The humorous irony of Pascal, in the “Provincial Letters,” plays like the diffusive sheen of an aurora borealis over the whole surface of the composition. It does not often deliver itself startlingly in sudden discharges as of lightning. You need to school your sense somewhat, not to miss a fine effect now and then. Consider the broadness and coarseness in pleasantry, that, before Pascal, had been common, almost universal, in controversy, and you will better understand what a creative touch it was of genius, of feeling, and of taste, that brought into literature the far more than Attic, the ineffable Christian, purity of that wit and humor in the “Provincial Letters” which will make these writings live as long as men anywhere continue to read the productions of past ages. Erasmus, perhaps, came the nearest of all modern predecessors to anticipating the purified pleasantry of Pascal.
It will be interesting and instructive to see Pascal’s own statement of his reasons for adopting the bantering style which he did in the “Provincial Letters,” as well as of the sense of responsibility to be faithful and fair, under which he wrote. Pascal says:
I have been asked why I employed a pleasant, jocose, and diverting style. I reply ... I thought it a duty to write so as to be comprehended by women, and men of the world, that they might know the danger of their maxims and propositions which were then universally propagated.... I have been asked, lastly, if I myself read all the books, which I quoted. I answer, No. If I had done so, I must have passed a great part of my life in reading very bad books; but I read Escobar twice through, and I employed some of my friends in reading the others. But I did not make use of a single passage without having myself read it in the book from which it is cited, without having examined the subject of which it treats, and without having read what went before and followed, so that I might run no risk of quoting an objection as an answer which would have been blameworthy and unfair.
Of the wit of the “Provincial Letters,” their wit and their controversial effectiveness, the specimens given will have afforded readers some approximate idea. We must deny ourselves the gratification of presenting a brief passage, which we had selected and translated for the purpose, to exemplify from the same source Pascal’s serious eloquence. It was Voltaire who said of these productions: “Molière’s best comedies do not excel them in wit, nor the compositions of Bossuet in sublimity.” Something of Bossuet’s sublimity, or of a sublimity perhaps finer than Bossuet’s, our readers will discover in citations to follow from the “Thoughts.”
Pascal’s “Thoughts,” the printed book, has a remarkable history. It was a posthumous publication. The author died, leaving behind him a considerable number of detached fragments of composition, first jottings of thought on a subject that had long occupied his mind. These precious manuscripts were almost undecipherable. The writer had used for his purpose any chance scrap of paper—old wrapping, for example, or margin of letter—that, at the critical moment of happy conception, was nearest his hand. Sentences, words even, were often left unfinished. There was no coherence, no sequence, no arrangement. It was, however, among his friends perfectly well understood that Pascal for years had meditated a work on religion designed to demonstrate the truth of Christianity. For this he had been thinking arduously. Fortunately he had even, in a memorable conversation, sketched his project at some length to his Port Royal friends. With so much, scarcely more, in the way of clew, to guide their editorial work, these friends prepared and issued a volume of Pascal’s “Thoughts.” With the most loyal intentions, the Port-Royalists unwisely edited too much. They pieced out incompletenesses, they provided clauses or sentences of connection, they toned down expressions deemed too bold, they improved Pascal’s style! After having suffered such things from his friends, the posthumous Pascal, later, fell into the hands of an enemy. The infidel Condorcet published an edition of the “Thoughts.” Whereas the Port-Royalists had suppressed to placate the Jesuits, Condorcet suppressed to please the “philosophers.” Between those on the one side and these on the other, Pascal’s “Thoughts” had experienced what might well have killed any production of the human mind that could die. It was not till near the middle of the present century that Cousin called the attention of the world to the fact that we had not yet, but that we still might have, a true edition of Pascal’s “Thoughts.” M. Faugère took the hint, and, consulting the original manuscripts, preserved in the national library at Paris, produced, with infinite editorial labor, almost two hundred years after the thinker’s death, the first satisfactory edition of Pascal’s “Thoughts.” Since Faugère, M. Havet has also published an edition of Pascal’s works entire, by him now first adequately annotated and explained. The arrangement of the “Thoughts” varies in order, according to the varying judgment of editors. We use, for our extracts, a current translation, which we modify at our discretion by comparison of the original text as given in M. Havet’s elaborate work.
Our first extract is a passage in which the writer supposes a skeptic of the more shallow, trifling sort, to speak. This skeptic represents his own state of mind in the following strain as of soliloquy:
“I do not know who put me into the world, nor what the world is, nor what I am myself. I am in a frightful ignorance of all things. I do not know what my body is, what my senses are, what my soul is, and that very part of me which thinks what I am saying, which reflects upon every thing and upon itself, and is no better acquainted with itself than with any thing else. I see these appalling spaces of the universe which inclose me, and I find myself tethered in one corner of this immense expansion without knowing why I am stationed in this place rather than in another, or why this moment of time which is given me to live is assigned me at this point rather than at another of the whole eternity that has preceded me, and of that which is to follow me.
“I see nothing but infinities on every side, which inclose me like an atom, and like a shadow which endures but for an instant, and returns no more.
“All that I know is, that I am soon to die; but what I am most ignorant of is, that very death which I am unable to avoid.