Lettres, Opuscules, et MÉmoires de Madame PÉrier et de Jacqueline, Soeurs de Pascal, et de Marguerite PÉrier, sa niÈce; publiÉs sur les Manuscrits originaux, par M. P. FaugÈre. Paris, 1845. Jacqueline Pascal, par M. Victor Cousin. TroisiÈme Éd. 1856. LÉlut, L’Amulette de Pascal. Paris, 1846. Sainte-Beuve. Port Royal. Tom. ii. iii. Mr Beard, in his two volumes on Port Royal, gives an excellent sketch of Blaise and Jacqueline Pascal, in which he has made a diligent use of all the recent French authorities on the subject. British Quarterly Review, August 1850. The Provincial Parliaments in France before the Revolution discharged within a definite area the same judicial and administrative functions as the Parliament of Paris; but they were always regarded as offshoots of the latter, and subordinate to its supreme direction. They possessed no lawful political powers. Lalanne, Dictionnaire Historique, Art. “Parl.,” p. 1421. The “Court of Aides,” according to the same authority, p. 32, decided in the last resort civil and criminal processes relating to subsidies, assessments, and taxes in general, and superintended the collection of the royal revenues. Gilberte Pascal—Madame PÉrier—says, in her life of her brother, 1626. Marguerite PÉrier, her daughter, Pascal’s niece, says 1628. Cousin (B. Pascal), App. I. 315. FaugÈre, Lettres, Opuscules, etc., p. 419. Cousin, Jacqueline Pascal, p. 23. Memoir by Marguerite PÉrier, her daughter, quoted by Cousin, ibid., p. 24. “Do not think,” adds Cousin, “that this portrait is embellished: the austere Marguerite flatters no one; and if she, a Jansenist, says that her mother was beautiful, we may be sure that she was very much so.” “The exterior angle of a triangle is equal to the two interior and opposite angles; and the three interior angles are together equal to two right angles.” Baillet, Vie de Descartes, liv. V. c. v. p. 39.
“Ne vous Étonnez pas, incomparable Armand,
Si j’ai mal contentÉ vos yeux et vos oreilles;
Mon esprit agitÉ de frayeurs sans pareilles
Interdit À mon corps et voix et mouvement.
Mais pour me rendre ici capable de vous plaire,
Rappelez de l’exil mon misÉrable pÈre.”
Cousin, Jacqueline Pascal, pp. 72–75. The Intendant was a special Royal Commissioner, sent into the provinces to watch over the administration of justice and the finances. See Cousin, Jacqueline Pascal, pp. 78–80. M. LÉlut’s volume (already referred to) deserves special attention in its bearing on Pascal’s health, and the character of his sufferings. He lays great stress on Pascal’s highly-strung nervous constitution, in connection both with the precocity of his genius, his physical sufferings, his religious susceptibility, and the profound melancholy which affected his later years. The study is very interesting in some respects, but is overstrained in its physiological details and imaginary analysis. Madame PÉrier, Vie de Pascal. A disciple and friend of FranÇois de Sales, who had been bishop of Bellay or Belley, but had at this time demitted his bishopric for the Abbey of Aulney-Havet. The documents containing these details are found among the Pascal MSS. in the National Library at Paris, having been given by Marguerite PÉrier to one of the Guerrier family, by whose care so many interesting memorials of Pascal have been preserved. See FaugÈre, Int. to Ed. of PensÉes, xlvi.-ix. Cousin, app. 392. FaugÈre, Lettres, Opuscules, etc., p. 452. It is difficult to make out the exact chronological sequence of some of the facts mentioned by Pascal’s sister and niece. But a special accession of ill-health, according to both, seems to have followed his conversion at Rouen, and to have been amongst the causes of his removal to Paris in 1647. Pp. 134–137. Jacqueline Pascal, p. 73. Œuvres de Blaise Pascal, t. 4. Paris, 1819. North British Review, August 1844, p. 296. I owe this information to the kindness of my friend, Professor Tait of Edinburgh. He further informs me that “of late years the calculating machine of M. Scheutz has been employed in the production of many valuable tables almost hopelessly beyond the power of mere mental calculation;” and that a very simple and ingenious machine, known as the ArithmomÈtre of M. Thomas, is to be found in the office of almost every engineer and actuary. Letter to M. Ribeyre, Œuvres, t. iv. The illustrious Italian was then advanced in years. He died in January 1642. Œuvres, t. iv. pp. 160,161. Sir D. Brewster, in an article on Pascal’s Writings and Discoveries in North Brit. Rev., Aug. 1844. Sir David’s account is almost literally translated from M. PÉrier’s letter to Pascal, of date September 22, 1648, and embodied in Pascal’s “RÉcit de la grande ExpÉrience de l’Équilibre des Liqueurs,” first published in 1648. Cousin, Jacqueline Pascal, p. 94. “Evidently,” says Cousin, “M. Habert de Montmor, the MÆcenas of the savants of the time.” Blaise Pascal. PrÉface de la nouvelle Éd., P. 46. Œuvres, t. i. 1849. Jus mihi esset hoc ipsum ab ipso potius quam a te expectare, ideo quod ego ipsi, jam biennium effluxit, auctor fuerim ejus experimenti faciendi, eumque certum reddiderim, nec de successu non dubitare, quamquam id experimentum nunquam fecerim. Verum quoniam D. R. amicitia junctus est qui mihi ultro adversatus . . . non sine ratione credendum est eum sequi passiones amici sui.—Descartes, Epist. Amstelodami, 1683. Discours sur la Vie et les Ouvrages de Pascal, p. xviii. Any reader curious as to how far Descartes had advanced in this matter may consult Montucla, Histoire des MathÉmatiques, vol. vi. p. 205. Montucla, no less than Baillet, writes with a clear bias in Descartes’s favour. RÉcit de la grande ExpÉrience de l’Équilibre des Liqueurs. Œuvres, t. iv. p. 301—“Je mÉditai des lors l’expÉrience dont je fais voir ici le RÉcit.” Intererat mea id rescire, ipse enim petii ab illo, jam exacto biennio, ut id faceret, eumque pulchri successus certum reddidi, quod esset omnino conforme meis Principiis, absque quo nunquam de eo cogitasset, eo quod contrari tenebatur sententiÂ.—Ep. lxix., ibid. Professor Tait, article “Vacuum,” Chambers’s Encyclopedia. These further researches are expounded in two treatises, ‘De l’Équilibre des Liqueurs,’ and ‘De la Pesanteur de l’Air,’ supposed to have been written in 1653, but not published till 1663, after the author’s death. North British Review, August 1844. Sir David in the main translates from M. Bossut’s “Discours.” Œuvres, t. iv. p. 187. FaugÈre, Lettres, etc., p. 80. Vie de Pascal. Cousin, Vie de Jacqueline, p. 43. Ibid., p. 101. B. Pascal, app. vii. p. 491. Vie de Jacqueline. Cousin’s Jacqueline, p. 189. Cousin’s Jacqueline, p. 161. Relation de la Soeur Jacqueline de Sainte-EuphÉmie Pascal À Port Royal, 10 Juin 1653—a long narrative, extending to about 50 pages of Cousin’s volume. See also Lettres, Opuscules, etc., ed. by FaugÈre, pp. 177–222. Relation de la Soeur Jacqueline, etc., p. 182. Ibid., p. 187. Ibid., p. 194. MÉmoire, FaugÈre, p. 453. Jacqueline Pascal, pp. 237, 244. Marguerite PÉrier says that Pascal had always a room at the Duc de Roannez’s, and that he stayed there frequently, although he had a house of his own in Paris. LÉlut, p. 234. Women throughout this time took the lead, and were never so active, even in French politics. “Beautiful, witty, and dissolute, they brought into public affairs their frivolous ideas, and sacrificed to their vanity their honour and that of their houses.”—La VallÉe, Hist. des FranÇais, t. iii. p. 195, quoted in Kitchin’s Hist. of France, vol. iii. p. 114. LÉlut, p. 238. PensÉes, Éd. de M. FaugÈre, t. i p. 197. Ibid., t. ii p. 91. FaugÈre, Introduction. Blaise Pascal, App. No. 7. Blaise Pascal, App. No. 7. Introd. to Ed. of PensÉes. Il prit la rÉsolution de suivre le train commun du monde, c’est-À-dire de prendre une charge et se marier.—FaugÈre, p. 453. “D’horribles attaches”—an expression already alluded to, which has given rise to a good deal of speculation.—Jacqueline Pascal, Cousin, p. 237. Cousin, Jacqueline Pascal, pp. 236–241. Fontaine, vol. i. p. 354. See Beard’s Port Royal, vol. i. pp. 207, 208. Recueil d’Utrecht, quoted by Maynard, vol. i. p. 78.
L’an de grÂce 1654.
Lundi 23 novÉmbre, jour de St ClÉment, 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.
Certitude. Certitude. Sentiment. Joie. Paix. [92]
Dieu de JÉsus-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 enseignÉes dans l’Evangile.
Grandeur de l’Âme humaine.
PÈre juste, le monde ne t’a point connu, mais je t’ai connu.
Joie, joie, joie, pleurs de joie.
Je m’en suis sÉparÉ—
Dereliquerunt me fontem aquÆ vivÆ.
Mon Dieu me quitterez-vous?—
Que je n’en sois pas sÉparÉ Éternellement!
Cette est la vie Éternelle qu’ils te connaissent seul
vrai Dieu et celui que tu as envoyÉ, J.-C.
JÉsus Christ—
JÉsus Christ—
Je m’en suis sÉparÉ; je l’ai fui, renoncÉ, crucifiÉ.
Que je n’en sois jamais sÉparÉ!
Il ne se conserve que par les voies enseignÉes dans l’Evangile.
Renonciation totale et douce,
etc. In the parchment copy, “Certitude, joie, certitude, sentiment, vue, joie.” 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 AbbÉ Boileau, unconnected with the poet of that name, who first told it in a volume of letters published in 1737. Leibnitziana, quoted by Sainte-Beuve, t. iii. p. 286. PensÉes, t. ii. p 76, 2d ed., Havet. Recueil d’Utrecht, Maynard, vol. i. p. 555. The most authentic portrait of Pascal is probably that prefixed by M. FaugÈre to his edition of the ‘PensÉes.’ 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 pÈre”—and is supposed to represent him in his earlier years, when he studied natural philosophy along with his friend. 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; Sancyranus Arnaldum et fratres ejus.” The sequel will show how earnestly Pascal disclaims Calvinism. “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. The full title is, “Cornelii Jansenii Episcopi Iprensis Augustinus: seu doctrina S. Augustini de humanÆ naturÆ sanitate, Ægritudine, medicinÂ, adversus Pelagianos et Massilienses.” Beard’s Port Royal, vol. i. p. 243. Recueil d’Utrecht, p. 271. See also Sainte-Beuve, vol. iii. p. 536. Curieux in the sense, says Sainte-Beuve, of bel-esprit, amateur. A name applied to the Jesuits after Louis Molina, a Spanish Jesuit (1535–1600), whose “Scientia Media,” akin to the Arminian doctrine of Divine foreknowledge, was very famous in its day. Beard’s Port Royal, vol. i. p. 271. Founded on Recueil d’Utrecht, p. 278, and Sainte-Beuve, t. ii. p. 555. 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 assailing 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. After the Edict of Nantes (1598), the Protestants were permitted to assemble for worship at Charenton, a small town about four miles from Paris. Letter V. “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.” Letter IV. Letter IV. Letter X. “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.” Letter XI. Ibid. Letter XV. This is Sainte-Beuve’s statement (t. iii. p. 138), repeated by Mr Beard, and founded apparently on Nicole. 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. These lectures will be found, translated by the writer of the present volume, in Kitto’s Journal of Sacred Literature, April-October, 1849. In his MÉmoires de LittÉrature et d’Histoire. FaugÈre, i. pp. 123–129. FaugÈre, i. pp. 149–152. See p. 66. Chiefly from PensÉes Diverses.—FaugÈre’s ed., vol. i. pp. 177–242. The following passage 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.” Fragment sur la Philosophie de Descartes. Havet, i. pp. cxxiv-cxxxiii FaugÈre, ii. pp. 81, 82. FaugÈre, ii. pp. 91, 92, 99, 104. FaugÈre, p. 108. FaugÈre, p. 84. FaugÈre, ii. pp. 136, 137. The lamented PrÉvost Paradol, Études sur les Moralistes FranÇais.
