Pascals Pensees | Page 2

to
keep a coach and horses--six horses is the number at one time attributed
to his carriage. Though he had no legal power to prevent his sister from
disposing of her property as she elected, the amiable Jacqueline shrank
from doing so without her brother's willing approval. The Mother
Superior, Mère Angélique--herself an eminent personage in the history

of this religious movement--finally persuaded the young novice to enter
the order without the satisfaction of bringing her patrimony with her;
but Jacqueline remained so distressed by this situation that her brother
finally relented.
So far as is known, the worldly life enjoyed by Pascal during this
period can hardly be qualified as "dissipation," and certainly not as
"debauchery." Even gambling may have appealed to him chiefly as
affording a study of mathematical probabilities. He appears to have led
such a life as any cultivated intellectual man of good position and
independent means might lead and consider himself a model of probity
and virtue. Not even a love-affair is laid at his door, though he is said to
have contemplated marriage. But Jansenism, as represented by the
religious society of Port-Royal, was morally a Puritan movement
within the Church, and its standards of conduct were at least as severe
as those of any Puritanism in England or America. The period of
fashionable society, in Pascal's life, is however, of great importance in
his development. It enlarged his knowledge of men and refined his
tastes; he became a man of the world and never lost what he had learnt;
and when he turned his thoughts wholly towards religion, his worldly
knowledge was a part of his composition which is essential to the value
of his work.
Pascal's interest in society did not distract him from scientific research;
nor did this period occupy much space in what is a very short and
crowded life. Partly his natural dissatisfaction with such a life, once he
had learned all it had to teach him, partly the influence of his saintly
sister Jacqueline, partly increasing suffering as his health declined,
directed him more and more out of the world and to thoughts of
eternity. And in 1654 occurs what is called his "second conversion,"
but which might be called his conversion simply.
He made a note of his mystical experience, which he kept always about
him, and which was found, after his death, sewn into the coat which he
was wearing. The experience occurred on 23 November, 1654, and
there is no reason to doubt its genuineness unless we choose to deny all
mystical experience. Now, Pascal was not a mystic, and his works are

not to be classified amongst mystical writings; but what can only be
called mystical experience happens to many men who do not become
mystics. The work which he undertook soon after, the Lettres écrites à
un provincial, is a masterpiece of religious controversy at the opposite
pole from mysticism. We know quite well that he was at the time when
he received his illumination from God in extremely poor health; but it
is a commonplace that some forms of illness are extremely favourable,
not only to religious illumination, but to artistic and literary
composition. A piece of writing meditated, apparently without progress,
for months or years, may suddenly take shape and word; and in this
state long passages may be produced which require little or no retouch.
I have no good word to say for the cultivation of automatic writing as
the model of literary composition; I doubt whether these moments can
be cultivated by the writer; but he to whom this happens assuredly has
the sensation of being a vehicle rather than a maker. No masterpiece
can be produced whole by such means; but neither does even the higher
form of religious inspiration suffice for the religious life; even the most
exalted mystic must return to the world, and use his reason to employ
the results of his experience in daily life. You may call it communion
with the Divine, or you may call it a temporary crystallisation of the
mind. Until science can teach us to reproduce such phenomena at will,
science cannot claim to have explained them; and they can be judged
only by their fruits.
From that time until his death, Pascal was closely associated with the
society of Port-Royal which his sister Jacqueline, who predeceased him,
had joined as a religieuse; the society was then fighting for its life
against the Jesuits. Five propositions, judged by a committee of
cardinals and theologians at Rome to be heretical, were found to be put
forward in the work of Jansenius; and the society of Port-Royal, the
representative of Jansenism among devotional communities, suffered a
blow from which it never revived. It is not the place here to review the
bitter controversy