Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/474

 he attacked the doctrines of certain Jesuit writers upon religious dogma, such as questions of Grace, and upon moral theories of casuistry, the science dealing with the solution of dilemmas of conscience and the exculpation of apparent offenses against righteousness. In the long and violent contest which raged in the seventeenth century, and of which the publication of the "Provincial Letters" was an incident, the Jesuits succeeded in having the Jansenists considered heretics, and they managed to encompass the destruction of Port Royal. But, whether rightly or wrongly (and here antagonists will remain unreconciled), Pascal dealt them severe blows from which, in France at least, they have never fully recovered.

THE "THOUGHTS"

The "Lettres Provinciales" are, however, in some respects, ephemeral literature as compared with the "Pensées" or "Thoughts." In the "Thoughts" we have the sum and substance of Pascal's religious views as well as one of the masterpieces of French literary style. Pascal had long planned a work on religion in which he intended to set forth the defense of Christianity. This work never got beyond the stage of disconnected and fragmentary notes and "Thoughts," from which it is difficult, if not impossible, to extract the definite plan of the whole work. But, none the less, what we have deserves the deepest consideration.

Pascal was by temperament a pessimist, and therefore he agreed the more easily with the gloomy Augustinian determinism of the Jansenists and their ideas of the sinfulness of man and of the necessity of grace. He was no less convinced of the impotence of man's reason to deal with the problems of the unknowable and of the hereafter. Pascal had fed on the jesting skepticism of Montaigne and realized how logically unanswerable it was in spite of its inconclusiveness. This realization made him feel that there was only one egress from the impasse, it was to reject all the help and conclusions of reason for or against, and to throw himself blindly into the arms of God, an act symbolized by his acceptance of faith and the influence of grace upon him. It is for these reasons that Pascal is