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These treatises, with the exception of that on the Cycloid, were composed and printed in the year 1654, but were not published till 1668, after the death of the author.” Pascal’s discoveries as to the cycloid belong to a later period of his life, after he had long forsaken the scientific studies which engrossed him at this time, and had become an inmate of Port Royal.
There can hardly be any doubt that this was the commencement of Pascal’s hostile relations with the Jesuits. On their part, they failed not to remember in after years, and in a more serious struggle, that he was an old enemy; whilst he on his part probably drew something of the contemptuous scorn which he poured upon them from the recollection of their obstinate ignorance in matters of science.
All his noblest writings were the product of his religious experience, and he never soared so high in intellectual and literary achievement as when moving on the wings of spiritual indignation or of spiritual aspiration. The whole interest of Pascal’s life from this period is concentrated in his writings—first the ‘Provincials,’ and then the ‘Pensées,’ to which we devote separate chapters.
The famous conversation with De Saci, when he entered Port Royal, must be taken as the chief key to Pascal’s own philosophical attitude. There is nowhere in any of the Thoughts so complete an exhibition of his point of view; and all the editors who have most entered into Pascal’s spirit—Sainte-Beuve, Faugère, and Havet alike—have recognised its importance.
We have thought it right to dwell at some length on the first two, because they enter so directly into the controversy betwixt Pascal’s friends and the Sorbonne, and because they are really, in some respects, the cleverest, if not the most valuable. The third Letter, on the “Censure of M. Arnauld,” and again, the three concluding Letters, are closely connected with the first two.
Pascal’s scientific studies may be said to have begun with the remarkable incident of his youth already related, when he elaborated for himself, in a solitary chamber without books, thirty-two propositions of the first book of Euclid. But his scientific labours were in the main concentrated in the eight or ten years of his life which followed the removal of the family to Rouen.
The programme was put forth in the name of Amos Dettonville, the anagram of Pascal’s assumed name as the writer of the ‘Provincial Letters.’ Huyghens, Sluzsius, a canon of the Cathedral of Liège, and Wren, the architect of St Paul’s, sent in partial solutions of the problems—those of Wren especially attracting the interest of both Fermat and Roberval.
There may be a tendency here and there to over-analysis, and to the balancing of antitheses now on one side and now on the other; but there is the breath of true passion all through the piece, and touching, as with fire, many of its many fine utterances. Who was then, conceivably, the object of Pascal’s affections?
It was Condorcet who first applied to the paper the epithet of Pascal’s “Amulette;” and Lélut has adopted the epithet, and written a volume more or less relating to it.
A second declaration was obtained from the priest, and the bishop refused to go further. Pascal’s health about this period appears to have undergone a change for the worse. He suffered from excessive headache and great internal heat and pain. A singular characteristic of his malady was his inability to swallow water unless it was heated, and even then only drop by drop.
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