Pascal Part 12

Lundi 23 novembre, jour de St Clement, pape et martyr, et autres au martyrologe.

Veille de St Chrysogone, martyr et autres.

Depuis environ dix heures et demie du soir jusques environ minuit et demi.

Feu.

Dieu d'Abraham, Dieu d'Isaac, Dieu de Jacob, Non des philosophes et de savants.

Cert.i.tude. Cert.i.tude. Sentiment. Joie. Paix. {92} Dieu de Jesus-Christ Deum meum et Deum vestrum.

Ton Dieu sera mon Dieu- Oubli du monde et de tout hormis Dieu.

Il ne se trouve que par les voies enseignees dans l'Evangile.

Grandeur de l'ame humaine.

Pere juste, le monde ne t'a point connu, mais je t'ai connu.

Joie, joie, joie, pleurs de joie.

Je m'en suis separe- Dereliquerunt me fontem aquae vivae.

Mon Dieu me quitterez-vous?- Que je n'en sois pas separe eternellement!

Cette est la vie eternelle qu'ils te connaissent seul vrai Dieu et celui que tu as envoye, J.-C.

Jesus Christ- Jesus Christ- Je m'en suis separe; je l'ai fui, renonce, crucifie.

Que je n'en sois jamais separe!

Il ne se conserve que par les voies enseignees dans l'Evangile.

Renonciation totale et douce, etc.

{92} In the parchment copy, "Cert.i.tude, joie, cert.i.tude, sentiment, vue, joie."

{94} The evidence of an anonymous MS. in the collection of P. Guerrier, grandnephew of Pascal, in which the story is told on the authority of two friends of the Pascal family, M. Arnoul de St Victor and M. le Pierre de Barillon. The evidence for the story of the abyss is not even contemporaneous. It comes from an Abbe Boileau, unconnected with the poet of that name, who first told it in a volume of letters published in 1737.

{95} Leibnitziana, quoted by Sainte-Beuve, t. iii. p. 286.

{97} Pensees, t. ii. p 76, 2d ed., Havet.

{101} Recueil d'Utrecht, Maynard, vol. i. p. 555.

{102} The most authentic portrait of Pascal is probably that prefixed by M. Faugere to his edition of the 'Pensees.' The sketch, in red chalk, was found amongst the papers of M. Domat, an eminent advocate, and one of Pascal's well-known friends. It bears below an inscription by Domat's son-"Portrait de M. Pascal fait par mon pere"-and is supposed to represent him in his earlier years, when he studied natural philosophy along with his friend.

{105} The following genealogy, from a Jesuit source, represents not unfairly the origin of Jansenism and Port Royalism as a theological system: "Paulus genuit Augustinum; Augustinus Calvinum; Calvinus Jansenium; Jansenius Sancyranum; Sancyra.n.u.s Arnaldum et fratres ejus."

The sequel will show how earnestly Pascal disclaims Calvinism.

{106} "Attrition" is a scholastic term for the first acute emotions of the grace of repentance. "Contrition" denotes the grace in a more advanced stage of development.

{107} The full t.i.tle is, "Cornelii Jansenii Episcopi Iprensis Augustinus: seu doctrina S. Augustini de humanae naturae sanitate, aegritudine, medicina, adversus Pelagianos et Ma.s.silienses."

{108} Beard's Port Royal, vol. i. p. 243.

{116a} Recueil d'Utrecht, p. 271. See also Sainte-Beuve, vol. iii. p.

536.

{116b} _Curieux_ in the sense, says Sainte-Beuve, of _bel-esprit_, _amateur_.

{120} A name applied to the Jesuits after Louis Molina, a Spanish Jesuit (15351600), whose "Scientia Media," akin to the Arminian doctrine of Divine foreknowledge, was very famous in its day.

{132} Beard's Port Royal, vol. i. p. 271. Founded on Recueil d'Utrecht, p. 278, and Sainte-Beuve, t. ii. p. 555.

{133} M. Sainte-Beuve connects only the two concluding Letters with the first two, but the sixteenth Letter also, upon the whole, as a direct defence of Jansen and Port Royal, may be said to connect itself with these rather than with the intervening series a.s.sailing the Jesuits.

There were eighteen Letters in all published by Pascal, but there is a brief fragment of a nineteenth Letter supposed to be also from his pen, and a farther Letter from the pen of M. le Maitre on the Inquisition, commonly printed along with the others.

{138} After the Edict of Nantes (1598), the Protestants were permitted to a.s.semble for worship at Charenton, a small town about four miles from Paris.

{144a} Letter V.

{144b} "The grand project of our Society," Pascal makes his Jesuit informant say (Letter VI.), "is for the good of religion, never to repulse any one, let him be what he may, and so avoid driving people to despair."

{147} Letter IV.

{148} Letter IV.

{150a} Letter X.

{150b} "Who is Escobar?" Pascal represents himself as inquiring in the fifth Letter. "Not know Escobar?" cries the monk; "the member of the Society who compiled a Moral Theology from twenty-four of our fathers."

This book, which Pascal says he "read twice through," was the great repository from which he gathered the details of Jesuit doctrine which he exposes with such minuteness. Escobar, like so many of the chief Jesuit writers, was a Spaniard, born at Valladolid in 1589. His name became a sort of proverb in connection with their casuistical system, and "escobarder" came to signify "to palter in a double sense."

{151a} Letter XI.

{151b} Ibid.

{152} Letter XV.

{153} This is Sainte-Beuve's statement (t. iii. p. 138), repeated by Mr Beard, and founded apparently on Nicole.

{156} Nicole's translation into Latin of the 'Provincial Letters,' in preparation for which he is said to have read repeatedly over all the plays of Terence, appeared at Cologne in 1658, about a year after their completion.

{164} These lectures will be found, translated by the writer of the present volume, in Kitto's Journal of Sacred Literature, April-October, 1849.

{165} In his Memoires de Litterature et d'Histoire.

{166} Faugere, i. pp. 123129.

{168} Faugere, i. pp. 149152.

{171} See p. 66.

{174} Chiefly from Pensees Diverses.-Faugere's ed., vol. i. pp. 177242.

{176} The following pa.s.sage from Fontaine's Memoirs, quoted by Cousin (B. Pascal, p. 132), gives an interesting and lively glimpse of the philosophical discourses at Port Royal. It may not be without some application to the modern no less than the original Cartesian doctrine.

"How many little agitations raised themselves in this desert touching the human science of philosophy and the new opinions of M. Descartes! As M.

Arnauld in his hours of relaxation conversed on these subjects with his more intimate friends, the excitement spread on every side, and the solitude, in the hours of social intercourse, resounded with these discussions. There was hardly a solitary who did not talk of 'automata.'

To beat a dog was no longer a matter of any moment. The stick was laid on with the utmost indifference, and a great fool was made of those who pitied the animals, _as if they had any feeling_. They said they were only clockwork, and that the cries they uttered when they were beaten were no more than the noise of some little spring that had been moved, and that all this involved no sensation. They nailed the poor animals upon boards by the fore-paws, in order to dissect them while still alive, and to see the circulation of the blood, which was a great subject of discussion. The chateau of the Duc de Luynes was the source of all these curious inquiries, and a source that was inexhaustible. There they talked incessantly, and with admiration, of the new system of the world according to M. Descartes."

{177} Fragment sur la Philosophie de Descartes.

{185} Havet, i. pp. cxxiv-cx.x.xiii

{186} Faugere, ii. pp. 81, 82.