Meditation on Pascal

France celebrates the third centenary of its birth as a prosperous date - as the ancients said - in its history, however so full of various glories. And France is right.

Among these thousands of illustrious children who have covered her with honor, she can be counted among the best. A brilliant scholar, a profound philosopher, a perfect writer, he was one of the most representative French people of the race. The man who united to the taste for high speculations the concern for practical inventions, and, moreover, to the gravity of thought all the finesse of the most biting mind, who bowed to the disciplines, but to those only that his Conscience agreed, is indeed, in fact, a child of this French genius whose complexity only finds agreement in balance. Certainly, the Provincials, the model of all controversy, are, in certain respects, unfair and, when they are fair, in certain of their parts, cruel. But in what way, completely French, does Blaise Pascal know how to oppose common sense to his adversaries and put at his service the light irony that he gets from Gallic blood? No doubt he could have, after attacking the Jesuits, turned his wit against the Jansenists who, too, were not far from offending common sense. At least he paid this good sense a fine tribute by stopping very precisely, when the nineteenth provincial letter was already written, a controversy which, by becoming too incisive, was going to shake, with a whole part of the Church, the divided Christianity.

He had the feeling that this struggle only benefited the adversaries of the revealed faith, those libertines who rejoiced at seeing Molinists and Jansenists, the Jesuits and Port-Royal, devour each other.
And, eager to make amends, it was against these libertines that he “turned his pen” when he began to prepare the Apology of Christianity. The incident is very characteristic of the uprightness of soul, conscience and – let us say it – of spirit, which makes this Blaise Pascal perhaps the greatest of the “honest people” of the Grand Siècle. This century loved reason, but it held it to the defeat and repression of passions. In his Discourse on the Passions of Love, the young scholar revealed himself to be the good disciple of this great School of Reason of which, in the theater, Corneille and Descartes, in philosophy, were the great masters. But. There are no passions other than love. Pascal, when he wrote the Provinciales, had known others: they were noble, because he understood clearly that he was defending the Truth. So abruptly, he gave up defending it with such cruel weapons, it was because he had convinced himself that it is often wrong to be too right and that the defenders of truth, if they allow themselves to be carried away by passion that is excited by controversy, can little by little come to hurt the very truth that they vigorously intend to serve. The Sacrifice of the Nineteenth Provincial, when the first eighteen, thrilling public opinion, earned their author incredible fame, is still a form of Cornelian sacrifice...

He carries Gallic irreverence in his veins, it must have given way to the desire not to offend the general order. The 17th century had these concerns — even in the midst of sedition. Pascal's father had disapproved of the Fronde, but certain rebels must, even during the revolt, feel constantly stopped by remorse for destroying order. The century was an orderly century; it had respect for the rule, for the law. This was the result of education which, since the Renaissance, was inspired by the cult of rules, Rome dominated, which was cited as a mistress of order. Pascal was part of the atmosphere. In 1657, order had just been reestablished after the wind of madness which, following the death of Richelieu and in reaction against his work, had blown over the country. Perhaps only the Jansenist quarrel now disturbed the atmosphere and Blaise, through the virulence of his pen, collaborated in a sort of small civil war. Some Jansenists felt that it served their grudges more than their minds. “God,” said the admirable Mother Angélique Arnaud, “is better appeased by tears and penance than by eloquence, which amuses more people than it converts. » Blaise must have had the feeling that he "entertained more than he converted" - and that he amused those who delight in great divisions. He broke his polemicist's pen. The Latin that we all have in our blood, more or less entangled with the Celt, silenced the Gaul. The polemicist had, in full success, renounced a controversy which hurt what he loved most in the world: the Christian religion. Long ago, the scientist who, at seventeen, astonished the world of thought, had already humiliated science before God. No doubt he would have been willingly inclined to splendor as he was inclined to irony. His biographer Victor Giraud cites words from his youth which make him suppose to be proud. If the Apology of Christianity could have been completed - of which the famous Thoughts are only the scattered notes - We would undoubtedly have had the spectacle of the greatest of religious thinkers. There is little doubt that the strength of his thought was increased tenfold by the double sacrifice he had made to his faith, that of his verve as a publicist and that of his pride as a scholar.

In this way he is one of the representatives of an age which, through such traits of will, ensures France incomparable greatness. He is the living lesson of what a man of genius gains in greatness when he knows how to overcome passions which, even very noble ones, could go against the disciplines.

Louis MADELIN