Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 11.djvu/565

 PASCAL

511

PASCAL

Flamini, It Cinque cento in StoHa delta Letteratura italiana (Milan, 1894), 458; Cohanio, Le dottrine politiche di P. Paruta.

U. Benigni.

Pascal, Blaise, b. at Clermont-Ferrand, 19 June, 1623; (1. in Paris, 19 August, 1662. He was the son of Eticunc Pascal, advocate at the court of Aids of Ck-rrnont, and of Antoinette Bcgon. His father, a man of fortune, went with his children (1631) to live in Paris. He tauKht his son grammar, Latin, Span- ish, and mathriMatics, all according to an original method. In his twelfth year Blaise composed a trea- tise on the communication of sounds; at sixteen an- other treatise, on conic sections. In 1639 he went to Rouen with his father, who had been appointed in- tendant of Normandy, and, to assist his father in his calculations, he invented the arithmetical machine. He repeated Torricelli's vacuum experiments and demonstrated, against Pere Noel, the weight of air (cf. Mathieu, "Revue de Paris", 1906 ^ Abel Lefranc, "Revue Bleue", 1906; Strowski, "Pascal", Paris, 1908). He published works on the arithmetical tri- angle, on wagers and the theory of probabilities, and on the roulette or cycloid.

Meanwhile, in 1646, he had been won over to Jan- senism, and induced his family, especially his sister JacqueUne, to follow in the same direction. In 1650, after a sojourn in Auvergne, his family returned to Paris. On the advice of physicians Pascal, who had always been ailing and who now suffered more than ever, relaxed his labours and mingled in society, with such friends as the Due de Roannez, the Chevalier Mere, the poet Desbarreaux, the actor Miton. This was what has been called the worldly period of his hfe, during which he must have written the "Dis- cours sur les passions de I'amour", inspired, it is said, by Mile de Roannez. But the world soon became dis- tasteful to him, and he felt more and more impelled to abandon it. During the night of 23 November, 16.54, his doubts were settled by a sort of vision, the evidence of which is in a writing, always subsequently carried in the hning of his coat, and called "Pascal's talisman". After this he practised the most severe asceticism, renounced learning, and became the con- stant guest of Port Royal. In 1656 he undertook the defence of Jansenism, and published the "Provin- ciales". This polemical work was nearing completion when Pascal had the joy of seeing his friends, the Due de Roannez and the jurisconsult Domat, eon- verted to Jansenism, as well as his niece Marguerite Perier, who had been cured of a fistula of the eye by contact with a relic of the Holy Thorn preserved at Port Royal. Thenceforth, although exhausted by illness, Pascal gave himself more and more to God. He multiplied his mortifications, wore a cincture of nails which he drove into his flesh at the slightest thought of vanity, and to be more like Jesus crucified, he left his own house and went to die in that of his brother-in- law. He wrote the "Mystere de Jesus", a sublime memorial of his transports of faith and love, and he laboured to collect the materials for a great apologetic work. He died at the age of thirty-nine, after having received in an ecstasy of joy the Holy Viaticum, for which he had several times asked, crying out as he half rose from his couch: "May God never abandon me!"

Pascal left numerous scientific works, among which must be mentioned "Essai sur les coniques" (1640); "Avis a ceux qui verront la machine arithm^tique (1645); "Recit de la grande experience de l'6quilibre des hqueurs" (1648); "Trait6 du triangle arith- mctique" (1654). He shows himself a determined advocate of the ex-perimental method, in opposition to the mathematical and mechanical method of Des- cartes. In his "Traite sur la vide", often reprinted with the "Pens<''es" under the title "De I'autorite en matiere de philosophie", Pascal clearly puts the question regarding progress, which he answers,

boldly yet prudently, in "L'esprit g^ometrique", where he luminously distinguishes between the geo- metrical and the acute mind, and establishes the foundations of the art of persuasion. As to his authorship of the "Discours sur les passions de I'amour", that essay at least contains certain theories familiar to the author of the "Pensik-s" on the part played by intuition in sentiment and aesthetic, and its style for the most part resembles that of Pascal. The "Entretien avec M. de Saci sur Eijictete et Mon- taigne" gives the key to the "Pensces"; psychology serving as the foundation and criterion of apolo- getics, various philosophies solving the problem only in one aspect, and Christianity alone affording the complete solution.

But Pascal's two masterpieces are the "Provin- ciales" and the "Pensees". The occasion of the "Provinciales" was an accident. The Due de Lian- court, a friend of Port Royal, hav- ing been refuserl absolution by the cure of S a i n t Sulpice. Antoine Arnauld wrote two letters which were censured by the So r bonne. He wished to appeal to the public in a pamphlet which he submitted to his friends, but they found it too heavy and theological. He then said to Pascal: "You, who are young, must do sometliing." The next day (23 Jan., 1666, Pascal brought the first "Provinciale". The "Petitis lettres" followed to the number of nineteen, the last unfinished, from January, 1656, to March, 1657. Appearing under the pseudonym of Louis de Montalte, they were published at Cologne in 1657 as "Les Provinciales, ou Lettres 6crites par Louis de Montalte k un provincial de ses amis et au RR. PP. J6suites sur le sujet de la morale et de la politique de ces peres". The first four treat the dogmatic question which forms the basis of Jansenism on the agreement between grace and hu- man liberty. Pascal answers it by practically, if not theoretically, denying sufficient grace and liberty. The seventeenth and eighteenth letters take up the same questions, but with noteworthy qualifications. From the fourth to the sixteenth Pascal censures the Jesuit moral code, or rather the casuistry, first, by depicting a naif Jesuit who, through silly vanity, re- veals to him the pretended secrets of the Jesuit policy, and then by direct invective against the Jes- uits themselves. The most famous are the foiu'th, on sins of ignorance, and the thiilcciilh, on linniicide.

That Pascal intended tliis to lie a useful work, his whole life bears witness, as do his deathbctl declara- tions. His good faith cannot seriously be doubted, but some of his methods are more questionable. V/ithout ever seriously altering his citations from the casuists, as he has sometimes been wrongfully accused of doing, he arranges them somewhat disingenuously; he simplifies complicated questions excessively, and, in setting forth the solutions of the casuists sometimes lets his own bias interfere. But the gravest reproach against him is, first, that he unjustly blamed the Soci- ety of Jesus, attacking it exclusively, and attributing to it a desire to lower the Christian ideal and to soften down the moral code in the interest of its pohcy ; then that he discredited casuistry itself by refusing to re- cognize its legitimacy or, in certain cases, its necessity.