Thoughts

Contents

PrSFACS vii

General Introduction i

" Pascal's Profession of Faith 2

Preface to the First Part 17

iEr'Man's Disproportion > 19 «~

^The Greatness and Littleness of Man 43 "*

;^ Of the Deceptive Powers of the Imagination^- . . . 51 ••

•fC Of Justice, Customs, and Prejudices -t . . . . 61 ""

The Weakness, Unrest, and Defects of Man . . • 73 "

t

The Happiness of Man with God 89

Preface to the Second Part 91

■ Of the Need of Seeking Truth 95

,Xrhe Philosophers I05 r'

Thoughts on Mahomet and on China 115

Of the Jewish People 119

The Authenticity of the Sacred Books 125

Of Types in General and of their Lawfulness . . .157

That the Jewish Law was Figurative 167

ij/^f the True Religion and its Characteristics . . . 179—7

fc.'The Excellence of the Christian Religion .... 183 j/^The Perpetuity of the Christian Religion . . . .197 Vt*roofs of the Christian Religion ' 203 vi CONTENTS.

The Happiness of Man with God {continued). Pacb

7 i. Proofs of the Divinity of Jesus Christ 213

The Mission and Greatness of Jesus Christ .... 225

^f the True Righteous Man and of the True Christian . 237

The Arrangement 253

Index 339

PRRF. 1 CE.

Tirosr. to whom the Life of I'.isral and the StMry of I'ort Royal are unknown, must Ije referred to works tre.itin;; tuily of the sul)ject, since it were impossible to deal with them adeiiuatcly within the limits of a preface. Sairtc lleuve's ,i;reat uork on i'ort Royal, especially the second ami third volumes, and "'Tort i\oyal,'' by Ciiarles Heard. II. .\., London, i>S('5, nriy best Ijc consulted by any who rei|uire full, lucid, and sm.;ularly impartial inform.ation.

l)ut for such as, alreacly ac(|uainted with the time and tlic man, need a recapitulation of the more inrmrt mt f u ts, or tor those wlio may lind an outline map usetul ol the country they are tt) stud\- in detail, a few words arc here ;ji\cn.

lUaise l'as(^d was born at Clermont- i-"en,ind in Auver;;ne, on June 19, 1623. He spruni; fiom a weil-l;nown le:_,'al f.unily, many members of which had held Unr.itixe and responsible positions. His father. Ltieiine I'ascal, lieUl the i)0st of intendant, or provincial administrator, in Normandy, u here, and at Paris previously, I'ascal li\cd from the a^e of sixteen to that of twenty-five ; almost wholly cducatetl by Ins father o\\ account of his precarious health. His mother died when he was ei;^!u years old. Etienne Pascal was a pious but stern person, and by no means disposed to entertain or allow any midue exaltation in religion, refusing as lon;^' as he lived to allow his daughter Jaqueline to take the veil, ikit he had the usu.d faiths and superstitions of his time, and believing that b.is son's ill-health arose from witchcraft, employed the old woman who v»as supposed to have caused the malady to remove it, by herbs culled before sunrise, and the expiatory death of a cat. This made a great impression on his son, who in the '" Thoughts "" employs an viii PREFACE.

ingenious argument to prove that wonders wrought by the invocation of the devil are not, in the proper sense of the term, miracles. At any rate the counter-charm was incomplete, as the child's feeble health remained feeble to the end.

Intellectually, Blaise Pascal grew rapidly to the stature and strength of a giant ; his genius showing itself mainly in the direction of mathematics ; at the age of fifteen his studies on conic sections were thought worthy to be read before the most scientific men of Paris, and in after years of agonizing pain mathematical research alone was able to calm him, and distract his mind from himself. His actual reading was at all times narrow, and his scholarship was not profound. In 1646, his father, having broken his thigh at Rouen, came under the influence of two members of the Jansenist^ school of thought at that place, who attended him in his illness, and from that time dated the more serious religious views of the family. Jaqueline was from the first deeply affected by the more rigorous opinions with which she came in contact. Forbidden to enter the cloister, she lived at home as austere a life as though she had been professed, but after her father's death won her brother's reluctant consent to take the veil at Port Royal, and became one of the strictest nuns of that rigid rule.

Blaise Pascal went through a double process of conversion. When the family first fell under Jansenist influence he threw himself so earnestly into the study of theology that he seriously injured his frail health, and being advised to refrain from all intellectual labour, he returned to the world of Paris, where his friends the Due de Roannez, the Chevalier de M^rd and M. Miton were among the best known and most fashionable persons. His father's death put him in possession of a fair fortune, which he used freely, not at all viciously, but with no renunciation of the pleasures of society. There is some evidence of a proposal that he should marry the Due de Roannez' sister, and no doubt with such a scheme before him he wrote his celebrated " Discours sur les Passions de 1' Amour." This, however, resulted only in the conversion of the duke and his sister, the latter of whom for a time, the former for the whole of his life, remained subject to the religious feelings then excited.

PREFACE. ix

In the autumn of 1654, whether after deliverance in a dangerous accident, or from some hidden cause of which nothing can now be even surmised, there came a second sudden conversion from which there was no return. That hour wrought a complete change in Pascal's life ; austerity, self-denial, absolute obedience to his spiritual director, boundless alms-giving succeeded to what at most had been a moderate and restrained use of worldly pleasure, and he threw himself into the life, controversy and interests of Port Royal, with all the passion of one who was not only a new convert, but the champion of a society into which those dearest to him had entered even more fully than he. He became, for a time, one of the solitaries of Port Royal before the close of that same year.

The Cistercian Abbey of Port Royal dcs Champs was situated about eighteen miles from Paris. It had been founded early in the thirteenth century, and would have faded away unremembered but for the grandeur of its closing years. The rule of the community had been greatly relaxed, but it was reformed with extreme rigour by Jaqueline Amauld, its young abbess, known in religion as La Mere Angdlique. The priest chosen as Director of the community waft Jeaa du. Vergier de Hauranne, Abb^ de St. Cyran, a close friend of Cornelius Jansen, Bishop of Ypres. They nad together devoted themselves to the study of Saint Augustine ; and the" Augustinus," the work to which Jansen gave his whole life, was planned with the assistance of St. Cyran. Certain propositions drawn from this work were afterwards condemned, and the controversy which raged between the two schools of the Jesuits and the Jansenists divided itself into two parts, first, whether the propositions were heretical, and secondly, whether as a fact they were contained in, or could fairly be deduced from, Jansen's book. The strife, which raged with varying fortunes for many years, need not here detain us.

After the reform of Port Royal, and when the Society, however assailed and in danger, was at the height of its renown, the whole establishment consisted of two convents, the mother house of Port Royal des Champs, and one in Paris to which was attached a school for girls. To Port Royal des Champs, as to a spiritual centre, and to be under the guidance of the three great

X PREFACE.

directors, who in succession ruled the abbey, M. de St. Cyran, M. Singlin, and M. de Saci, there came men and women, not under monastic vows, but hving for a time the monastic or even the eremitical life. The women, for the most part, had rooms in the convent, the men built rooms for themselves hard by, or shared between them La Grange, a farm belonging to the abbey. It need scarcely be said that in so strict a community the sexes were wholly separate ; a common worship, and the confidence of the same confessor, together with similarity of views in religion, were the ties which boimd together the whole society.

When Pascal formally joined Port Royal, the Abbey and all that was attached to it greatly needed aid from without. A Bull in condemnation of Jansen had been gained from the Pope, and a Formulary, minimising its effect as far as possible, was drawn up by the General Assembly in France, which was ultimately accepted by Port Royal itself. But if the Port Royalists minimized the defeat, and, with great intellectual dexterity, showed that the condemned propositions were not in precise terms what they had held, and were not in J.insen's book, tlieir adversaries exaggerated the victory. A confessor in Paris refused absolution to a parishioner because he had a Jansenist living in his house, and had sent his grand-daughter to school at Port Royal Antoine Arnauld, known as Le Grand Amauld, brother of La M^re Angdlique, himself in danger of condemnation by the Sorbonne, drew up a statement of the case intended to instruct the public on the points in dispute. On reading this to the Port Royal solitaries before printing it, he saw that it would not do, and turning to Pascal, who had then been a year under M. Singlin's direction, he suggested to him as a younger man with a lighter pen to see what he could do. The next day Pascal produced the first of the " Provincial Letters," or to give it the correct title, " A Letter written to a Provincial by one of his friends." In these Letters Pascal formed his true style, and took rank at once among the great French writers. They contributed largely to turn the scale of feeling against his adver- Siiries ; they, and an occurrence in which he saw the visible finger of God, saved Port Royal for a time. But the history of the "Provincial Letters" must be read elsewhere, as must also in

PREFACE. xi

its fulness the miracle of the Holy Thorn, on which a few words are needed.

The " Provincial Letters " were in course of publication, but M. Arnauld had been condemned by the Sorbonne just as the first was issued, and his enemies said he was excommunicated, which was not technically true ; he was in danger of arrest, and was in hiding ; the solitaries of Port Royal were almost all dispersed ; the schools were thinned of their pupils and on the point of closing, the confessors were about to be withdrawn and the nuns sent to various other convents, when the miracle took place. Marguerite Perier, a child of ten years old, daughter of Pascal's elder sister, was one of the pupils at Port Royal in Paris, not as yet dismissed to her home. She was tenderly nursed by the nuns for an ulcer in the lachrymal gland, which had destroyed the bones of the nose, and produced other horrors of which there is no need to speak. A relic of the Saviour, one of the thorns of his crown of mockery, which had been intrusted to the nuns, was specially venerated during a service in its honour, and as it would seem was passed from hand to hand in its reliquary. When the turn of the scholars came. Sister Flavia, their mistress, moved by a sudden impulse said, " My child, pray for your eye," and touched the ulcer with the reliquary. The child was cured, and the effect on the community was immediate. The remaining solitaries were not dispersed, some of those who had gone returned, the confessors were not removed, the school was not closed, and Port Royal was respited.

The miracle was to Pascal at once a solemn matter of religion and a family occurrence ; he took henceforward as his cognizance an eye encircled with a crown of thorns and the motto Scio cut credtdi, he jotted down various thoughts on the miracle, and the manner in which as it seemed to him God had by it given as by " a voice of thunder " his judgment in favour of Port Royal, and he sketched a plan of a work against atheists and unbelievers. In the year between the spring of 1657, and that of 1658, the last year of his good health, if that can be called good which was at best but feeble, he indicated the plan, and wrote the most finished paragraphs of his intended work. The detached thoughts which make up the bulk of it were xit PREFACE.

scribbled, as they occurred to him during the last four years of his life, on scraps of paper, or on the margin of what he had already written, often when he was quite incapable of sustained employment. Many were dictated, some to friends, and some to a servant who constantly attended him in his illness.

Towards the end of his life he was obliged to move into Paris again, where he was carefully nursed by his sister Madame Perrier, to whose house he was moved at the last, where he died on August 9th, 1662, at the age of thirty-nine, having spent his last years in an ecstasy of self-denial, of charity, and of aspiration after God.

Not for six years after his death were his family and friends able to consider in what form his unfinished work should be given to the world. Then Port Royal had a breathing space, what was known as the Peace of the Church was established by Clement IX., and it was considered that the time had come to set in order these precious fragments. The duty of giving an author's works to the world as he left them was little understood in those days, and the Due de Roannez even suggested that Pascal's whole work should be re-written on the lines he had laid down. Some editing was, on all hands, allowed to be needful ; thus the arrangement of chapters, and the fragments to be included in chapters, were matter for fair discussion. But the committee of editors went further, and even when the text had been settled by them, it had to undergo a further censorship by various theologians. Finally, in January, 1670, the ** Pens^ " appeared as a small duodecimo, with a preface by the Perrier family, and no mention of Port Royal in the volume.

For a full account of this and other editions, the reader must be referred to the preface to M. Molinier's edition, Paris, 1877- 1879, and to that of M. Faug^re, Paris, 1844.

M. Victor Cousin was the first to draw attention to the need of a new edition of Pascal in 1842. He showed that great liberties had been taken with and suppressions made in the text, and the labour to which he invited was first undertaken by M. Prosper Faug^re. M. Havet adopting his text departed from his arrangement, reverted in great measure to that of the

PREFACE. xiii

old editors, and accompanied the whole by an excellent commentary and notes, 2nd edition, Paris, 1866. M. Molinier has again consulted the MSS. word for word, and while in a degree following M. Faug^re's arrangement has yet been guided by his own skill and judgment. It must always be remembered that each editor must necessarily follow his own judgment in regard to the position he should give to fragments not placed by the writer. But provided that an editor makes no changes merely for the sake of change and that he loyally enters into the spirit of his predecessors, each new comer, till the arrangement is finally fixed, has a great advantage. Such an editor is M. Molinier, and in his arrangement the text of Pascal would seem to be mainly if not wholly fixed ; so that for the first time we have not only Pascal's " Thoughts," but we have them approximately arranged as he designed to present them to his readers.

The course of an English translator is clear ; his responsibility is confined to deciding which text to follow, he has no right to make one for himself. In the present edition, therefore, M. Molinier's text and arrangement are scrupulously followed except in two places. In regard to one, M. Molinier has himself adopted a different reading in his notes made after the text was printed, the second is an obvious misprint. Pascal's " Profession of Faith," or " Amulet," is transferred from the place it occupies in M. Molinier's edition to serve as an introduction to the work, striking as it does the key-note to the " Thoughts."

Pascal's quotations from the Bible were made of course from the Vulgate, but very often indeed from memory, and incorrectly, while he often gave the substance alone of the passage he used. No one version of the Bible therefore has been used exclusively, but the Authorised Version and the Douai or Rheims versions have been used as each in turn most nearly afforded the equivalent of the quotations made by Pascal.

The notes are mainly based on those of MM. Faug^re, Havet, and Molinier.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

SI

PASCAL'S PROFESSION OF FAITH.

This year of Grace 1654,

Monday, November 23'^, day of SaiDt Clement, pope

and martjrr, and others in the martyrology.

Eve of Saint Chrysogonus, mart]rr, and others ;

From about half past ten at night, to

about half after midnight.

Fire.

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,

Not of the philosophers and the wise.

Security, security. Feeling, joy, peace.

God of Jesus Christ

Thy God shall be my God.

Forgetfiilness of the world and of all save God.

He can be found only in the ways tanght

in the GospeL

Greatness of the human soul.

O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee,

but I have known thee.

Joy. joy. joy, tears of joy.

I have separated myself from him.

My God, why hast tboa forsaken me ? . . .

That I be not separated from thee eternally.

This is life eternal : That they might know thee

the only true God, and him whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ,

I have separated myself from him ; I have fled, renounced, crucified him.

May I never be separated from him.

He maintains himself in me only in the ways taught

in the Go^>el.

Renunciation total and sweet

etc.

aA

GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

Let them at least learn what is the Religion they assail, before they assail it. If this religion claimed to have a clear view of God, and to possess it openly and unveiled, then to say that we see nothing in the world which manifests him with this clearness would be to assail it. But since on the contrary it affirms that men are in darkness and estranged from God, that he has hidden himself from their knowledge, that the very name he has given himself in the Scriptures is Deus absconditus ; and if indeed it aims equally at establishing these two points, that God has set in the Church evident notes to enable those who seek him in sincerity to recognise him, and that he has nevertheless so concealed them that he can only be perceived by those who seek him with their whole hearts ; what advantages it them, when, in their professed neglect of the search after truth, they declare that nothing reveals it to them ? For the very obscurity in which they are, and for which they blame the Church, does but establish one of the points which she maintains, without affecting the other, and far from destroying, establishes her doctrine.

In order to assail it they ought to urge that they have sought everywhere with all their strength, and even in that which the Church proposes for their instruction, but without avail. Did they thus speak, they would indeed assail one of her claims. But I hope here to show that no rational person can thus speak, and I am even bold to say that no one has ever done so. We know well enough how men of this temper behave. They believe they have made great efforts for their instruction, when they have spent a few hours in reading some book of Scripture, and have talked with some Ecclesiastic on the truths of the faith. Whereupon they boast that they have in vain consulted books and men. But indeed I will tell them what I have often said, that such carelessness is intolerable. We are not here dealing with the light interest of a stranger, that we should thus treat it ; but with that which concerns ourselves and our alL

The immortality of the soul is a matter of so gjreat moment to us, it touches us so deeply, that we must have lost all feeling if we are careless of the truth about it Our every action and our every thought must take such different courses, according as there are or are not eternal blessings for which to hope, that it is impossible to take a single step with sense or judgment, save ijuvies iif that point which ought to be our end and aim.

Thus our first interest and our first duty is to gain light on this subject, whereon our whole conduct depends. Therefore kmong unbelievers, I make a vast difference between those who habour with all their power to gain instruction, and those who hive without taking trouble or thought for it] / I can have nothing but compassion for all who sincerely lament their doubt, who look upon it as the worst of evils, and who, sparing no pains to escape it, find in that endeavour their principal and most serious occupation.

But as for those who pass their life without thought of the ultimate goal of life, who, solely because they do not find within themselves the light of conviction, neglect to seek it elsewhere and to examine thoroughly whether the opinion in question be among those which are popularly received with credulous simplicity, or among those which, although in themselves obscure, have yet a solid and indestructible basis, — of those, I say, my thoughts are very different.

This neglect of a matter in which themselves are concerned, their eternity, and their all, makes me angry rather than compassionate ; it astonishes and terrifies me, it is t/inne something monstrous. I do not say this out of the pious zeal of a spiritual devotion. I mean on the contrary that such a feeling should spring from principles of human interest and self-love ; and for this wc need see no more than what is seen by the least enlightened person -^

We need no great elevation of soul to understand that here js^jlO_true^mt-snlid satJ5iactionj_that^^allour_^l£a£j^^ are but vanityj_^oui:..eyils infinite, and lastly that death, wTTicr threatens us every moment, must infallibly and within a fev years place us in the dread alternative of being for ever eithei^ annihilated-QlLwretched.

"Nothing is more real than this, nothing more terrible. Brave it out as we may, that is yet the end which awaits the fairest / life in the world. Let us reflect on this, and then say if it be not \ certain that there is_jio_^2?d i"^ this life^jaygj.n th.g_Juape of another, thaf we are happy only in proportion as we approach it, andTKaFas There TS"no~more sorrow for those who have an entire assurance of eternity, so there is no happiness for those who have not a ray of its light.

Assuredly then it is a great evil thus to be in doubt, but it is at least an indispensable duty to seek when we are in such doubt ; he therefore who doubts and yet seeks not is at once thoroughly unhappy and thoroughly unfair. And if at the same time he be easy and content, profess to be so, and in fact pride himself thereon ; if even it be this very condition of doubt which forms the subject of his joy and boasting, I have no terms in which to describe a creature so extravagant.

Whence come such feelings .-' What delight can we find in the expectation of nothing but unavailing misery ? What cause of boasting that we are in impenetrable darkness ? How can such an argument as the following occur to a reasoning man ?

" I know not who has sent me into the world, nor what the world is, nor what I myself am ; I am terribly ignorant of every thing ; I know not what my body is, nor my senses, nor my soul, nor even that part of me which thinks what I say, which reflects on all and on itself, yet is as ignorant of itself as of all beside. I see those dreadful spaces of the universe which close me in, and I find myself fixed in one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am set in this place rather than elsewhere, nor why this moment of time given me for life is assigned to this point rather than another of the whole Eternity which was before me or which shall be after me. I see nothing but infinities on every side, which close me round as an atom, and as a shadow which endures but for an instant and returns no more. I know only that I must shortly die, but what I know the least is this very death which I cannot avoid.

" As I know not whence I come, so I know not whither I go; only this I know, that on departing this world, I shall either fall for ever into nothingness, or into the hands of an offended God, without knowing which of these two conditions shall eternally be my lot Such is my state, full of weakness and uncertainty ; from all which I conclude that I ought to pass all the days of my life without thought of searching for what must happen to me. Perhaps I might find some ray of light in my doubts, but I will not take the trouble, nor stir a foot to seek it ; and after treating with scorn those who are troubled with this care, 1 will go without foresight and \^nthout fear to make trial of the grand event, and allow myself to be led softly on to death, uncertain of the eternity of my future condition."

Who would wish to have for his friend a man who should thus speak ; who would choose him rather than another for advice in business ; who would turn to him in sorrow ? And indeed to what use in life could we put him ?

In truth, it is the glory of Religion to have for enemies men so unreasoning, whose opposition is so little dangerous to her, that it the rather serves to establish her truths. For the Christian faith goes mainly to the establishment of these two points, the comiptjon of jjature, and the Redenaption by Jesus ^ri^tf _ Now I maintain tnat ii tnese meiT serve not to demonstrate the truth of Redemption by the holiness of their morals, they at least serve admirably to show the corruption of nature by sentiments so unnatural.

Nothing is so important to nuin as his condition, nothing so formidable to him as eternity ; and thus it is not natural there should be men indifferent to the loss of their being, and to the peril of an endless woe. They are quite other men in regard to all else ; they fear the veriest trifles, they foresee them, they feel them ; and the very man who spends so many days and nights I in rage and despair for the loss of office or for some imaginary )|nsult to his honour, is the same who, without disquiet and without emotion, knows that he must lose allby.death. It is a monstrous thing to see in one and the same heart and at the same time this sensibility to the meanest, and this strange insensibility to the greatest matters. It is an incomprehensible spell, a supernatural drowsiness, which denotes as its cause an all powerful force.

There must be a strange revolution in the nature of man, before he can glory at being in a state to which it seems incredible that any should attain. Experience however has shown me a large number of such men, a surprising fact did we not know that the greater part of those who meddle with the matter are not as a fact what they declare themselves. They are people who have been told that the manners of good society consist in such daring. This they call shaking off the yoke, this they try to imitate. Yet it would not be difficult to convince them how much they deceive themselves in thus seeking esteem. Not so is it acquired, even among those men of the world who judge wisely, and who know that the only way of worldly success is to show ourselves honourable, faithful, of sound judgment, and capable of useful service to a friend ; because by nature men love only what may prove useful tothenu' Now in what wa^'doeT" itadvantage^us to hear a man say he has at last shaken off the yoke, that he does not believe there is a God who watches his actions, that he considers himself the sole master of his conduct and accountable for it only to himself. Does he think that thus he has brought us to have henceforward confidence in him, and to look to him for comfort, counsel and succour in every need of life ? Do they think to delight us when they declare that they hold our soul to be but a little wind or smoke, nay, when they tell us so in a tone of proud content ? Is this a thing to assert gaily, and not rather to say sadly as the saddest thing in all the world .''