Des Pensées de Pascal. Rapport à L'Académie Française sur la nécessité d'une nouvelle édition de cet ouvrage. Par M. V. COUSIN. 8vo. Paris: 1843.

2. Pensées, Fragments, et Letters de Blaise Pascal: publiés pour la première fois conformément aux manuscrits originaux, en grande partie inédits. Par M. PROSPER FAUGERE. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris: 1844.

So much has been written of late years respecting Pascal, and so much that is worth reading, that we do not know that we should have been induced to make him the subject of present criticism, had it not been for the appearance of the above remarkable volumes of M. Faugère.

will be sufficient briefly to advert to the principal facts of this great man's history, and the dates of their occurrence.

He was born at Clermont, in Auvergne, in the year 1623, and died in the year 1662, at the early age of thirty-nine. When we think of the achievements which It seems strange to say, that the most he crowded into that brief space, and which popular work of an author who has been have made his name famous to all generadead two hundred years, and who has ob- tions, we may well exclaim with Corneille, tained a world-wide reputation-a work" A peine a-t-il vécu, quel nom il a laissé !" which has passed through numberless editions, and been translated into most European languages-has never been published in an authentic form till now. Yet this is strictly true of the Pensées de Pascal.

It is well known that Pascal exhibited from the earliest childhood the most precocious proofs of inventive genius, especially in the department of mathematics. Having, if we may believe the universally reIt is not possible to convey to the reader ceived tradition, been willingly kept in a just idea of the merits of this improved ignorance of Geometry, lest his propensity edition, or the circumstances which led to in that direction should interfere with the it, without relating some of the more im- prosecution of other branches of knowledge, portant incidents of Pascal's life. A for- his self-prompted genius discovered for mal biography, however, it cannot be neces- itself the elementary truths of the forbidsary to give; for who has not read some den science. At twelve years of age, he account of the life of Blaise Pascal? It was surprised by his father in the act of VOL. X. No. IV.

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demonstrating, on the pavement of an old of the age, and partly from the solicitation hall, where he used to play, and by means of his friend the Duke de Roannes, he conof a rude diagram, traced by a piece of cealed for a time the discoveries at which coal, a proposition which corresponded to he had arrived, and offered the problems the thirty-second of the First Book of for solution to all the mathematicians of Euclid. At the age of sixteen, he com- Europe, with a first and second prize to posed a little tractate on the Conic Sections, successful candidates. If no solution were which provoked the mingled incredulity offered in three months, Pascal promised to and admiration of Descartes. At nineteen, furnish his own. Several were forwarded, he invented his celebrated Arithmetical but as none, in the estimation of the judges, Machine; and at the age of six-and-twenty, completely fulfilled the conditions of the he had composed the greater part of his challenge, Pascal redeemed his pledge by mathematical works, and made those bril- publishing his own, under the name of liant experiments in Hydrostatics and Amos Dettonville,-an anagram of Louis Pneumatics which have associated his name de Montalte, the name under which the with those of Torricelli and Boyle, and " Provincial Letters" had appeared. This ranked him amongst the first philosophers was in 1658-9, when he was thirty-six of his age. Yet, strange to say, he now years of age.

suddenly renounced the splendid career to With this brief exception, Pascal may be which his genius so unequivocally invited said to have practically abandoned science him, and gave himself up to totally differ- from the age of twenty-six. Yet he did not ent studies. This was principally attribut- at once become a religious recluse. For some able to that strong religious impulse which years he lived a cheerful, and even gay, though was imparted to his mind at this period- never a dissipated life, in Paris, in the centre rendered deeper by early experience in the of literary and polite society, loved and adschool of affliction. From the age of eigh-mired by a wide circle of friends, and teen, he was a perpetual sufferer. In 1647, especially by his patron, the Duke de Rowhen only in his twenty-fourth year, he annes. To the accomplished sister of this was attacked by paralysis. His ill health nobleman, M. Faugère conjectures (as we was mainly, if not wholly, occasioned by think plausibly) that Pascal was secretly his devotion to study; and of him it is attached, but, from timidity and humility, literally true, that his mind consumed bis "never told his love." Perhaps, in part, body. from the melancholy which this hopeless So complete was his abandonment of attachment inspired, but certainly much science, that he never returned to it but on more in consequence of the deeper religious one memoriable occasion, and then only convictions, produced by a memorable for a short interval. We allude, of course, escape from an appalling death, in 1654, to the remarkable problems which he solved his indifference to the world increased; respecting the curve called the Cycloid. and he at length sought for solitude at The accounts which have been transmitted Port Royal, already endeared to him by to us by his sister, of the manner in which the residence there of his sister Jacqueline. these investigations were suggested and Here it is well known he produced his completed accounts which are authenti- immortal "Provincial Letters ;" and, when cated by a letter of his own to Fermat-death cut short his brief career, was medistrongly impress us with the vigor and bril- tating an extensive work on the fundamenliancy of his genius. We are assured that, tal truths of religion,-especially on the after long abandonment of mathematics, existence of God and the evidences of Chrishis attention was directed to this subject tianity, for the completion of which he by a casual train of thought suggested in would have required ten "years of health one of the many nights which pain made and leisure.” An outline of the work had sleepless. The thoughts thus suddenly been sometimes (and on one occasion someoriginated, his inventive mind rapidly pur- what fully) imparted in conversation to his sued to all the brilliant results in which friends, but no part of it was ever comthey terminated; and in the brief space of pleted. Nothing was found after his death eight days the investigations were complet- but detached Thoughts" (interspersed ed. Partly in compliance with the fashion with some on other subjects) on the princi

• His sister, Madame Perier, has left an interesting and circumstantial account of this matter, in the life of her brother.

pal topics appropriated to such a work. They were the stones of which the building was to have consisted, many of them unhewn, and some few such as the builder,

had he lived, would no doubt have laid meditated. It is wonderful that a being, aside. The form in which the Thoughts such as he, should achieve so much; it is were put together comported but two well humiliating that he must depend on such with their fragmentary character. It ap- casualities for success. On the precarious pears that he did not even use a Common- control which even the greatest men have place Book; but when, after a profound over their own minds, Pascal himself strikmeditation, any thought struck him as ingly says,-" The mind of this sovereign worth recording, he hastily noted it on any of the world is not so independent as not to scrap of paper that came to hand, often on be discomposed by the first tintamarre that the backs of old letters; these he strung may be made around him. It does not need together on a file, or tied up in bundles, the roar of artillery to hinder him from and left them till better health and un- thinking; the creaking of a vane or a pultroubled leisure should permit him to evoke ley will answer the purpose. Be not sura new creation out of this chaos. It is a prised that he reasons ill just now; a fly wonder, therefore, that the Pensées of is buzzing in his ears-it is amply sufficient Pascal have come down to us at all. Never, to render him incapable of sound deliberasurely, was so precious a freight committed tion. If you wish him to discover truth, be to so crazy a bark. The Sybil herself was pleased to chase away the insect who holds not more careless about those leaves on his reason in check, and troubles that mighty which she inscribed her prophetic truths, intellect which governs cities and kingthan was Pascal about those which con- doms! Le plaisant dieu que voila! tained the results of his meditations. Of ridicolosissimo eroe !"'* these results, however, we are in part de- On the imperfect sentences and halffrauded, by something far worse than either written words, which are now printed in the the fragility of the materials on which they volumes of M. Faugère, we look with someare inscribed, or their utter want of arrange- thing like the feelings with which we pore ment. Many of the "Thoughts" are them- on some half-defaced inscription on an anselves only half developed; others, as given cient monument-with a strange commixus in the literal copy of M. Faugère, break ture of curiosity and veneration; and, off in the middle of a sentence, even of a whilst we wonder what the unfinished senword. Some casual interruption-frequent-tences may mean, we mourn over the malily, no doubt, some paroxysm of pain, to which the great author, in his latter years, was incessantly subject-broke the thread of thought, and left the web imperfect

for ever.

cious accident which, has perhaps, converted what might have been an aphorism of profoundest importance into a series of unmeaning cyphers. One of the last things, assuredly, which we should think of doing It is humiliating to think of the casual- with such fragments, would be to attempt ties which, possibly in many cases, have to alter them in any way; least of all, to robbed posterity of some of the most pre- supplement them, and to divine and pubcious fruits of the meditations of the wise; lish Pascal's meaning. There have been perhaps arrested trains of thought which learned men, who has given us supplements would have expanded into brilliant theo-to the lost pieces of some ancient historians; ries or grand discoveries ;-trains which, erudite Freinsheimiuses, who hand us a when the genial moment of inspiration has passed, it has been found impossible to recall; or which, if recalled up to the point at which they were broken off, terminate only in a wall of rock, in which the mountain path, which had been before so clearly seen, exists no longer. It is humiliating to think that a fit of the toothache, or a twinge of the gout, might have thus arrested-no more to return-the opening germ of conjecture, which led on to the discovery of the Differential Calculus, or the Theory of Gravitation. The condition of man, in this respect, affords, indeed, one striking proof of that combined " greatness and misery" of his nature, on which Pascal so profoundly

huge bale of indifferent Latin, and beg us only to think it Livy's lost Decades. But what man would venture to supplement Pascal? Only such, it may be supposed, as would feel no scruple in scouring an antique medal, or a worthy successor of those Monks who obliterated manuscript pieces of Cicero, that they might inscribe them with some edifying legend.

Alas! more noted people than these were scarcely more scrupulous in the case of Pascal. His friends decided that the fragments which he had left behind him, im

Faugère, tom. ii., p. 54. It may proper to observe, that all our citations from the Pensées are from this new and solely authentic edition.