ART. III. THE MIND OF PASCAL.

'C'étoit un ramasseur de coquilles.'--Nicole.

1. Blaise Pascal. Euvres. (Les grands écrivains de la France.) 1me série. 3 volumes. Jusqu'au Mémorial de 1654. Par MM. LÉON BRUNSCHVICG et P. BOUTROUX. 2me série, en préparation. 3me série. 3me série. 3 volumes. Les Pensées. Par M. L. BRUNSCHVICG.

2. Pascal et son Temps. Par FORTUNAT STROWSKI. 3 volumes. 3. Pascal. By VISCOUNT ST. CYRES.

4. Pascal inédit. Par M. ERNEST Jovy. 2 volumes.

5. Discours sur les Passions, etc. Avec commentaire. Par M. EMILE FAGUET, de l'Académie Française.

6. Les derniers jours de Blaise Pascal.

Par AUGUSTIN GAZIER.

7. Pascal. Sa vie religieuse, etc. Par H. PETITOT.

8. L'Angoisse de Pascal. Par MAURICE BARRÈS, de l'Académie Française.

9. La Maladie de Pascal. Par le Docteur P. JUST-NAVARRE.

THE

still unfinished edition of the works of Pascal by MM. Brunschvicg and Boutroux, the extraordinarily living biography by M. Fortunat Strowski, and in a less degree the crowd of witnesses that cease not to give evidence as to his life and writings, enable us to know Pascal more intimately, more minutely, than almost any other man of equal genius. His letters and the letters that were written about him by his friends, enemies and family; his published works, his private notes and memoranda; the reminiscences of his conversation, as taken down by Nicole and Fontaine; souvenirs of his lecture at Port Royal, anecdotes, memoirs of contemporaries, constitute a vast mass of material, from which it would be interesting to disengage a notion as to the nature of genius and particularly of his genius, for, as M. Brunschvicg remarks, the study of the individual, Blaise Pascal, has too often been subordinated to the consideration of general questions.

Physicist, pragmatist, artist in prose, inventor, mathematician, man of the world and saint-Pascal was all these things, but not in a continuous progression, nor were they all blended into a perfect type, like the faces in a

composite photograph. No; let us imagine rather a number of Pascals, each distinct, like the rays of a revolving lighthouse-mathematician, natural philosopher, fine gentleman, ascetic, revivalist, man of letters, inventor-succeeding and supplanting each other on the screen of his being, recurrent personalities, appearing and disappearing.

More disconcerting still, sometimes there comes out an inversion-the element appears on the wrong side, as when we turn over a piece of beaten metal work; where there was a hollow, behold a boss, and the high relief is sunk into a depression. The Pascal, honnête homme,' lecturing to duchesses, who liked good horses to his coach, plenty of money and everything handsome about him, is the antagonist of the ascetic Pascal who would have no hangings in his bedroom, carried his own tray to and from the kitchen, and looked on brushes and brooms as useless articles of luxury.

In highly organised natures the psychical elements are sometimes dissociated-the machinery, too delicate, too complex, is often out of gear. It is the abundance and importance of these elements that make Pascal's case unique, and his character full of apparent contradictions-so many selves, each animated by a different purpose and activity of its own. His state of mind was never, at any given moment, the sole and stable result of all his moral life: it was the image of one face in a many-figured soul. A certain precipitation, incoherence, inexactness, sometimes result from the overlapping, the brusque appearances and disappearances of the recurrent elements. To examine such a soul as this is to lose ourselves in listening to the most intricate fugue in all the counterpoint of psychology.

Pascal was in an eminent degree the son of his father and the product of his native province- Blasius Pascal, 'Patricius Arvernus,' as he signed his arithmetical machine, or (according to the freakish letters subscribed to the third Provinciale") B.P.A.F.D.E.P. Blaise Pascal, Auver'gnat, Fils de Etienne Pascal.' Certain traits of his volcanic province were so deeply imbedded in his nature that nothing-no conversion, no dissociation-could efface them; even in the latter days of his sainthood we find their trace, like fossil-shells in stone, sterilised but immortal. Underneath the superstructure of his soul there exists the latent spirit of a place where men, though kind and true and deeply passionate, are cold and harsh; where, born to hardship, they are naturally shrewd and sparing and yet the

more appreciative of all amenity; men of more imagination than sensibility, of helpful acts rather than of tender speeches. For in this land so close to the romantic Limousin and the sensuous Périgord there is no mildness of nature, no babble of green fields, none of the abundance and prettiness that come so natural, for instance, to a Fénelon. But nowhere do we find more clearly the relish and courage of a fine sincerity, and a disposition to look plainly in the face both Life and Death.

Pascal has many of the traits of the traditional mountaineer of Auvergne. All his life he was a driver of hard bargains. He had a positive imagination, a keen grasp of facts, a hatred of conventions. The same love of truth inspired his experiments in physical science and his quest of a supernatural reality. (And we remember another Auvergnat, Pierre Curie, of whom a like thing might be said.) He had not the intellectual disinterestedness of a Descartes, his science was utilitarian, always in search of a material benefit; just as his religion was not the mystic's selfless love of God, but the quest. of Salvation-the greatest benefit of all!

On this ancestral substratum (which is hidden, profound as it is stable, supporting all, but never seen)-on this most secret foundation, imagine the delicate erection of an individual soul, full of nervous grace, passionate, violent and charming, the least like the traditional rugged Auvergnat of any that we may imagine. Pascal in his youth, until say his twentieth year (from which date he was a confirmed invalid), was a sort of Prince Charming, a delightful young Archimedes, the darling of Science- parfaitement beau'; and even later portraits show a handsome noble face where there lurks an impertinent grace, just peeping through its poetic gravity—the spirit of the Provinciales' piercing the spirit that will one day prompt the 'Pensées.' For although the ultimate character of Pascal's genius was to prove a tragic spiritual grandeur, yet, almost to the end, there was a freakishness mixed up with it, a love of paradox, a delight in subterfuges and disguises, an amusement at throwing dust in the world's eyes and springing out on it in the dark, sometimes as 'Louis de Montalte,' sometimes as Amos Dettonville,' and sometimes as ' Salomon 'de Tultie.' A lonely boy, brought up between two clever, high-spirited, idolising sisters, by a father whose sole scholar he was and who allowed him no other master than himself, the young Pascal grew in grace :-subtle, charming, 'prompt to disdain, proud, and full of self-confidence. Even in later days he never quite lost that amor dominandi, that libido excellendi,