LECTURE II. PASCAL. PROVINCIAL LETTERS, AND REMARKS ON THE PASSION OF LOVE. "THERE was a man, who, at twelve years of age, with bars and hoops invented mathematics; at sixteen, wrote the most learned treatise on conic sections that had been seen for centuries; at nineteen, reduced to machinery a science which exists entirely in the mind; at twenty-three, demonstrated the phenomenon of the weight of the air, and destroyed one of the great errors of ancient physics; who, at the age when other men scarce begin to live, having run through the circle of human sciences, perceived their insufficiency, and turned his thoughts to religion. Between that time, (being then in his thirty-ninth year,) and his death, though always infirm and suffering, he established the language which Bossuet and Racine spoke; and in his writings gave specimens of the most perfect pleasantry, as well as the most profound logic; and finally, in the brief intervals of pain, resolved, by abstraction, one of the most difficult problems in geometry; and left on paper 39 thoughts which seem as much divine as human. This mighty genius was Pascal." Such is Chateaubriand's encomium on the author, who will now claim our attention; and yet he has not said all. Pascal has more fully comprehended the gospel than any one since the apostle Paul. This should not have been forgotten by the author of the Genius of Christianity. We must omit, in this brief notice of his work, those on geometry, arithmetic, and physics; and confine ourselves exclusively to Pascal, the moralist and Christian philosopher. His writings and treatises, printed or in manuscript, amounted to twenty-six. We shall only speak of two, "The Provincial Letters," and "The Thoughts." But before making acquaintance with the thinker, we must say a word of the writer. Pascal opens the seventeenth century; and to him belongs the glory of fixing the French language. We do not intend by this to say that the dictionary is completed, but that the language is so written that both contemporary authors and posterity will seek a conformity to the rules and precedents then established. Authors who fix a language, are those who determine the terms, expressions, and words, which ought to be employed; while those they do not deign to use are forgotten. Corneille and Balzac have contributed much to form the French language; but it is especially to Pascal that this honor belongs, for he was more popular than Balzac, who scarce wrote but for the fashionable world, and more pure than Corneille, who has many expressions now obsolete, while we can hardly find half a dozen such * Genius of Christianity, vol. 1st, p. 391. words in Pascal. Foreigners, then, who wish to learn the language, may read him with confidence; remembering, however, that the signification of many of the terms employed by the author of the Provincial Letters has changed since the seventeenth century. Vinet, who understands Pascal better than all others, uses this very happy expression, to show the state of the language when Pascal commenced writing. 66 France," says he, “prepared her rhetoric and forms of expression, while waiting for thoughts. This language, already beautiful, but of a cold beauty, needed, like Galatea, a Pygmalion, whose ardor should communicate life. Thought does much for language, but passion more. The author of the Provincial Letters found passion in the public; and mingling with it his own, he took his course; he aided, and received aid. The subjects in which Pascal knew how to interest his contemporaries were questions in theology, that to this day remain preeminently difficult. It was in the controversies respecting grace, predestination, and election, that he could so interest the public." These debates are so remote from us; and our minds are now so preoccupied by other subjects, that we can scarce understand the intense interest which this dispute awakened. When we remember that the seventeenth century was a religious age, we are not astonished that the controversy on grace was the great event of the time. Two powerful societies, the Jesuits and the Jansenists, at the time of this dispute, were rivals for the public favor. The order of Jesuits was founded at Paris, in 1534, by Ignatius Loyola, Knight of the Virgin, as he styled himself. To the ordinary monastic vows, Loyola and |