[53]La Vie de M. Pascal, écrite par Madame Périer, sa sœur.
[54]Life of Galileo, by Drinkwater, p. 90, 91.
[55]Innocent X., in condemning propositions, did not cite the passages in which they were to be found; and, in fact, they are not quoted with verbal correctness. Voltaire asserts that they are to be found there in spirit; and he cites passages which establish his assertion. Siècle de Louis XIV., chap. XXXVII.
[56]Madame Périer, in the life she has written of her brother, mentions the miraculous cure of her daughter: "This fistula," she says, "was of so bad a sort, that the cleverest surgeons of Paris considered it incurable. Nevertheless she was cured in a moment by the touch of the holy thorn; and this miracle was so authentic, that it is acknowledged by every body." Racine, in his fragment of a History of the Abbey of Port Royal, details the whole circumstance with elaborate faith in the most miraculous version of it. He says, that such was the simplicity of the nuns, that though the cure took place on the instant, they did not mention the miracle for several days, and some time elapsed before it was spread abroad. Voltaire says, that persons who had known mademoiselle Périer told him that her cure was very long. Still some circumstance must have made it appear short, or so universal a belief in a miracle, sufficient at the time to confound the jesuits, could not have been spread abroad; nor would her uncle, Pascal, the most upright and single-minded of men, have given it the support of his testimony.
[57]Boileau's admiration for Pascal was unbounded. He declared the "Lettres Provinciales" to be the best work in the French language. Madame de Sévigné, in her letters, narrates a whimsical scene that took place between him and some jesuits. Their conversation turning on literary subjects, Boileau declared that there was only one modern book to be compared to the works of the ancients. Bourdaloue begged him to name it. Boileau evaded the request. "You have read it more than once, I am sure," he said, "but do not ask me its name." The jesuit insisted; and Boileau, at last, taking him by the arm, exclaimed, "You are determined to have it, father; well, it is Pascal." "Morbleu! Pascal!" cried Bourdaloue, astonished. "Yes, certainly Pascal is as well written as any thing false can be." "False!" exclaimed Boileau, "False! Know that he is as true as he is inimitable." On another occasion, a jesuit, father Boubours, consulted Boileau as to what books he ought to consult as models for style. "There is but one," said Boileau, "read the 'Lettres Provinciales,' and believe me that will suffice." Voltaire pronounces the same opinion: he calls Pascal the greatest satirist of France; and says that Molière's best comedies have not the wit of the first of these Letters, nor had Bossuet written any thing so sublime as the latter ones.
[58]He thus expresses his sentiments on individual attachments: "It is unjust to attach one's self, even though one should do it voluntarily and with pleasure: I should deceive those in whom I call forth affection—for I cannot be the end of any one, and possess not that by which they can be satisfied. As I should be culpable if I caused a falsehood to be believed, although I should persuade gently and was believed with pleasure, arid hence derive pleasure myself—so am I culpable if I caused myself to be loved, and attracted persons to attach themselves to me. I ought to undeceive those who are ready to give faith to a falsehood in which they ought not to believe, and in the same way teach them that they should not attach themselves to me; for their lives ought to be spent in pleasing God, and seeking him." As if the beneficent Creator would not be pleased in seeing his creatures linked by the bonds of those very affections which he himself has made the law of our lives. One wonders where and how Pascal lived, that he did not discover that the worst crimes and vices of mankind arose from want of attachment: and that hardness of heart, pride, and selfishness, would, in the common run of men, be the consequences of an adherence to his creed.
[59]Lockhart, in his Life of Sir Walter Scott, vol. VII.
[60]The following is Pascal's address to Atheists:—
"I will not certainly make use, to convince you, of the faith by which we ascertain the existence of God, nor of all the other proofs which we possess, since you will not receive them. I will act by your own principles, and I undertake to show you, by the manner in which you daily reason on matters of less consequence, the way in which you ought to reason on this, and the part you ought to take in deciding the important question of the existence of God. You say we are incapable of knowing whether there be a God. Yet either God is, or God is not—there is no medium: towards which side, then, shall we lean? Reason, you say, cannot decide. An infinite gulph separates us. Stake, toss up at this distance; heads or tails—on which will you bet? Your reason does not affirm, nor can your reason deny one or the other.
"Do not blame the falsehood of those who have chosen—you cannot tell whether they are mistaken: No, you say I do not blame the choice they have made, but that they choose at all; he who chooses heads and he who chooses tails are both in the wrong—the right thing is not to make the wager.