* * *

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.

Is it not equally true that for twenty-five or thirty years now, every seeker of a remedy for the diseases that torment us has offered nothing else under the barbarous name of altruism than to sacrifice our individualism; to learn to forget oneself in others; strive to ensure that the goals of our activity and the purpose of our life are placed outside of us. Not Schopenhauer with his Buddhism, not even Comte, Stuart Mill or George Elliot with their utilitarianism; nor Tolstoy with his mysticism; and, finally, the mass of other thinkers with their socialism do not advise, preach, or recommend anything else.

However, it is precisely here that the main point of Jansenism lies, it is here, if we purge this teaching of its theological veils, that its essence and content are rooted. And it is about this, in the voice of Pascal, that his Thoughts, his Provincials, are eternally calling to us. There is no religion whose demands can free us from the constant work of becoming better and more indifferent to the world, because there are no requirements, no skills, no absolution of sins, no communion that can replace our own efforts. It is an effort that we must make against ourselves. As for this final life, although in it we strive to make our name outlive us by a number of years, or to sacrifice our happiness for the sake of future generations, or to "finally achieve the salvation of the soul," it is still worthy of being lived only if it sets before itself a goal other than itself. On the day when these ideas will triumph over the sophisms that have long obscured them, and, contrary to the formal rule of conduct, will once again become, at least for men, the reflection of truth, on that day, I say, Pascal will be victorious. Battle will change its character, fortune will change its camp, to which it favors. I dare not hope that such a day is near, but it will come, we are all sure of it. And if we are sure of this, there will never be written in French more eloquent denunciations than the Provincials, and a more beautiful book than the mutilated fragments of the Thoughts. Nor will there be a greater writer who should be read more assiduously, loved more ardently, and revered more deeply than Pascal.

F. Brunetière (1891)

Provincialia

Letter One

Of the debate at the Sorbonne, and of the proximate faculty which the Moyainists had recourse to in order to obtain censorship on the Arnaud