may be laid on the description of Pascal by his family as a converted sinner, and it may be added that at least as much stress has been laid on the other side of the notion of him as of a clear-headed materialist and expert in positive science, who by ill-health, overwork, and family influence was persuaded to adopt, half against his will, supernaturalist opinions. An unbiassed study of the scanty facts of his history, and of the tolerably abundant but scattered and chaotic facts of his literary production, ought to enable any one to steer clear of these exaggera tions, while admitting at the same time that it is impossible to give a complete and final account of his attitude towards the riddles of this world and others. He certainly was no mere advocate of orthodoxy ; he as certainly was no mere victim of terror at scepticism ; least of all was he a free thinker in disguise. He appears, as far as can be judged from the fragments of his Pensees, to have seized much more firmly and fully than has been usual for two cen turies at least the central idea of the difference between reason and religion. Where the difficulty rises respecting him is that most thinkers since his day who have seen this difference with equal clearness have advanced from it to the negative side, while he advanced to the positive. In other words, most men since his day who have not been contented with a mere concordat, have let religion go and contented themselves with reason. Pascal, equally dis contented with the concordat, held fast to religion and continued to fight out the questions of difference with reason. The emotion, amounting to passion, which he displays in conducting this campaign, and the superfluous energy of his debate on numerous points which, for instance, such a man as Berkeley was content to leave in the vague must be traced to temperament, aggravated no doubt by his extreme intellectual activity, by ill health, and by his identification comparatively late in life and under peculiar circumstances with a militant and so to speak sectarian form of religious or ecclesiastical belief. Surveying these positions, we shall not be astonished to find much that is surprising and some things that are con tradictory in Pascal s utterances on " les grands sujets." But the very worst method that can be taken for dealing with these contradictions is to assume, as his critics on one side too often do, that so clever a man as Pascal could not possibly be a convinced acceptor of dogmatic Christi anity, or to assume, as too many of his critics on the other do, that so pious and orthodox a man as Pascal could not entertain any doubts or see any difficulties in reference to dogmatic Christianity. He had taken to the serious con templation of theological problems comparatively late ; for the Rouen escapade noted above is- merely a specimen of the kind of youthful intolerance which counts for no thing when justly viewed. The influence exercised on him by Montaigne is the one fact regarding him which has not been and can hardly be exaggerated, and his well-known Entretien with Sacy on the subject (the restoration of which to its proper form is one of the most valuable results of recent criticism) leaves no doubt possible as to the source of his " Pyrrhonian " method. The atmo sphere of somewhat heated devotion in which he found himself when he retired to Port Royal must naturally count for something in the direction and expression of his thoughts ; his broken health for something more. It is unfortunately usual with societies like Port Royal to generate a kind of mist and mirage which deceives and distorts even the keenest sight that looks through their eyes. But it is impossible for any one who takes Pascal s Pensees simply as he finds them in connexion with the facts of Pascal s history to question his theological ortho doxy, understanding by theological orthodoxy the accept ance of revelation and dogma ; it is equally impossible for any one in the same condition to declare him absolutely content with dogma and revelation. Excursions into the field beyond formularies were necessary to him, and he made them freely ; but there is no evidence that these excursions tempted him to remain outside, and it appears particularly erroneous to take his celebrated "wager" thoughts (the argument that, as another world and its liabilities, if accepted, imply no loss and much possible gain, they should be accepted) as an evidence of weakened belief or a descent from rational religion. It is of the essence of an active mind like Pascal s to explore and state all the arguments of whatever degree of goodness which make for or make against the conclusion it is investigat ing, and this certainly is neither the least obvious nor the weakest of the arguments which must have presented themselves to him. In ecclesiastical questions as distinguished from thec- logical Pascal appears to have been an ardent Jansenist, adopting without very much discrimination the stand point of his friends and religious directors Sacy, Arnauld, j Singlin, and others. In one point he went beyond them, boldly disputing the infallibility of the pope, and hinting not obscurely at the propriety of agitation against errone ous papal decisions. The Jansenists as a body could not muster courage to adopt this attitude. But it is not easy to discuss isolated points of this kind here ; indeed their discussion belongs more properly to the general subject of Jansenism, and the history of Port Royal. To sum up, the interest and value of the Penaees is positively diminished if they are taken as gropings after self-satisfaction or feeble attempts at freethinking. They are excursions into the great unknown made with a full acknowledgment of the greatness of that unknown, but with no kind of desire for something more known than the writer s own standpoint. If to any one else they communicate such a desire that is not Pascal s fault ; and, if it seems to any one that without such a desire they could not have been indulged in, that comes mainly from an alteration of mental attitude, and from a want of familiarity with the mental attitude of Pascal s own time. From the point of view that belief and know ledge, 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. There are few writers who are more in need than Pascal of being fully and competently edited. The chief nominally complete edition at present in existence is that of Bossut (1779, 5 vols., and since reprinted), which not only appeared before any attempt had been made to restore the true text of the Peiisecs, but is in other respects quite inadequate. The edition of Lahure, 1858, is not much better, though the Pensees appear in their more genuine form. An XVIII. - 43