temerity. With more care than any other person, he would have smoothened the roughest turns of thought or word, he would have blunted the sharpest angles. Pascal, in a word, would have shrunk, as from the fire, from handing to us a Pascal. In the present day, we like a boldly pronounced individuality of an author's manifestation;-perhaps because we find that to be a rare thing. It was not in the character of the seventeenth century, nor in the principles of the religious school to which Pascal belonged, to permit the individuality to impress itself strongly upon writings. Both the age and the Port Royal concurred, though from very different principles, in the maxim, Christian piety annihilates the I; human politeness hides and covers it. In our day we like to peep into the inside, to see the man in the writer: egotism pleases us, and egoism does not always displease us. In the seventeenth century, readers were less inquisitive, and writers more reserved. The reigning formality of manners seemed to impose this reserve. Montaigne's talking so much about himself was the very thing in him which offended Pascal the most. La Fontaine, for instance, could not have unveiled his mind so completely as he has done, he could not have exposed his simplicity and his reveries, without putting himself, in some sort, out of the pale of the law of letters. I conclude then, that, whether the Thoughts had been published by Pascal's friends or by himself, it would have been impossible for them to have preserved that characteristic manner which has ever had so great a share in the liveliness of the impression which they make, and the kind of popularity which they have acquired. I leave this consideration to the judgment of my reader but I will advance another which will perhaps touch more closely; if we had not gotten the Thoughts as we actually have them, it is probable that we should never have gotten them at all. : 'No man, after Pascal's death, would have published his Thoughts without alteration. The text might have been less deeply clipped and shaped ;—and it might have been more so. It has run more risks than we think of. The worst of all, but the most probable, was that it would never have appeared. Given to the world as it was, it could not at the very first, but have a very bold aspect; and we much doubt whether some pages would have been printed, if the editors had sufficiently guaged the depth of impression which they were likely to make upon certain minds. The only person likely to have dared, whether from moral courage or natural fondness, to insist upon an unadulterated publication, was Madame Perier' [his only surviving sister], and she would have roused against herself all the ardent minds as well as all the prudent. Unless considerable alterations had been resolved upon, Pascal would have remained buried in his manuscripts; or else, a very long time would have elapsed before he would have been fetched back, and such a long oblivion would easily have glided into an everlasting suppression. Strange then as it may appear, one is tempted to thank the editors rather than to blame them. It is incomparably better to have Pascal, though in their form, than not to have him at all. 'However, we may ask, with whom would Pascal himself have been the more satisfied? Wth the old editors, or the new one? I think, with neither the one nor the other; but much less with Mr. Faugère, than with the Duke de Roannez * and M. de Brienne,' [partly the original editors, but the chief were Peter Nicole, and Antony Arnauld.] Nevertheless, our highest obligations are to Mr. Faugère. After the long succession of imperfect editions, after the lapse of close upon two centuries, and, more than all, after the inferences which some persons have professed to draw from their access to the original manuscripts, such a work as this had become indispensable. Perhaps Pascal himself would have admitted this; but that does not imply that he would have been pleased with it. It is much the same with the first heavings and turnings of an author, as with the privacies of his life, which ought to be sacredly intrenched; or, as with his correspondence, the most inviolable of all. His moral dwelling-house has been invaded, his seal has been broken; and, though such violations may find their excuse in even the benefit which they confer upon those who are subjected to them, still they are violations. Pascal would have felt such an act most acutely. It has often been said, that no man could bring himself to confide to his most intimate friend, all the thoughts that dart through his mind. Who would avow to another what he is afraid of avowing even to himself? Yet to this Mr. Faugère has compelled Pascal; and the confident thus forced upon him is just-the world. You may tell me that Pascal had not to blush for his Thoughts: they were surely not bad thoughts. But, who would like to be taken in the very act of hesitating, and groping in the deep closets of his mind? Who would not find it disagreeable to see, early in a morning, his room, as yet in disorder, entered by, I will not say a stranger, but a familiar friend? Pray, why could you not wait a few minutes? One hour later, and you would have found me risen, dressed, all my things in their places, and my room in order. It is rather too uncomfortable * Commonly spelt Roannes, and so Mr. Vinet writes it; but we follow Mr. Faugère. to be thus taken when just getting out of bed, or in the necessary embarrassment of an early hour. But much more so it is, to be compelled to lay before the public the dots and strokes of a work just beginning to be formed, and which, when completed, is intended for that public which now is made a forestaller. From this concealed laboratory has come forth, or is to come forth, a composition smooth, sustained, flowing, such as befits a man in whom thoughts and expression spring up together, as the water of a fountain at one jet. The public cannot enter into the idea of what this deep-seated labour costs; it is completely ignorant of the process; it sees, or knows, or perhaps even conjectures, nothing. Here, then, this very public is bursting into the author's laboratory, counting and handling his tools, finding out all the combinations of his apparatus, and the dexterous manipulation whose effect he had fondly imagined would appear an inspiration. If the public like this, it is very well on its part; but, for the author, how does he feel? Can he like it? Oh, but Pascal was far above the puerilities of (mauvaise honte) false shame. Very true; I grant it: but there is another thing, more serious still. In these unsewed tatters which you are handing to us, Pascal is not a writing man, but a THINKING man; rather may we say, a man seeking for his thoughts. Beware of a serious mistake. Many of his affirmations are interrogations disguised. Instead of saying, Is the matter so? he often says, It is. He lays down, in absolute terms, what, in his view, is true in only a relative sense. Sometimes even the person that addresses you is not he, but a third, perhaps his adversary. A man must be utterly devoid of experience in literary composition, not to admit at once and before hand all this. THINKING is by turns affirming and doubting, questioning and answering. We scarcely think without the help of words, which serve as chemical agents, decomposing and recomposing thought. Undoubtedly, a man need not pronounce those words, nor write them; but it is better to use those helps. Many persons cannot meditate without a pen in hand; they think not, except they write. That was not the case with Pascal; but it is the fact that a great part of this collection of his Thoughts spread open before us, not the result of his thinking, which a book would do, but the very inward working itself of that thinking; I might almost say, the brewing of his mind. In many passages, the idea is not more definite than the form of its expression. Now, if our great thinker and writer could see that he was thus surrendered to the public gaze, would he not look upon himself as betrayed? And, would he not really be so, up to a certain point? Let the grave and judicious editor of the Thoughts pardon me for this expression; the meaning of which, however, he cannot mistake. His work is strictly accordant to the laws of honour, so far as they could be extended. After what I have said of the involuntary impression which (on the supposition) would certainly have been made upon the author of the Thoughts, I do maintain that he, when he duly considered the case, and took into his account the time and the circumstances, even he would acknowledge that Mr. Faugère had done HIм a service as well as us. 'It will never be said again, that the first editors left the true Pascal, that is, as some have said, the sceptical and hopeless, lurking at the bottom of the original text. That text we now have in its integrity. Mr. Faugère has carried his scrupulosity farther, if it be possible, than they did their liberties. He has given us even insulated words, which yield no meaning to any one: and when even a single word was illegible, he has marked the place. Now, better than ever, you can judge whether Pascal had within him good reasons for being a Christian; yes, now better than ever, you will be convinced that he WAS a Christian. Indeed, he does not become a Christian as the generality of men do. He, if not the first, yet the first in a clear and explicit manner, has summoned, to sit in judgment upon the great question of the truth of Christianity, the moral faculties, which had too generally been deposed, out of compliment to the intellectual. He has brought the decision of the great question to the entire man. From the depths of our nature, he has called up witnesses who had never before been brought to the bar. IIe has made good his assertion, that their testimony, neglected as it had been, is completely sufficient for every man's personal conviction; and that, for a definitive conclusion, there is no true knowledge, no thorough and effectual conviction, for those who listen not to these internal witnesses. By their evidence, he has reduced to their proper value, not only the objections of the adversaries to his faith, but not a few prejudices, not a few beggings of the question which religion may perhaps, after other proof, erect into certainty, but which cannot await to give certainty to religion. All this was shewn in the first and subsequent editions of the Thoughts, though, we must acknowledge, much disfigured: but the present publication brings out many new sides on which to contemplate the character of Pascal as a defender of revelation. And, indeed, this is all. It is not another Pascal; not a new creation, not even a modification; and be it especially observed that, of his religious character, it gives no different idea from that which we before had, except that here he appears surrounded with a purer and brighter light. 'Yet this circumstance, and the very great number of entirely new materials which Mr. Faugère has brought to light, are not, if we penetrate to the bottom of the subject, the only advantages of this FAITHFUL edition. Whoever reads the new Pascal will be struck with the strongly marked individuality which belonged to the religion of that great man. A publication prepared by himself, and of course in concert with his friendswhat one might call the official edition, the authorized bookwould have greatly attenuated that character, and thus have lessened the peculiar excellence of the work. After all, Pascal's first editors respected him dead, to much better effect than they could have managed him living. They would have required of him more sacrifices than they allowed themselves to make of alterations. Death has been the seal and guardian of the author's religious individuality. That he is a Roman catholic and a Jansenist every one knows: but he is both the one and the other in his own way; and he is not either, at all times, up to the point which his friends would probably have desired. At one time he makes use of technical terms, and then he throws them aside. His system of divinity is his own, even when it is conceived in the utmost precision of terms. It is not a doctor in divinity that speaks: it is a man who breathes the free air of the world; and, better still, it is a man. A long time it had been, as I think, that religion had possessed no [apologistes] defenders by direct authorship, besides titled doctors*. An apologist of this new kind was wanting; for it is hardly to be expected that a doctor be turned entirely back again into a man. Pascal, in the old editions, but above all in the new, is such; the individual and independent man, more than he was himself aware of, more than he would have desired. And perhaps it would not be very difficult to distinguish the portions in which he is the Christian of his church and party, and those in which he is his own kind of Christian. "The method employed by Pascal in the Thoughts, has a bearing which himself, clear-sighted and far-seeing as he was, did not perhaps perceive. We will try to make ourselves understood by moving back a few steps. In religion, upon all systems, a place must be found somewhere for the principle of examination. At the least and lowest, a man must examine, to know whether he may believe without examining. The Roman catholic examines, as well as the protestant: he examines the grounds of the authority to which his church lays claim. Till he arrives at a full conviction of that authority, he proceeds as a protestant-he is a protestant. The examination which he has to make, embraces a large number of very great questions. It would be difficult to say what questions are not here implied. The whole space that lies between the *Had Mr. Vinet forgotten, when he wrote this, the noble Mornay du Plessis? |