Descartes expressed it like Bacon, and it was taken up and repeated by many whom Descartes influenced. Pascal, who till 1654 was a man of science and a convert to Cartesian ideas, put it in a striking way. The whole sequence of men (he says) during so many centuries should be considered as a single man, continually existing and continually learning. At each stage of his life this universal man profited by the knowledge he had acquired in the preceding stages, and he is now in his old age. This is a fuller, and probably an independent, development of the comparison of the race to an individual which we found in Bacon. It occurs in a fragment which remained unpublished for more than a hundred years, and is often quoted as a recognition, not of a general progress of man, but of a progress in human knowledge.
To those who reproached Descartes with disrespect towards ancient thinkers he might have replied that, in repudiating their authority, he was really paying them the compliment of imitation and acting far more in their own spirit than those who slavishly followed them. Pascal saw this point. "What can be more unjust," he wrote, "than to treat our ancients with greater consideration than they showed towards their own predecessors, and to have for them this incredible respect which they deserve from us only because they entertained no such regard for those who had the same advantage (of antiquity) over them?" [Footnote: Pensees, ib.]
At the same time Pascal recognised that we are indebted to the ancients for our very superiority to them in the extent of our knowledge. "They reached a certain point, and the slightest effort enables us to mount higher; so that we find ourselves on a loftier plane with less trouble and less glory." The attitude of Descartes was very different. Aspiring to begin ab integro and reform the foundations of knowledge, he ignored or made little of what had been achieved in the past. He attempted to cut the threads of continuity as with the shears of Atropos. This illusion [Footnote: He may be reproached himself with scholasticism in his metaphysical reasoning.] hindered him from stating a doctrine of the progress of knowledge as otherwise he might have done. For any such doctrine must take account of the past as well as of the future.
But a theory of progress was to grow out of his philosophy, though he did not construct it. It was to be developed by men who were imbued with the Cartesian spirit.
3.
The theological world in France was at first divided on the question whether the system of Descartes could be reconciled with orthodoxy or not. The Jesuits said no, the Fathers of the Oratory said yes. The Jansenists of Port Royal were enthusiastic Cartesians. Yet it was probably the influence of the great spiritual force of Jansenism that did most to check the immediate spread of Cartesian ideas. It was preponderant in France for fifty years. The date of the Discourse of Method is 1637. The Augustinus of Jansenius was published in 1640, and in 1643 Arnauld's Frequent Communion made Jansenism a popular power. The Jansenist movement was in France in some measure what the Puritan movement was in England, and it caught hold of serious minds in much the same way. The Jesuits had undertaken the task of making Christianity easy, of finding a compromise between worldliness and religion, and they flooded the world with a casuistic literature designed for this purpose. Ex opinionum varietate jugum Christi suavius deportatur. The doctrine of Jansenius was directed against this corruption of faith and morals. He maintained that there can be no compromise with the world; that casuistry is incompatible with morality; that man is naturally corrupt; and that in his most virtuous acts some corruption is present.
Now the significance of these two forces—the stern ideal of the Jansenists and the casuistry of the Jesuit teachers—is that they both attempted to meet, by opposed methods, the wave of libertine thought and conduct which is a noticeable feature in the history of French society from the reign of Henry IV. to that of Louis XV. [Footnote: For the prevalence of "libertine" thought in France at the beginning of the seventeenth century see the work of the Pere Garasse, La Doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits de ce temps ou pretendus tels, etc. (1623). Cp. also Brunetiere's illuminating study, "Jansenistes et Cartesiens" in Etudes critiques, 4me serie.] This libertinism had its philosophy, a sort of philosophy of nature, of which the most brilliant exponents were Rabelais and Moliere. The maxim, "Be true to nature," was evidently opposed sharply to the principles of the Christian religion, and it was associated with sceptical views which prevailed widely in France from the early years of the seventeenth century. The Jesuits sought to make terms by saying virtually: "Our religious principles and your philosophy of nature are not after all so incompatible in practice. When it comes to the application of principles, opinions differ. Theology is as elastic as you like. Do not abandon your religion on the ground that her yoke is hard." Jansenius and his followers, on the other hand, fought uncompromisingly with the licentious spirit of the time, maintaining the austerest dogmas and denouncing any compromise or condescension. And their doctrine had a wonderful success, and penetrated everywhere. Few of the great literary men of the reign of Louis XIV. escaped it. Its influence can be traced in the Maximes of La Rochefoucauld and the Caracteres of La Bruyere. It was through its influence that Moliere found it difficult to get some of his plays staged. It explains the fact that the court of Louis XIV., however corrupt, was decorous compared with the courts of Henry IV. and Louis XV.; a severe standard was set up, if it was not observed.
The genius of Pascal made the fortunes of Jansenism. He outlived his Cartesianism and became its most influential spokesman. His Provinciales (1656) rendered abstruse questions of theology more or less intelligible, and invited the general public to pronounce an opinion on them. His lucid exposition interested every one in the abstruse problem, Is man's freedom such as not to render grace superfluous? But Pascal perceived that casuistry was not the only enemy that menaced the true spirit of religion for which Jansenism stood. He came to realise that Cartesianism, to which he was at first drawn, was profoundly opposed to the fundamental views of Christianity. His Pensees are the fragments of a work which he designed in defence of religion, and it is easy to see that this defence was to be specially directed against the ideas of Descartes.
Pascal was perfectly right about the Cartesian conception of the Universe, though Descartes might pretend to mitigate its tendencies, and his fervent disciple, Malebranche, might attempt to prove that it was more or less reconcilable with orthodox doctrine. We need not trouble about the special metaphysical tenets of Descartes. The two axioms which he launched upon the world—the supremacy of reason, and the invariability of natural laws—struck directly at the foundations of orthodoxy. Pascal was attacking Cartesianism when he made his memorable attempt to discredit the authority of reason, by showing that it is feeble and deceptive. It was a natural consequence of his changed attitude that he should speak (in the Pensees) in a much less confident tone about the march of science than he had spoken in the passage which I quoted above. And it was natural that he should be pessimistic about social improvement, and that, keeping his eyes fixed on his central fact that Christianity is the goal of history, he should take only a slight and subsidiary interest in amelioration.
The preponderant influence of Jansenism only began to wane during the last twenty years of the seventeenth century, and till then it seems to have been successful in counteracting the diffusion of the Cartesian ideas. Cartesianism begins to become active and powerful when Jansenism is beginning to decline. And it is just then that the idea of Progress begins definitely to emerge. The atmosphere in France was favourable for its reception.