French Classics Part 13

The "Seventh Letter" tells the story of how Jesuit confessors were instructed to manage their penitents in a matter made immortally famous by the wit and genius of Pascal, the matter of "directing the intention." There is nothing in the "Provincial Letters" better suited than this at the same time to interest the general reader, and to display the quality of these renowned productions. (We do not scruple to change our chosen translation a little at points where it seems to us susceptible of some easy improvement.) Remember it is an imaginary Parisian gentleman who now writes to a friend of his in the country. Our extract introduces first the Jesuit father speaking:

"You know," he said, "that the ruling pa.s.sion of persons in that rank of life [the rank of gentleman] is 'the point of honor,' which is perpetually driving them into acts of violence apparently quite at variance with Christian piety; so that, in fact, they would be almost all of them excluded from our confessionals, had not our fathers relaxed a little from the strictness of religion, to accommodate themselves to the weakness of humanity. Anxious to keep on good terms, both with the gospel, by doing their duty to G.o.d, and with the men of the world, by showing charity to their neighbor, they needed all the wisdom they possessed to devise expedients for so nicely adjusting matters as to permit these gentlemen to adopt the methods usually resorted to for vindicating their honor without wounding their consciences, and thus reconcile things apparently so opposite to each other as piety and the point of honor."...

"I should certainly [so replies M. Montalte, with the most exquisite irony crouched under a cover of admiring simplicity]--I should certainly have considered the thing perfectly impracticable, if I had not known, from what I have seen of your fathers, that they are capable of doing with ease what is impossible to other men. This led me to antic.i.p.ate that they must have discovered some method for meeting the difficulty--a method which I admire, even before knowing it, and which I pray you to explain to me."

"Since that is your view of the matter," replied the monk, "I cannot refuse you. Know, then, that this marvelous principle is our grand method of _directing the intention_--the importance of which, in our moral system, is such, that I might almost venture to compare it with the doctrine of _probability_. You have had some glimpses of it in pa.s.sing, from certain maxims which I mentioned to you. For example, when I was showing you how servants might execute certain troublesome jobs with a safe conscience, did you not remark that it was simply by diverting their intention from the evil to which they were accessory, to the profit which they might reap from the transaction? Now, that is what we call _directing the intention_. You saw, too, that, were it not for a similar divergence of _the mind_, those who give money for benefices might be downright simoniacs. But I will now show you this grand method in all its glory, as it applies to the subject of homicide--a crime which it justifies in a thousand instances--in order that, from this startling result, you may form an idea of all that it is calculated to effect.

"I foresee already," said I, "that, according to this mode, every thing will be permitted: it will stick at nothing."

"You always fly from the one extreme to the other," replied the monk; "prithee, avoid that habit. For just to show you that we are far from permitting every thing, let me tell you that we never suffer such a thing as a formal intention to sin, with the sole design of sinning; and, if any person whatever should persist in having no other end but evil in the evil that he does, we break with him at once; such conduct is diabolical. This holds true, without exception of age, s.e.x, or rank. But when the person is not of such a wretched disposition as this, we try to put in practice our method of _directing the intention_, which consists in his proposing to himself, as the end of his actions, some allowable object. Not that we do not endeavor, as far as we can, to dissuade men from doing things forbidden; but, when we cannot prevent the action, we at least purify the motive, and thus correct the viciousness of the means by the goodness of the end. Such is the way in which our fathers have contrived to permit those acts of violence to which men usually resort in vindication of their honor.

They have no more to do than to turn off their intention from the desire of vengeance, which is criminal, and direct it to a desire to defend their honor, which, according to us, is quite warrantable. And in this way our doctors discharge all their duty toward G.o.d and toward man. By permitting the action, they gratify the world and by purifying the intention, they give satisfaction to the gospel. This is a secret, sir, which was entirely unknown to the ancients; the world is indebted for the discovery entirely to our doctors. You understand it now, I hope?"

"Perfectly," was my reply. "To men you grant the outward material effect of the action, and to G.o.d you give the inward and spiritual movement of the intention; and, by this equitable part.i.tion, you form an alliance between the laws of G.o.d and the laws of men. But, my dear sir, to be frank with you, I can hardly trust your premises, and I suspect that your authors will tell another tale."

"You do me injustice," rejoined the monk; "I advance nothing but what I am ready to prove, and that by such a rich array of pa.s.sages, that altogether their number, their authority, and their reasonings, will fill you with admiration. To show you, for example, the alliance which our fathers have formed between the maxims of the gospel and those of the world, by thus regulating the intention, let me refer you to Reginald. (_In Praxi._, liv. xxi., num. 62, p. 260.) [These, and all that follow, are verifiable citations from real and undisputed Jesuit authorities, not to this day repudiated by that order.] 'Private persons are forbidden to avenge themselves; for St. Paul says to the Romans (ch. 12th), "Recompense to no man evil for evil;" and Ecclesiasticus says (ch. 28th), "He that taketh vengeance shall draw on himself the vengeance of G.o.d, and his sins will not be forgotten."

Besides all that is said in the gospel about forgiving offenses, as in the 6th and 18th chapters of St. Matthew.'"

"Well, father, if after that, he [Reginald] says any thing contrary to the Scripture, it will, at least, not be from lack of scriptural knowledge. Pray, how does he conclude?"

"You shall hear," he said. "From all this it appears that a military man may demand satisfaction on the spot from the person who has injured him--not, indeed, with the intention of rendering evil for evil, but with that of preserving his honor--_non ut malum pro malo reddat, sed ut conservat honorem_. See you how carefully, because the Scripture condemns it, they guard against the intention of rendering evil for evil? This is what they will tolerate on no account. Thus Lessius observes (_De Just._, liv. ii., c. 9, d. 12, n. 79), that, 'If a man has received a blow on the face, he must on no account have an intention to avenge himself; but he may lawfully have an intention to avert infamy, and may, with that view, repel the insult immediately, even at the point of the sword--_etiam c.u.m gladio_.' So far are we from permitting any one to cherish the design of taking vengeance on his enemies, that our fathers will not allow any even to _wish their death_--by a movement of hatred. 'If your enemy is disposed to injure you,' says Escobar, 'you have no right to wish his death, by a movement of hatred; though you may, with a view to save yourself from harm.' So legitimate, indeed, is this wish, with such an intention, that our great Hurtado de Mendoza says that 'we may _pray G.o.d_ to visit with speedy death those who are bent on persecuting us, if there is no other way of escaping from it.'" (In his book, _De Spe_, vol.

ii., d. 15, sec. 4, 48.)

"May it please your reverence," said I, "the Church has forgotten to insert a pet.i.tion to that effect among her prayers."

"They have not put every thing into the prayers that one may lawfully ask of G.o.d," answered the monk. "Besides, in the present case, the thing was impossible, for this same opinion is of more recent standing than the Breviary. You are not a good chronologist, friend. But, not to wander from the point, let me request your attention to the following pa.s.sage, cited by Diana from Gaspar Hurtado (_De Sub.

Pecc._, diff. 9; Diana, p. 5; tr. 14, r. 99), one of Escobar's four-and-twenty fathers: 'An inc.u.mbent may, without any mortal sin, desire the decease of a life-renter on his benefice, and a son that of his father, and rejoice when it happens; provided always it is for the sake of the profit that is to accrue from the event, and not from personal aversion.'"

"Good," cried I. "That is certainly a very happy hit, and I can easily see that the doctrine admits of a wide application. But yet there are certain cases, the solution of which, though of great importance for gentlemen, might present still greater difficulties."

"Propose such, if you please, that we may see," said the monk.

"Show me, with all your directing of the intention," returned I, "that it is allowable to fight a duel."

"Our great Hurtado de Mendoza," said the father, "will satisfy you on that point in a twinkling. 'If a gentleman,' says he, in a pa.s.sage cited by Diana, 'who is challenged to fight a duel, is well known to have no religion, and if the vices to which he is openly and unscrupulously addicted are such as would lead people to conclude, in the event of his refusing to fight, that he is actuated, not by the fear of G.o.d, but by cowardice, and induce them to say of him that he was a _hen_, and not a man--_gallina, et non vir_; in that case he may, to save his honor, appear at the appointed spot--not, indeed, with the express intention of fighting a duel, but merely with that of defending himself, should the person who challenged him come there unjustly to attack him. His action in this case, viewed by itself, will be perfectly indifferent; for what moral evil is there in one's stepping into a field, taking a stroll in expectation of meeting a person, and defending one's self in the event of being attacked? And thus the gentleman is guilty of no sin whatever; for, in fact, it cannot be called accepting a challenge at all, his intention being directed to other circ.u.mstances, and the acceptance of a challenge consisting in an express intention to fight, which we are supposing the gentleman never had.'"

The humorous irony of Pascal, in the "Provincial Letters," plays like the diffusive sheen of an aurora borealis over the whole surface of the composition. It does not often deliver itself startlingly in sudden discharges as of lightning. You need to school your sense somewhat, not to miss a fine effect now and then. Consider the broadness and coa.r.s.eness in pleasantry, that, before Pascal, had been common, almost universal, in controversy, and you will better understand what a creative touch it was of genius, of feeling, and of taste, that brought into literature the far more than Attic, the ineffable Christian, purity of that wit and humor in the "Provincial Letters" which will make these writings live as long as men anywhere continue to read the productions of past ages. Erasmus, perhaps, came the nearest of all modern predecessors to antic.i.p.ating the purified pleasantry of Pascal.

It will be interesting and instructive to see Pascal's own statement of his reasons for adopting the bantering style which he did in the "Provincial Letters," as well as of the sense of responsibility to be faithful and fair, under which he wrote. Pascal says:

I have been asked why I employed a pleasant, jocose, and diverting style. I reply ... I thought it a duty to write so as to be comprehended by women, and men of the world, that they might know the danger of their maxims and propositions which were then universally propagated.... I have been asked, lastly, if I myself read all the books, which I quoted. I answer, No. If I had done so, I must have pa.s.sed a great part of my life in reading very bad books; but I read Escobar twice through, and I employed some of my friends in reading the others. But I did not make use of a single pa.s.sage without having myself read it in the book from which it is cited, without having examined the subject of which it treats, and without having read what went before and followed, so that I might run no risk of quoting an objection as an answer which would have been blameworthy and unfair.

Of the wit of the "Provincial Letters," their wit and their controversial effectiveness, the specimens given will have afforded readers some approximate idea. We must deny ourselves the gratification of presenting a brief pa.s.sage, which we had selected and translated for the purpose, to exemplify from the same source Pascal's serious eloquence. It was Voltaire who said of these productions: "Moliere's best comedies do not excel them in wit, nor the compositions of Bossuet in sublimity." Something of Bossuet's sublimity, or of a sublimity perhaps finer than Bossuet's, our readers will discover in citations to follow from the "Thoughts."

Pascal's "Thoughts," the printed book, has a remarkable history. It was a posthumous publication. The author died, leaving behind him a considerable number of detached fragments of composition, first jottings of thought on a subject that had long occupied his mind. These precious ma.n.u.scripts were almost undecipherable. The writer had used for his purpose any chance sc.r.a.p of paper--old wrapping, for example, or margin of letter--that, at the critical moment of happy conception, was nearest his hand. Sentences, words even, were often left unfinished. There was no coherence, no sequence, no arrangement. It was, however, among his friends perfectly well understood that Pascal for years had meditated a work on religion designed to demonstrate the truth of Christianity. For this he had been thinking arduously. Fortunately he had even, in a memorable conversation, sketched his project at some length to his Port Royal friends. With so much, scarcely more, in the way of clew, to guide their editorial work, these friends prepared and issued a volume of Pascal's "Thoughts." With the most loyal intentions, the Port-Royalists unwisely edited too much. They pieced out incompletenesses, they provided clauses or sentences of connection, they toned down expressions deemed too bold, they improved Pascal's style! After having suffered such things from his friends, the posthumous Pascal, later, fell into the hands of an enemy. The infidel Condorcet published an edition of the "Thoughts." Whereas the Port-Royalists had suppressed to placate the Jesuits, Condorcet suppressed to please the "philosophers." Between those on the one side and these on the other, Pascal's "Thoughts" had experienced what might well have killed any production of the human mind that could die. It was not till near the middle of the present century that Cousin called the attention of the world to the fact that we had not yet, but that we still might have, a true edition of Pascal's "Thoughts." M. Faugere took the hint, and, consulting the original ma.n.u.scripts, preserved in the national library at Paris, produced, with infinite editorial labor, almost two hundred years after the thinker's death, the first satisfactory edition of Pascal's "Thoughts." Since Faugere, M. Havet has also published an edition of Pascal's works entire, by him now first adequately annotated and explained. The arrangement of the "Thoughts" varies in order, according to the varying judgment of editors. We use, for our extracts, a current translation, which we modify at our discretion by comparison of the original text as given in M. Havet's elaborate work.

Our first extract is a pa.s.sage in which the writer supposes a skeptic of the more shallow, trifling sort, to speak. This skeptic represents his own state of mind in the following strain as of soliloquy:

"I do not know who put me into the world, nor what the world is, nor what I am myself. I am in a frightful ignorance of all things. I do not know what my body is, what my senses are, what my soul is, and that very part of me which thinks what I am saying, which reflects upon every thing and upon itself, and is no better acquainted with itself than with any thing else. I see these appalling s.p.a.ces of the universe which inclose me, and I find myself tethered in one corner of this immense expansion without knowing why I am stationed in this place rather than in another, or why this moment of time which is given me to live is a.s.signed me at this point rather than at another of the whole eternity that has preceded me, and of that which is to follow me.

"I see nothing but infinities on every side, which inclose me like an atom, and like a shadow which endures but for an instant, and returns no more.

"All that I know is, that I am soon to die; but what I am most ignorant of is, that very death which I am unable to avoid.

"As I know not whence I came, so I know not whither I go; and I know only, that in leaving this world I fall forever either into nothingness or into the hands of an angry G.o.d, without knowing which of these two conditions is to be eternally my lot. Such is my state--full of misery, of weakness, and of uncertainty.

"And from all this I conclude that I ought to pa.s.s all the days of my life without a thought of trying to learn what is to befall me hereafter. Perhaps in my doubts I might find some enlightenment; but I am unwilling to take the trouble, or go a single step in search of it; and, treating with contempt those who perplex themselves with such solicitude, my purpose is to go forward without forethought and without fear to try the great event, and pa.s.sively to approach death in uncertainty of the eternity of my future condition."

Who would desire to have for a friend a man who discourses in this manner? Who would select such a one for the confidant of his affairs?

Who would have recourse to such a one in his afflictions? And, in fine, for what use of life could such a man be destined?

The central thought on which the projected apologetic of Pascal was to revolve as on a pivot is, the contrasted greatness and wretchedness of man--with Divine Revelation, in its doctrine of a fall on man's part from original n.o.bleness, supplying the needed link, and the only link conceivable, of explanation, to unite the one with the other, the human greatness with the human wretchedness. This contrast of dignity and disgrace should constantly be in the mind of the reader of the "Thoughts" of Pascal. It will often be found to throw a very necessary light upon the meaning of the separate fragments that make up the series.

We now present a brief fragment a.s.serting, with vivid metaphor, at the same time the fragility of man's frame and the majesty of man's nature.

This is a very famous "Thought":

Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

It is not necessary that the entire universe arm itself to crush him.

An exhalation, a drop of water, suffices to kill him. But were the universe to crush him, man would still be more n.o.ble than that which kills him, because he knows that he is dying, and knows the advantage that the universe has over him. The universe knows nothing of it.

Our whole dignity consists, then, in thought.

One is reminded of the memorable saying of a celebrated philosopher: "In the universe there is nothing great but man; in man there is nothing great but mind."

What a sudden, almost ludicrous, reduction in scale, the greatness of Caesar, as conqueror, is made to suffer when looked at in the way in which Pascal asks you to look at it in the following "Thought"!

(Remember that Caesar, when he began fighting for universal empire, was fifty-one years of age:)

Caesar was too old, it seems to me, to amuse himself with conquering the world. This amus.e.m.e.nt was well enough for Augustus or Alexander; they were young people, whom it is difficult to stop; but Caesar ought to have been more mature.

That is as if you should reverse the tube of your telescope, with the result of seeing the object observed made smaller instead of larger.

The following sentence might be a "Maxim" of La Rochefoucauld. Pascal was, no doubt, a debtor to him as well as to Montaigne:

I lay it down as a fact, that, if all men knew what others say of them there would not be four friends in the world.

Here is one of the most current of Pascal's sayings:

Rivers are highways that move on and bear us whither we wish to go.

The following "Thought" condenses the substance of the book proposed into three short sentences:

The knowledge of G.o.d without that of our misery produces pride. The knowledge of our misery without that of G.o.d gives despair. The knowledge of Jesus Christ is intermediate, because therein we find G.o.d and our misery.

The prevalent seeming severity and intellectual coldness of Pascal's "Thoughts" yield to a touch from the heart, and become pathetic, in such utterances as the following, supposed to be addressed by the Saviour to the penitent seeking to be saved:

Console thyself; thou wouldst not seek me if thou hadst not found me.

I thought on thee in my agony; such drops of blood I shed for thee.