THE FRENCH ACADEMY--PHILOSOPHY (DESCARTES)--RELIGION (PASCAL)
The French Academy, an organised aristocracy of letters, expressed
the growing sense that anarchy in literature must end, and that
discipline and law must be recognised in things of the mind. It is
one of the glories of RICHELIEU that he perceived that literature
has a public function, and may indeed be regarded as an affair of
the State. His own writings, or those composed under his
direction--memoirs; letters; the _Succincte Narration_, which sets
forth his policy; the _Testament_, which embodies his counsel in
statecraft--belong less to literature than to French history. But
he honoured the literary art; he enjoyed the drama; he devised plots
for plays, and found docile poets--his Society of five--to carry out
his designs.
In 1629 Valentin Conrart, secretary to the King, and one of the
frequenters of the Hotel de Rambouillet, was accustomed to receive
weekly a group of distinguished men of letters and literary amateurs,
who read their manuscripts aloud, discussed the merits of new works,
and considered questions of criticism, grammar, and language.
Tidings of these reunions having reached Richelieu, he proposed that
the society should receive an official status. By the influence of
Chapelain the objections of certain members were overcome. The
_Academie Francaise_ held its first sitting on March 13, 1634; three
years later the letters patent were registered; the number of members
was fixed at forty; when vacancies occurred, new members were co-opted
for life. Its history to the year 1652 was published in the following
year by Pellisson, and obtained him admission to a chair. The
functions of the learned company were to ascertain, as far as possible,
the French language, to regulate grammar, and to act as a literary
tribunal if members consented to submit their works to its examination.
There were hopes that authoritative treatises on rhetoric and poetics
might be issued with its sanction; but these hopes were not fulfilled.
A dictionary, of which Chapelain presented the plan in 1638, was,
however, undertaken; progressing by slow degrees, the first edition
appeared in 1694. Its aim was not to record every word of which an
example could be found, but to select those approved by the usage
of cultivated society and of the best contemporary or recent authors.
Thus it tended to establish for literary use an aristocracy of words;
and while literary expression gained in dignity and intellectual
precision, gained as an instrument of reason and analysis, such
regulation created a danger that it might lose in elements that have
affinities with the popular mind--vivacity, colour, picturesqueness,
variety. At its commencement no one was more deeply interested in
the dictionary than Vaugelas (1585-1650), a gentleman of Savoie,
whose concern for the purity of the language, as determined by the
best usage, led him to resist innovations and the invasion of foreign
phraseology. His _Remarques sur la Langue Francaise_ served as a guide
to his fellow-members of the Academy. Unhappily he was wholly ignorant
of the history of the language. With the erudite Chapelain he mediated
between the scholarship and the polite society of the time. But while
Vaugelas was almost wholly occupied with the vocabulary and grammar,
Chapelain did much to enforce the principles of the classical school
upon literary art. The Academy took up the work which the _salons_
had begun; its spirit was more robust and masculine than theirs; it
was freer from passing fashions, affectations, prettinesses; it
leaned on the side of intellect rather than of sentiment.
In what may be called the regulation of French prose the influence
of JEAN-LOUIS GUEZ DE BALZAC (1594-1654) was considerable. He had
learnt from Malherbe that a literary craftsman should leave nothing
to chance, that every effect should be exactly calculated. It was
his task to apply to prose the principles which had guided his master
in verse. His _Lettres_, of which a first series appeared in 1624,
and a second twelve years later, are not the spontaneous intercourse
of friend with friend, but rather studious compositions which deal
with matters of learning, literature, morals, religion, politics,
events, and persons of the time. Their contents are of little
importance; Balzac was not an original thinker, but he had the art
of arranging his ideas, and of expressing them in chosen words
marshalled in ample and sonorous sentences. A certain fire he had,
a limited power of imagination, a cultivated judgment, a taste, which
suffered from bad workmanship; a true affection for rural life. These
hardly furnished him with matter adequate to support his elevated
style. His letters were regarded as models of eloquence; but it is
eloquence manufactured artificially and applied to subjects, not
proceeding from them. His _Prince_, a treatise on the virtues of kings,
with a special reference to Louis XIII., was received coldly. His
_Aristippe_, which dealt with the manners and morals of a court, and
his _Socrate Chretien_, a study in ethics and theology, were efforts
beyond his powers. His gift to literature was a gift of method and
of style; others who worked in marble learned something from his
studious modellings in clay.
To regulate thought required an intellect of a different order from
that of Balzac, "emperor of orators." It was the task of RENE DESCARTES
(1596-1650). A child of delicate health, born at La Haye, near Tours,
he became, under Jesuit teachers, a precocious student both in
languages and science. But truth, not erudition, was the demand and
the necessity of his mind. Solitary investigations in mathematics
were for a time succeeded by the life of a soldier in the Netherlands
and Holland. The stream of thought was flowing, however, underground.
Suddenly it emerged to light. In 1619, when the young volunteer was
in winter quarters at Neuburg, on the Danube, on a memorable day the
first principles of a new philosophical method presented themselves
to his intellect, and, as it were, claimed him for their interpreter.
After wanderings through various parts of Europe, and a period of
studious leisure in Paris, he chose Holland for his place of abode
(1629), and though often shifting his residence, little disturbed
save by the controversies of philosophy and the orthodox zeal of Dutch
theologians, he gave his best hours during twenty years to thought.
An invitation from Queen Christina to the Swedish court was accepted
in 1649. The change in his habits and the severity of a northern winter
proved fatal to the health which Descartes had carefully cherished;
in February of 1650 he was dead.
The mathematical cycle in the development of Descartes' system of
thought preceded the metaphysical. His great achievements in
analytical geometry, in optics, in physical research, his
explanation of the laws of nature, and their application in his theory
of the material universe, belong to the history of science. Algebra
and geometry led him towards his method in metaphysical speculation.
How do all primary truths verify themselves to the human mind? By
the fact that an object is clearly and distinctly conceived. The
objects of knowledge fall into certain groups or series; in each
series there is some simple and dominant element which may be
immediately apprehended, and in relation to which the subordinate
elements become intelligible. Let us accept nothing on hearsay or
authority; let us start with doubt in order to arrive at certitude;
let us test the criterion of certitude to the uttermost. There is
one fact which I cannot doubt, even in doubting all--I think, and
if I think, I exist--"Je pense, donc je suis." No other evidence of
this is needed than that our conception is clear and distinct; in
this clearness and distinctness we find the principle of certitude.
Mind, then, exists, and is known to us as a thinking substance. But
the idea of an infinite, perfect Being is also present to our
intellect; we, finite, imperfect beings, could not have made it;
unmake it we cannot; and in the conception of perfection that of
existence is involved. Therefore God exists, and therefore the laws
of our consciousness, which are His laws, cannot deceive us. We have
seen what mind or spirit signifies--a thinking substance. Reduce our
idea of matter to clearness and distinctness, and what do we find?
The idea of an extended substance. Our complex humanity, made up of
soul and body, comprises both kinds of substance. But thought and
extension have nothing in common; their union can only be conceived
as the collocation at a single point of a machine with that which
raises it above a mere machine. As for the lower animals, they are
no more than automata.
Descartes' _Principia_ and his _Meditationes_ were written in Latin.
The _Discours de la Methode_ (1637) and the later _Traite des
Passions_ showed how the French language could be adapted to the
purposes of the reason. Such eloquence as is found in Descartes is
that of thought illuminating style. The theory of the passions
anticipates some of the tendencies of modern psychology in its
physical investigations. No one, however, affirmed more absolutely
than Descartes the freedom of the will--unless, indeed, we regard
it as determined by God: it cannot directly control the passions,
but it can indirectly modify them with the aid of imagination; it
is the supreme mistress of action, however the passions may oppose
its fiat. Spiritualist as he was, Descartes was not disposed to be
the martyr of thought. Warned by the example of Galileo, he did not
desire to expose himself to the dangers attending heretical opinions.
He separated the province of faith from that of reason: "I revere
our theology," he said; but he held that theology demanded other
lights than those of the unaided powers of man. In its own province,
he made the reason his absolute guide, and with results which
theologians might regard as dangerous.
The spirit of Descartes' work was in harmony with that of his time,
and reacted upon literature. He sought for general truths by the light
of reason; he made clearness a criterion of truth; he proclaimed man
a spirit; he asserted the freedom of the will. The art of the classical
period sought also for general truths, and subordinated imagination
to reason. It turned away from ingenuities, obscurities, mysteries;
it was essentially spiritualist; it represented the crises and heroic
victories of the will.
Descartes' opponent, Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), epicurean in his
physics, an empiricist, though an inconsistent one, in philosophy,
chose the Latin language as the vehicle for his ideas. A group of
writers whose tendencies were towards sensualism or scepticism,
viewed him as their master. Chapelle in verse, La Mothe le Vayer in
prose, may serve as representatives of art surrendering itself to
vulgar pleasures, and thought doubting even its doubts, and finding
repose in indifference.
The true successor of Descartes in French philosophy, eminent in the
second half of the century, was NICOLAS DE MALEBRANCHE (1638-1715).
Soul and body, Descartes had shown, are in their very nature alien
each from the other. How then does the soul attain a knowledge of
the external world? In God, the absolute substance, are the ideas
of all things; in God we behold those ideas which matter could never
convey to us, and which we could never ourselves originate; in God
we see and know all things. The _Recherche de la Verite_ (1674-75)
was admirably written and was widely read. The theologians found it
dangerous; and when six years later Malebranche published his _Traite
de la Nature et de la Grace_, characterised briefly and decidedly
by Bossuet as "pulchra, nova, falsa," at Bossuet's request both
Arnauld and Fenelon attempted to refute "the extravagant Oratorian."
His place in the evolution of philosophy lies between Descartes and
Spinoza, who developed and completed the doctrine of Descartes. In
the transition from dualism to monism Malebranche served as a
mediator.
Religious thought in the seventeenth century, wedded to an austere
morality, is expressed by the writers of Port-Royal, and those who
were in sympathy with them. They could not follow the flowery path
of piety--not the less the narrow path because it was cheerful--pointed
out by St. Francois de Sales. Between nature and grace they saw a deep
and wide abyss. In closest connection with them was one man of the
highest genius--author of the _Provinciales_ and the _Pensees_--whose
spiritual history was more dramatic than any miracle-play or morality
of the Middle Ages.
BLAISE PASCAL was born at Clermont-Ferrand in 1623. His father, a
president of the Court of Aids at Clermont, a man of intellect and
character, guided his education in languages, natural science, and
mathematics. The boy's precocity was extraordinary; at sixteen he
had written a treatise on Conic Sections, which excited the
astonishment of Descartes. But the intensity of study, preying upon
a nervous constitution, consumed his health and strength; at an early
age he suffered from temporary paralysis. When about twenty-three
he fell under the religious influences of certain disciples of St.
Cyran, read eagerly in the writings of Jansen and Arnauld, and
resolved to live for God alone. But to restore his health he was urged
to seek recreation, and by degrees the interests and pleasures of
the world took hold upon him; the master of his mind was the sceptical
Montaigne; he moved in the mundane society of the capital; and it
has been conjectured from hints in his _Discours sur les Passions
de l'Amour_ that he loved the sister of his friend, the Duc de Roannez,
and had the vain hope of making her his wife.
The spirit of religion, however, lived within his heart, and needed
only to be reawakened. The reawakening came in 1654 through the
persuasions of his sister, Jacqueline, who had abandoned the world
two years previously, and entered the community of Port-Royal. The
abbey of Port-Royal, situated some seven or eight miles from
Versailles, was presided over by Jacqueline Arnauld, the Mere
Angelique, and a brotherhood of solitaries, among whom were several
of the Arnauld family, had settled in the valley in the year 1637.
With this unvowed brotherhood Pascal, though never actually a
solitary, associated himself at the close of 1654. An escape from
sudden danger in a carriage accident, and a vision or ecstasy which
came to him, co-operated in his conversion. After his death, copies
of a fragmentary and passionate writing referring to this period--the
so-called "amulet" of Pascal--were found upon his person; its words,
"renonciation totale et douce," and "joie, joie, joie, pleurs de
joie," express something of his resolution and his rapture.
The affair of the _Provinciales_, and the design of an apology for
Christianity with which his _Pensees_ are connected, together with
certain scientific studies and the deepening passion of religion,
make up what remained of Pascal's life. His spirit grew austere, but
in his austerity there was an inexpressible joy. Exhausted by his
ascetic practices and the inward flame of his soul, Pascal died on
August 19, 1662. "May God never leave me" were his last words.
With Pascal's work as a mathematician and a physicist we are not here
concerned. In it "we see," writes a scientific authority, "the
strongest marks of a great original genius creating new ideas, and
seizing upon, mastering, and pursuing further everything that was
fresh and unfamiliar in his time. After the lapse of more than two
hundred years, we can still point to much in exact science that is
absolutely his; and we can indicate infinitely more which is due to
his inspiration."
Jansenism and Jesuitism, opposed as they were, have this in common,
that both were movements in that revival of Roman Catholicism which
was stimulated by the rivalry of the Protestant Reformation. But the
Jesuits sought to win the world to religion by an art of piety, in
which a system of accommodation was recognised as a means of drawing
worldlings to the Church; the Jansenists held up a severe moral ideal,
and humbled human nature in presence of the absolute need and
resistless omnipotence of divine grace. Like the Jesuits, but in a
different spirit, the Port-Royalists devoted themselves much to the
task of education. They honoured classical studies; they honoured
science, dialectics, philosophy. Their grammar, logic, geometry were
substantial additions to the literature of pedagogy. Isaac le Maistre
de Sacy and others translated and annotated the Bible. Their
theologian, moralist, and controversialist, Pierre Nicole (1625-95),
author of _Essais de Morale_ (1671), if not profound or brilliant,
was the possessor of learning, good sense, good feeling, and religious
faith. Under the influence of St. Cyran, the Port-Royalists were in
close sympathy with the teaching of Jansen, Bishop of Ypres; the
writings of their great theologian Antoine Arnauld were vigorously
anti-Jesuitical. In 1653 five propositions, professedly extracted
from Jansen's _Augustinus_, were condemned by a Papal bull. The
insulting triumph of the Jesuits drew Arnauld again into controversy;
and on a question concerning divine grace he was condemned in January
1656 by the Sorbonne. "You who are clever and inquiring" (_curieux_),
said Arnauld to Pascal, "you ought to do something." Next day was
written the first of Pascal's _Lettres a un Provincial_, and on 23rd
January it was issued to the public; a second followed within a week;
the success was immense. The writer concealed his identity under the
pseudonym "Louis de Montalte."
The _Lettres Provinciales_ are eighteen in number. The first three
and the last three deal with the affair of Arnauld and the Sorbonne,
and the questions under discussion as to the nature and the need of
divine grace. In the opening letters the clearest intellectual
insight and the deepest seriousness of spirit are united with the
finest play of irony, and even with the temper of comedy. The supposed
Louis de Montalte, seeking theological lights from a doctor of the
Sorbonne, finds only how hopelessly divided in opinion are the
opponents of Arnauld, and how grotesquely they darken counsel with
speech. In the twelve letters intervening between the third and the
sixteenth, Pascal takes the offensive, and deploys an incomparably
skilful attack on the moral theology of the Jesuits. For the rigid
they may have a stricter morality, but for the lax their casuistry
supplies a pliable code of morals, which, by the aid of ingenious
distinctions, can find excuses for the worst of crimes. With force
of logic, with fineness of irony, with energy of moral indignation,
with a literary style combining strength and lightness, Pascal
presses his irresistible assault. The effect of the "Provincial
Letters" was to carry the discussion of morals and theology before
a new court of appeal--not the Sorbonne, but the public intelligence
and the unsophisticated conscience of men. To French prose they added
a masterpiece and a model.
The subject of the _Provinciales_ is in part a thing of the past;
the _Pensees_ deal with problems which can never lose their interest.
Among Pascal's papers were found, after his early death, many
fragments which his sister, Madame Perier, and his friends recognised
as of rare value; but the editors of the little volume which appeared
in 1670, imagining that they could safeguard its orthodoxy, and even
amend its style, freely omitted and altered what Pascal had written.
It was not until 1844 that a complete and genuine text was established
in the edition of M. Faugere. We can hardly hope to arrange the
fragments so as to exhibit the design of that apology for Christianity,
with which many of them were doubtless connected, but the main
outlines of Pascal's body of thought can be clearly discerned.
The intellect of Pascal, so powerful in its grasp of scientific truth,
could find by its own researches no certitude in the sphere of
philosophy and religion. He had been deeply influenced by the
sceptical mind of Montaigne. He found within him a passionate craving
for certitude; man is so constituted that he can never be at rest
until he rests in knowledge of the truth; but man, as he now exists,
is incapable of ascertaining truth; he is weak and miserable, and
yet the very consciousness of his misery is evidence of his greatness;
"Nature confounds the Pyrrhonist, and reason the dogmatist;" "Man
is but a reed, the feeblest of created things, but a reed which
thinks." How is this riddle of human nature to be explained? Only
in one way--by a recognition of the truth taught by religion, that
human nature is fallen from its true estate, that man is a dethroned
king. And how is the dissonance in man's nature to be overcome? Only
in one way--through union with God made man; with Jesus Christ, the
centre in which alone we find our weakness and the divine strength.
Through Christ man is abased and lifted up--abased without despair,
and lifted up without pride; in Him all contradictions are reconciled.
Such, in brief, is the vital thought from which Pascal's apologetic
proceeds. It does not ignore any of the external evidences of
Christianity; but the irresistible evidence is that derived from the
problem of human nature and the essential needs of the spirit--a
problem which religion alone can solve, and needs which Christ alone
can satisfy. Pascal's "Thoughts" are those of an eminent intelligence.
But they are more than thoughts; they are passionate lyrical cries
of a heart which had suffered, and which had found more than
consolation; they are the interpretation of the words of his
amulet--"Joie, joie, joie, pleurs de joie." The union of the ardour
of a poet or a saint with the scientific rigour of a great geometer,
of wit and brilliance with a sublime pathos, is among the rarest
phenomena in literature; all this and more is found in Pascal.