But if it now turns out that this decomposition and alteration of the Gospel was the work of the Jesuits, then to whom else but the last should Pascal have addressed his reproaches? The ufosa of effective grace and purity of morality did not come from the private opinions or views of Caramuzle or Diana, taken separately. The source of this danger was Molinism, Probabilism, and, in the eyes of Pascal as well as in the eyes of the author Augustine, the open and obvious support which these teachings meet with among the theologians of the Society of Jesus. Thus the situation in which Pascal is reproached for attacks directed chiefly against the Jesuits (as if the Jesuits alone were to blame for everything) is in fact reminiscent of the situation in which the object of reproach was that which he had seen from the outset and freed from the burden of the empty quibbles and subterfuges engendered by someone's clever policy in order to confuse him, the real and only important question. the question of what Christian virtue consists of and what it consists of. In fact, it was complained that he got the situation right and declared, "No! The path of salvation is not wide! [39] No! Your merits are not enough to justify yourself before God! No! You no longer have the right to reconcile the gospel and the light (monde), just as you have no right to reconcile reason and faith!" One should only try to look down on things like him. A few incorrect or truncated quotations, if any, are not at all sufficient to obtain a weapon against him in a question which touches almost the whole content of religion and the most sublime subjects of morality. And if we are to dot the i's, I do not understand how the Jesuits, complaining that it was against them that he directed the mighty pressure of his dialectics and eloquence, can forget that they would not have been what they had become in the history of the Church if, in particular, they had not been struck by such a dangerous opponent.

Does this show that we are always against the Jesuits, always on the side of Pascal? Of course not. The Jesuits may, I think, justifiably reproach the author of the Provincials, for example, with his denial of belonging to Port-Royal, and of any connection whatsoever with the Jansenisgians, which is characteristic of the whole controversy. It must be admitted that it is impossible to reread the beginning of the seventeenth Letter without some awkwardness: "So you seriously, my father, recognize me as a heretic... So I ask what evidence you have... First, you assume that "the author of the Letters is a member of Port-Royal." Then you say that "Port-Royal is declared heretical": from this you conclude that "the author of the Letters is recognized as a heretic." Consequently, my father, the whole weight of this accusation does not fall on me, but on Port-Royal, and you bring it against me only because you suppose that I am from Port-Royal. It will not be difficult for me to justify myself, for it is enough to say that I am not from Port-Royal and to point to my Letters, where I said that 'I am alone' and plainly that 'I am not from Port-Royal'. When Voltaire thus turns his own weapons against his opponents, this act can only be regarded as a clever manoeuvre. But I would never have used the same excuse to smooth over the ambiguity to which Pascal had the error of resorting—after all, he himself had made us more scrupulous of him.

Nor am I more impressed by the acquittal of the Bishop of Ypres at the beginning of the sixteenth Letter by the author of the Provincials from the accusations of dishonesty reasonably addressed to him. It is the money of the College of Louvain, part of which Jansenius thought fit to use for the maintenance of M. de Barcos, the nephew of his personal friend Saint-Cyran. But such are the pitfalls of polemics. According to its rules, nothing should go unanswered; all the objections of opponents should be destroyed one by one; it is necessary to divide, to distinguish, to bring to subtleties. And there is absolutely nothing wrong in this, for the enemy would have triumphed too loudly in view of our silence, but there is no more truth in it. Even the best of us are still people. And if, of course, Jansenius had done the right thing to find funds for M. Barcot from sources other than the Louvain College, Pascal would have done better either by keeping silent about the event or, if it has been said, by giving it a proper appraisal.

It is equally indisputable that the Jesuits must be admitted to be right more than once. In particular, it is unacceptable what Pascal speaks of the duel in the thirteenth and seventh letters,[42] nor the strange confusion he makes in the fourth letter,[43] between the "sin of ignorance" and the sin of habit. His dialectics here looks, so to speak, infected with the dialectics of his opponents. Read carefully the beginning of the thirteenth Letter[44]. Is it not true that under the general term "homicide" Pascal deliberately confused three aspects that are considered in both morality and jurisprudence as fairly independent cases: assassinat, deprivation of life (meurtre), and duel? Yes, of course, in Pascal's broadcast, Escobar and Lessius do teach that "the opinion that one can kill for a slap in the face is probably in speculation." The second of the authors just mentioned states verbatim that "he who receives a slap in the face is considered dishonored until he kills the one who inflicted it." However, what neither one nor the other teaches is the permissibility of "hired killing" for a slap in the face – I mean situations when one avenges oneself treacherously, from an ambush or unexpectedly. It seems to Pascal that this is what the above-mentioned casuists are talking about. In neither the thirteenth nor the seventh Letter do we really find a single word about the equal degree of risk or equal chance implied by the very definition of a duel, which allows you to take life only when you risk yourself. But what Lessius and Escobar allow, or rather excuse, justify from sin, in certain cases, is not to be understood simply as the taking of life, or even as a veshktta, but as a duel, a duel, a fair fight (guerre) in the end. And it is permissible to think that by defending the Non ocddes of the Decalogue against the above-mentioned authors, and by not referring here to any distinctions or divisions, Pascal goes beyond the real question and deviates from it.

Similarly, Pascal is mistaken in the Fourth Letter[47] when he reproaches Fr. Boni for proclaiming the following principle; "In order to commit a sin and be guilty before God, you must realize that you are going to commit an unworthy act, or at least doubt..." Whether it is a question of fasting, of which so much is said in the fifth letter, or of hearing the mass, how can I transgress the commandments of the church if I do not know them at all? Pascal here very cleverly attacks those of our sins which are vices or crimes, which are considered as such both in China and in Rome, and will be considered as such at all times, such as theft or debauchery. But does he not forget that every religion condemns other sins, so to speak, artificially created, such as not celebrating the Sabbath or engaging in any activity on Sunday, as well as heresy and sacrilege? Moreover, it is these sins that are condemned more severely than others. In order to make them, it is necessary, at least, to know about their existence. Excusatur a crimine qut in die jejunii cames comedit, nihil cogitans de jejunio[49] — here Escobar is right. Let us go further: he is right even when he makes a decision that allows him to drink wine and even hypokrass without breaking the fast. Because. After all, the rule that prescribes fasting is established by the Church and, therefore, is entirely within the Church's competence only to determine what fasting consists of and what can be "drunk" or "eaten" without violating it.

However, here comes the last reproach that we will venture to address to Pascal. If Escobar's morality is certainly too lenient, Pascal's own morality is too harsh and intolerant. It is not that the Provincials require of man an effort beyond our capacity, but the nature of these demands and their fulfillment still do not agree well with what I call the course of life. In order to bind ourselves, as Pascal demands, "exclusively and unchangeably" to God, we would have to devote ourselves, like our author, to hermitage, retiring for a long time to Port-Royal. We would not have any duties that would keep us in the company of other people, we should not be a citizen, nor a husband, nor a father, we would be forbidden to have a profession, to do business. That is, in the end, we should enjoy some benefits that are real for some of us only if other people accept the lack of such benefits in themselves. Let us call a spade a spade: strict in terms of its own principles, Pascal's morality in practical application turns out to be ascetic. Undoubtedly, it is precisely this circumstance that makes it beautiful, elevates it above the morality of casuists, and even the very name of the latter seems to be forever discredited by Pascal. But this same circumstance makes it so difficult to implement in practice. If the Jesuits (or casuists in general) excessively expanded the ways of salvation, then one may wonder whether Pascal does not unjustifiably narrow these paths, whether he does not "increase the weight of the Gospel" too much, wishing to enslave the conscience of Christians with too unjustified strictness. One can ask oneself such a question, if only because Bossuet was thinking and speaking about the same thing.

Be that as it may, however, it is precisely this asceticism that completes the proof, if it is still necessary, of Pascal's passionate sincerity. In the solution of the great question, which kept the minds of that time in anxiety and expectation, he took an extreme position. Just as it was impossible for the author of the Thoughts to reconcile faith and reason <cf. p. 515 of the present day). t. — OH>, so the author Provgaschiay did not see any prospects for at least some reconciliation of casuistry and morality. You have to choose. On the one hand, the law of Christ, on the other, the law of nature; on the one hand, the righteous, on the other, the libertines, the indifferent, the atheists; Jansenism or Cartesianism (we say "rationalism" today); religion or secular society. But what Pascal really does not allow is the adaptation of these oppositions to each other. Read the passage entitled A Comparison of the First Christians with the Present Ones (apparently it was written a year or two earlier than the Provincials): "<... > the first Christians had to leave the world in order to be received into the church, whereas in our age they enter the church at the same time as they enter the world. Thanks to this order, an essential distinction was made between the world and the church; They were considered opposites, two irreconcilable enemies who constantly pursued each other <... > People <... > rejected the laws of one for the sake of the laws of another; they put off thoughts befitting one in order to clothe themselves with thoughts corresponding to another <... > in former times there was a significant difference between the Church and the world <... > Approach the sacraments and enjoy the pleasures of this world <... >Now it is a most common phenomenon that the Christian heart is full of secular vices," etc. If the Jesuits were for Pascal, as for every Jansenist, the authors of the described "confusion of the Church with the world," could there really be anything more natural for him than the desire to direct his main efforts against these Fathers? If Pascal's aim was to separate the Church and the world, who does not understand that there was no better and more legitimate means for its realization than the one to which he resorted? And, if we have understood Pascal well, is it not obvious that the criticism of the accuracy of some of the quotations he has quoted, which has lasted for two and a half centuries, has brought him neither benefit nor loss? Now it remains for me only to see whether he has achieved his goal and what were the historical consequences of the Provincials.

* * *

Sainte-Beuve, in his Port-Royal, tried to summarize them briefly: "By turning to the light, and in a secular manner," he said, "Pascal achieved the result he least sought: he accelerated the process of the formation of the morality of decent people." And ever since Sainte-Beuve had uttered these words, they had been repeated in one way or another. The Jesuits themselves, or the enemies of Jansenism in general, who had not found any reason for reproach up to that moment, eagerly seized upon the idea planted. As a great crime, they now ascribed to Pascal what the latter, they said, had paved the way for unbelief: "Pascal's misfortune is something more than a mere lack of sincerity and impartiality, he has killed the very strict morality for which he fought; it has established a dissolute morality and contributed to the spread of that spirit of unbelief, the breath of which fills the ruins of the Church and society." That is how one of our bishops speaks. Isn't this turn of events admirable? Did you not think that the worst misfortune for a Christian would be to overthrow the power of truth "in the temple of his heart"? It seems that in this case this is happening in the most direct way. However, M. Ernest Ave, one of those who nevertheless spoke well of Pascal, in his assessment of the consequences generated by the Provincials, agrees with the Jesuits: "Pascal's mind began a destructive work, which was continued in the eighteenth and present centuries, a work that was carried on externally with the help of eloquence, from the inside with the help of philosophy. The destructive influence of his ideas continued after his death, going far beyond the framework of these ideas themselves. Speeches from the tribunes, pamphlets, the explosive power of the daily press — all this comes from the Provincials... Whenever the spirit of modernity prepares for a battle, it is in them that it finds its weapon." In this way, forgetting all the precautions, mitigations, or restraints by which Sainte-Beuve, a man of the world, who has always avoided such ill-conceived things in the most fortunate manner, has had the prudence to surround his conclusions, or neglecting the precautions mentioned, and have transformed (I do not quite understand why) the Provincials in our day into a vague analogy of Tartuffe, and of their author into a sort of predecessor of Voltaire.

I cannot agree with this opinion. It cannot be said that for more than two centuries after its appearance, the Provincialia did not give rise to any consequences not foreseen by Pascal. Unfortunately, there is nothing more typical in history. A man's gaze never extends too far, and his understanding of his own work is too often unreliable and vague. And there is no doubt that in our time, deviated from their true aim in favor of certain party interests, the Provincials, only by virtue of their slogan of fighting the Jesuits, serve the cause of combating religion and the Church. In the past, however, a man of the seventeenth or eighteenth century, as we have already said, could not have thought of such an idea. Moreover, did not Voltaire himself, judging by the surviving information of his contemporaries, consider it his duty to refute Pascal's Letters? Does not the latter prove with sufficient clarity that at that time the book in question was not considered dangerous to religion? On the other hand, it is known that, having chosen Pascal almost from the first steps of his work (1728) as an important opponent, against whom it was necessary to fight and whose authority had to be overthrown as much as possible, Voltaire did not betray such views in 1778, when, burdened with years and fame, it was to Pascal that he gave his last battle. Secondly, in order to turn the Provincials against religion, one must most diligently refrain from reading them, or at least read them without any idea of their meaning, abstrahendo a sensu Jansenistorum, as Pascal might say, et a sensu omnium atiorum theologorum? [53]. To begin with, one must lose all conception of what they contain, then ascribe features that are not inherent in them in reality, and only then find there everything that the soul desires. And, finally, regarding the notorious danger allegedly always lurking in them, according to the statements of some persons who touched only on certain topics; The answer here was given by the Church itself, stating that "the sharpest and most painful feeling of bitterness that it experienced has calmed down." Modernity, on the other hand, replies that it is unable to secure to anyone the exclusive right to deal with moral and philosophical questions. I do not speak of those who would like Pascal to resent gently, or, so to speak, silently; that he would moderate his outbursts of anger and irony; and that he should restrain them, or, if necessary, shut them up within the walls of Porroyal, for I seriously fear that the possessors of such judgments do not mock us, Pascal, and religion in equal measure.

However, the less subtle and more 1rustic truth is that Pascal was defeated in the struggle he started. Remember once again the definition given by Sainte-Beuve of the morality of decent people. "This is not a virtue, but a complex of habits, good manners, courteous actions, which usually have a more or less common basis, more or less generous natural inclinations... It does not use human kindness or malice as a common basis. When some great crisis comes, when some great rogue, some dangerous and successful criminal gains power over society in order to mold it as he pleases, this morality of decent people becomes inadequate.

She shows enviable "flexibility and adapts, finding a thousand reasons to embellish her greed and baseness. There have already been examples of this." Is there not a feeling that the very essence of casuistry is defined in these words? And the "malleability," the "adaptations," the compromises—were they not the reasons for Pascal's indignation against the Moral Theologies of Escobar and Dicastillo? "I reproach you not because you are afraid of judges," he said, "but because you are afraid only of judges <... > you are insolent against God and timid before men"[54]. If there is a morality of decent men which in fact conforms to its principles, it is surely the morality of the Jesuits, by which the Fathers of the Society of Jesus substituted with pleasant ease the severity of the ancient precepts. It is not enough to say that Pascal achieved the result he least sought, it must be said that his opponents defeated him.

But does not this conclusion necessarily and naturally follow from what we have called the real aim of the Provincials and Augustine? Being Christians of a type that had practically disappeared in their time, Pascal, Arno, and Jansenius tried in vain to bring Christian morality back to its original strictness. The slope was too steep, and the movement was too rapid. If they succeeded in restraining the progress of casuistry for half a century, they succeeded in interrupting or stopping the progressive development of Cartesianism for almost as long. As long as they supported their writings with the brilliant brilliance of their own personalities, and overwhelmed their opponents with the weight of their own living authority, combined with their eloquence, they caused the very passage of time to break and freeze, which may serve as a weighty and rare word of praise for both their genius and their virtues. However, when they left the world, they took their life's work with them. All the opponents whom they had forced either to silence or at least to respect raised their heads and regained their voices. All, both libertines and Jesuits, at once understood, or rather felt, that with the death of the author of the Thoughts and Provincials they had happily lost their great enemy. And then time resumed the flow. The morality of decent people, together with the indulgences it affords, has regained its natural power over the world. Religion, the existence of which had meaning only because of the conviction of man's insignificance and his deplorable impotence to achieve the good, began to glorify the goodness of nature in the person of its most famous representatives, Fénelon or, say, Maesillon. And when this new dogma was firmly established, when it became permissible to think that man, in order to be good, had only to follow the promptings of his own instincts, then there appeared philosophers who declared, that since nature is good, there is nothing more useless and degrading than to subject it to certain childish demands, reason to incomprehensible dogmas, and finally man to a law distinct from the law of nature. And if in all this I clearly see the influence of the "licentious morality" of the Jesuits and the retribution for their policy, then no analogous influence of the Provincials can be seen here. And even if the reader wants to think about it much deeper, I don't think he will see more here than we did.

The only thing that I consider it my duty to add, and which can add to the explanation of the historical fate of the Provincials, is that Pascal's defeat is not final, and the question is not closed here. What am I talking about? I note the revival of interest in this issue. For is it not true that after so many profound revolutions which our coming century has witnessed, no one today will dare to support the idea of a fundamentally good human nature, which, by virtue of its own inclinations, is capable of acquiring all virtues, capable in the end (relying only on its own strength, without a constant battle with its own instincts, without any outside help)—I am not talking about self-sacrifice or self-denial—even for a Simple charity? Rather, there are excesses in the opposite spirit, and everything around us, as it once was among the Jansenists, speaks of an agreement or intention aimed at conquering our original baseness and bringing out, even in those of our actions which we most take credit for, a certain egoistic principle which belittles and distorts the motives of these actions. There is no other way to explain the naturalism of our novelists, nor the pessimism of our poets, nor the realism of our philosophers.