part of any such single and coherent design as that referred to above. But the editors omitted, altered, added, separated, combined and so forth entirely at their pleasure, actually making some changes which seem to have been thought improvements of style. 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, conducted 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 A. P. Faugère edited that text from the MS. in something like a condition of purity, though, as subsequent 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 Pensées, just as the completely unfinished condition of the work, from the literary point of view, constantly causes slighter or graver doubts as to the actual meaning which the author wished to express. Accordingly the Pensées have always been a favourite exploring ground, not to say a favourite field of battle, to persons who take an interest in their 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 possibility 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 revelation alone to justify each other.
Excluding here his scientific attainments (see below), Pascal presents himself for comment in two different lights, the second of which is, if the expression be permitted, a composite one. The first exhibits him as a man of letters, the second as a philosopher, a theologian, and simply a man, for in no one is the colour of the theology and the philosophy more distinctly personal. Yet his character as a man is not very distinct. The accounts of his sister and niece have the defect of all hagiology; 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 Provinciales. The first example of polite controversial irony since Lucian, the Provinciales 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. The unfailing freshness and charm of the contrast between the importance, 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 can ever impair. Nor perhaps is this literary art really less evident in the Pensées, though it is less clearly displayed, owing to the fragmentary or rather chaotic condition of the work, and partly also to the nature of the subject. The vividness and distinction of Pascal’s phrase, his singular faculty of inserting without any loss of dignity in the gravest and most impassioned meditation what may be almost called quips of thought and diction, the intense earnestness of meaning weighting but not confusing the style, all appear here.
No such positive statements as these are, however, possible as to the substance of the Pensées and the attitude of their author. 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 apologist of intellectual orthodoxy animated by an almost fanatical “hatred of reason,” and possessed with a purpose 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. An unbiased 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 exaggerations, 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 freethinker in disguise. He appears, as far as can be judged from the fragments of his Pensées, to have seized firmly and fully 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 discontented with the concordat, held fast to religion and continued to fight out the questions of difference with reason. Surveying these positions, we shall not be astonished to find much that is surprising and some things that are contradictory in Pascal’s utterances on “les grands sujets.” 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 Entretion with Sacy on the subject (the restoration of which to its proper form is one of the most valuable results of modern criticism) leaves no doubt possible as to the source of his “Pyrrhonian” method. But it is impossible for anyone who takes Pascal’s Pensées simply as he finds them in connexion with the facts of Pascal’s history to question his theological orthodoxy, understanding by theological orthodoxy the acceptance of revelation and dogma; it is equally impossible for any one in the same condition to declare him absolutely content with dogma and revelation. It is of the essence of an active mind like Pascal’s to explore and state all the arguments which make for or make against the conclusion it is investigating.
To sum up, the Pensées are excursions into the great unknown made with a full acknowledgment of the greatness of that unknown. From the point of view that belief and knowledge, based on experience or reasoning, are separate domains with an unexplored sea between and round them, Pascal is perfectly
