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BLAISE
PASCAL (1623–1662)
French mathematician and scientist; Christian apologist
Early Life and Scientific DiscoveriesBlaise Pascal, French philosopher, mathematician, and mystic, was born at Clermont-Ferrand (212 m. s.s.w. of Paris) June 19, 1623; d. at Paris Aug. 19, 1662. He was the son of Étienne Pascal, second president of the cour des aides(court of the assistances) at Clermont, who in 1631 resigned his post in order to go to Paris and devote himself to the education of his children. Here he found himself in a circle of friends whose center was the family of Antoine Arnauld. The surroundings of young Blaise, as well as his natural inclinations, turned his attention early to scientific and mathematical problems, in favor of which he rather neglected the classical and humanistic. His attainments in mathematics are evidenced by his Essai pour les coniques(essay on conic sections), written before he was seventeen, and the calculating machine which be put before the public in 1642. But while a brilliant worldly future seemed to lie before him, his course was changed by an event of great significance for the entire family. An accident which befell Étienne in Rouen, where he was intendant of Normandy from 1640, brought him into contact with the absorbing problems of the spiritual life, as regarded from the Jansenist standpoint. He became acquainted with Cornelius Jansen's Diacours our la reformation de I'homme in-terieur(Discussion on the Reformation of the Inner Man), Robert Arnauld's De la frequente communion(On Frequent Communion), St. Cyran's Lettres spirituelles(Spiritual Letters) (Paris, 1648), and similar works. The earnestness with which the Jansenistic piety rejected every compromise with the world was not without effect on young Pascal and the first impulse toward his conversion dates from this period. The spiritual effect of those writings on his sister Jacqueline (b. 1625) was even more marked. In the autumn of 1647 Blaise went to Paris with Jacqueline to seek the improvement of his health, impaired by overwork, being almost paralyzed and walking only by means of crutches. Here he was a constant auditor of the sermons of the Abbé Singlin, confessor of the community of Port- Royal. Jacqueline soon took him for her director, and desired to enter Port-Royal herself; but her father, who had returned to Paris in 1648, was unwilling to be separated from her. Pascal's first biographer, his sister Gilberte, recounts his conversion of the year 1646 as though it involved a complete breach with worldly interests; but this was not the case. The next few years saw his epoch-making discoveries and writings on scientific subjects, giving an account of the pressure of the atmosphere, nature's "horror of a vacuum," barometric measurements, and equivalent weights of fluids. This is not the place to discuss his scientific achievements; but it may be noticed that even in this field he had a serious conflict with the Jesuits, who accused him of plagiarism and of giving out as his own the discovery of Torricelli as to the method of barometrical measurement. About 1649 he was of a divided mind between the conflicting attractions of religion and science, and for some years he could not arrive at a clear choice.His father died Sept, 24, 1651; and Jacqueline was now free to carry out her cherished wish. On Jan. 4, 1652, she entered Port-Royal des Champs as a novice, and was received into the religious order on June 5, 1653. Pascal now plunged for a time into worldly distractions in order to drown his sorrow at his father's death, finding his justification in the works of Montaigne, of which he was a diligent student at this time, as well as of Epictetus. But he did not neglect his studies, and his principal mathematical discoveries belong to the years 1653 and 1654. He wrote then the Traité du triangle arithmétique(Treatise on the Arithmetic Triangle), the Traité des ordres numériques(Treatis on the Orders of Numbers Paris, 1665), and other smaller treatises. In these he discusses the laws of probability, he lays down the principles of the differential and integral calculus. The Jansenistic ideal paled for a while before his eyes; he thought of entering public life and marrying. ConversionSuddenly, however, the old religious impulses awoke once more in his heart. He found the things which had appealed to him to be hollow and unsatisfying, and felt an intense longing for God and his grace. He paid frequent visits to Port-Royal, and related his sufferings to his sister. On one of these visits he heard a sermon from the Abbé Singlin on the beginning of the Christian life, describing it as a serious decision made in the presence of God involving a thorough breach with the world. The words seemed to Pascal to be spoken expressly for him. Two days later (Nov. 23, 1653) he had a remarkable experience, being made vividly conscious of the presence of God as if in an ecstacy. This is the date of his real conversion. He sought strength and protection for his new inner life in the solitude of Port-Royal, where his coming was welcomed with joy and taken as a signal mark of God's favor to the persecuted community. In spite of the advice of his physicians, he subjected himself to the strict discipline of fasting, vigils, and self-torture, although retaining his independence and frequently visiting Paris. He plunged into the study of the Bible and the Church Fathers, but did not refrain, on occasions, from opposing the elders of Port-Royal with his own convictions; such as the relation between knowledge and faith. His colloquy with Le Maistre de Saci shows that he neither shared the skeptical distrust of Singlin and de Saci for theoretical reason nor admitted a complete separation between theology and philosophy. During this period he occupied himself with the plan of a great work in apologetics, which was to win to the faith the philosophers and atheists; but he was deflected from this path by the call to engage in the controversy between Port-Royal and the Jesuits.Provincial LettersEarly in 1655 the Abbé Picoté of St. Sulpice refused absolution to the Duke de Liancourt because he had received into his house a friend of Port-Royal, the Abbé de Bourgeois, and had allowed his grandchildren to be educated in the Port-Royal schools. This gave occasion to Arnauld to write a letter (Paris, 1655) which was hotly attacked by the Jesuits, and followed up in July, 1655, by a second letter to the Duke of Luynes. The Jesuits saw their opportunity to reopen the vexing question as to "fact" and "law". Arnauld was cited before the Sorbonne and condemned on the point of "fact" by a majority of more than two to one. The Port-Royalists, anxious to bring the question before a wider tribunal, asked Pascal to treat it in such a way as to appeal to the lay public. This he undertook in the first of the "Provincial Letters", published under the pseudonym of "Louis de Montalte," Jan. 23, 1656. The pretended author, knowing nothing of theological subtleties, asks for information on the controversy from a Thomist, a Jansenist, a Molinist, and a Neo-Thomist, and comes to the conclusion that Arnauld's offense consists in the fact that he has not used the expression pouvoir prochain ("prevenient grace"). Although some at Port-Royal had their doubts about the tone of the letter, it had an immediate success, and sixty friends of Arnauld's protested against the action of the Sorbonne. In a second letter, Pascal showed that the Neo-Thomists were really on the side of the Jansenists in the doctrine of "Sufficient grace," and that only from fear of the Jesuits they had tempered "efficient grace" down to "sufficient grace." As was to be expected, Arnauld was condemned also on the point of "law" (Jan. 31, 1656). In his third letter(Feb. 9), Pascal utters his protest, asserting that Arnauld, although having St. Augustine and the Fathers on his side, yet was condemned. In the fourth letter (Feb. 25), he begins to attack the Jesuits directly, asserting that they are undermining morality; that they constitute the ethical ideal not according to what man ought to do, but according to what the average man is able to do; and that they degrade religion to politics, and rationalize on morality. On the day of publication of the fifth letter (Mar. 20), the community was required to leave Port-Royal, but before long was permitted to return. Meantime Pascal got fresh weapons by a study of Antonio Escobar y Mendosa and of Jesuit practice in the confessional. In the letters from the sixth to the tenth (Apr. 10 to Aug. 2), he deals blow after blow at the principles of probabilism, the method of justifying the means by the end, and the doctrines of equivocation of favorable circumstances and of mental reservation. In the eleventh (Aug. 18) he drops his mask and comes out under his own name against the enemy; in this and the two following letters (Aug. 18 to Sept. 30) dealing with charges brought against him by the Jesuits and quoting from their most approved teachers to show the havoc they have wrought to the moral sense by their teaching on almsgiving, making profits from sacred things, bankruptcy, and duelling. A week after Alexander VII. solemnly declared that Jansen had taught the five condemned propositions in a reprehensible sense, Pascal, leaving that question for the time, gave a powerful speech against the doctrine of the order on the question of murder. Then in the last letters (fifteenth to eighteenth, Nov. 26, 1856, to Mar. 24, 1657), he returns to the Arnauld affair, and in the nineteenth, which ends abruptly, he attempts to strengthen his friends of Port-Royal in their resistance to the signature of the formula of submission proposed by the assembly of the clergy.The whole series had an indescribable effect, and the Latin version made by P. Nicole (1658) circulated throughout Europe. The public conscience was with Pascal. At Rome the letters were condemned; and at Paris, burned by the hangman. They were morally a brave achievement. Though in the utmost physical agonies, Pascal yet stood boldly as the champion of freedom of conscience, of truth, and justice against the all-powerful Jesuits without fear of the Bastile or galleys. But the letters are also, in spite of their occasional character, a literary masterpiece possessing a high dramatic unity. In place of dry scholastic discussions on technicalities, Pascal has given vivacious dialogue, sparkling with humor. The figure of the genial Jesuit, expounding the secrets of his repository of deceptions with smug complacency to the curious Louis de Montalte, is worthy of Moliere at his best; and the strong, clear, sober style makes the book one of the finest monuments of French prose. Thoughs on ReligionWhen its termination left him free to carry out his plan for a great apologetic work, his health was so increasingly feeble that he could do nothing more than leave a few scattered sheets to represent his thoughts. In 1661 a new attack upon Port-Royal gave him much pain, which was increased by what he thought the weakness of the submission of Arnauld and Nicole, and by the death of his sister Jacqueline (Oct. 4, 1661). His last few months were spent in retirement and in devotional exercises and works of charity. His remains were buried in the church of St. Etienne du Mont. The fragments found among his papers, representing his desultory preparations for the great work which was to have converted the atheists, were published by his friends. (Paris, 1670). Unfortunately Nicole and Arnauld felt obliged or authorized to alter the text almost out of all recognition; and it was not until the publication of Victor Cousin's Des Pensées de Pascal(The Thoughts of Pascal - Paris 1843) that attention was drawn to the original. Other authors followed-up and expounded on his work in the years to come.ConclusionsScientific studies, according to Pascal, leave the riddle of life unsolved, and the deepest cravings of the heart unsatisfied. Hence be turned to the study of man. Mathematical logic is incontrovertible but minus concrete truth. For scientific deduction God is perceived only as a mathematical determination or concept of limitation. Only a single ethical effect follows the contemplation of the mathematical; through the conception of the infinitely small and the infinitely great, man comes to the realization of self and reverence before the infinite. The study to which man is called by his own constitution is the study of man. The first results are despairing; man is a chaos, a being full of inexplicable contradictions. But the very fact that he seeks and yet is helplessly weak, is proof that he once possessed a real happiness. He seeks in that which he has not, the help which he finds not in that which he has, while neither the one nor the other is able to deliver him, because this infinite abyss is only to be filled by an infinite means. Mere philosophy can not bridge the chasm. Of the two fundamental types, Stoicism sets forth the grandeur of man but is blind to his misery and ethical impotence: skepticism recognizes his misery, but stumbles over his greatness. Philosophy points out the way of escape from the dilemma by preparing man for the receptivity of faith or leading to theology, the center of all truth. Reason affords a knowledge of God as a philosophical postulate but not as salvation; how God exists and how he is related to man must come by religious revelation. In the search for true religion, in the first place, reason is the only instrument: divine revelation must be perceivable by it, or at least not opposed to it. By miracle, prophecy, and the historic life of Jesus, Christianity reveals itself to reason as the true religion. The proofs are not "mathematically convincing," but they offer the Christian religion as a hypothesis that satisfies the reason. The doctrines of nature and grace, of the fall and of a divine-human Redeemer, are the necessary complement of experience as to the conjoint misery and greatness of man. But as the ungodly passions set themselves against the reasonable apprehension of God and his revelation, man can strengthen his faith by a second means; namely, habit. The habit of acting as though he believed, will reduce the obstinacy of man's heart. Actual faith, however, is a gift of the divine grace; not indirectly through the reason but directly God inspires faith in the heart, whenever it suits his pleasure. The result is an absolute certainty and blessedness. The inspiration which makes the heart certain of the truth of religion proceeds from Christ, through whom alone we know God. Christian perfection consists for Pascal in the imitation of the self-denying life of Jesus-penitent self-contemplation, monastic mortification of the natural man, mystical surrender, and contemplative elevation are the means of sanctification. Thus his ideal of life is largely negative, the duty of charity toward the poor and suffering being the principal positive precept. This insistence on the inner life and personal sanctification is far removed from the Jesuit cosmopolitan morality; but it is almost equally far from the Evangelical conception of Christian perfection. There is nothing in all his work to show that he had any real understanding of or sympathy with Protestantism; yet he has been, like his contemporaries of Port-Royal, a stranger in the Roman Catholic Church to this day. Like Paul and Augustine, his great teachers, he has been a pathfinder to all those who were seeking God. A prince in the realm of science, he is even a greater than a prince in that. of faith.(EUGEN LACHENMANN.) |
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