144 DEVELOPMENT OF CARTESIANISM. the love to God created in us has left us and self-love has transgressed its limits ; pride has delivered us over to selfish- ness and misery. Our nature is corrupted, but not beyond redemption. In his actions worthless and depraved, man is seen to be exalted and incomprehensible in his ends ; in reality he is worthy of abhorrence, but great in his desti- nation. ^o philosophy or religion has so taught us at once to know the greatness and the misery of man as Christianity: this bids him recognize his low condition, but at the same time to endeavor to become like God7 We must humbly despise the world and renounce ourselves; in order to love God, we must hate ourselves. Moral reformation is an act of divine grace, and the merit of human volition con- sists only in not resisting this. God transforms the heart by a heavenly sweetness, grants it to know that spiritual pleasure is greater than bodily pleasure, and infuses into it a disgust at the allurements of sin. Virtue is find- ing one's greatest happiness in God or in the eternal good. As morality is a matter of feeling, not of thought, so God, so even the first principles on which the certitude of demonstration depends, are the object, not of reason, but of the heart. That which certifies to the highest indemonstrable principles is a feeling, a belief, an instinct of nature: les principes se sentent. Asa defender of the needs and rights of the heart, Pascal is a forerunner of the great Rousseau, His depreciation of the reason to exalt faith establishes a certain relationship with the skeptics of his native land, among whom Cousin has unjustly classed him {Etudes siir Pascal, 5th ed., 1857).* Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715), a member of the Ora- tory of Jesus, in Paris, which was opposed by the Jesuits, completed the development of Cartesianism in the religious direction adopted by Pascal. His thought is controlled by the endeavor to combine Cartesian metaphysics and Au- gustinian Christianity, those two great forces which consti- tuted the double citadel of his order. His collected works appeared three years before his death ; and a new edi-
- Of the works on Pascal we may mention that of H. Reuchlin, 1840;
Havet's edition of the Ptns^es, with notes, Paris, 1866 ; and the &tude by Ed Droz, Paris. 1 886.
