4. Navarre. Martin Azpilcueta (1490 ?-1586), called Navarrese or Navarre. A Spanish writer on canon law.

A Spanish Cistercian

5. Henriquez, Crisostomo (1594–1632). monk, author of lives of saints and religious treatises.

Pascal's quotation is

Page 63.1. Plusieurs personnes, etc. not quite literal, omitting or changing a word or two.

Page 64. — 1. la créance ... en. Notice that Pascal has changed from créance ... à to créance en, which may add a shade of mean

ing to his phrase.

2. votre doctrine des équivoques. Discussed in the ninth Letter.

Page 66.-1. c'est celui du soufflet de Compiègne. At about the time of this letter it was reported in Paris, that one of the court stewards named Guille ("officiers de la maison du roi," line 12), who had been sent to the Jesuit College at Compiègne to prepare a dinner offered by the fathers to Queen Christina of Sweden, had had a dispute with one of their order and had been cuffed by him.

- The curate who had counselled forgiveness to the steward (line 23) was evidently a Jansenist.

2. Escobar y Mendoza, Antonio (1589-1669). A Spanish Jesuit and a renowned casuist. His Liber Theologiae moralis (1646), a compilation of the ethical writings of twenty-four Jesuit fathers, had by 1651 already gone through forty-one editions. Pascal had begun his attacks on Escobar in his fifth Letter.

3. Pratique de l'homicide. This was a division in the first part of Escobar's treatise.

Page 67. — 1. Caen. In Normandy, seat of a university.

2. l'université of Paris.

3. Parlement. The so-called Parliaments were courts of justice sitting in the chief towns of France. They were abolished in 1790. The one mentioned here is that of Paris, which exercised extensive jurisdiction.

4. Quand vous avez enterpris, etc. Page 68.

See the fourth Letter.

1. Filiutius. Vincenzo Filiucci (Latin Filiutius, 1566-1622), professor in the Jesuit College at Rome and author of Quaestionum moralium, etc. (1634). One of the twenty-four authorities of Escobar.

2. Tr., Tractatus, or division of the subject-matter of a book.

3. Reginaldus. Valère Regnauld, or Réginald (1543-1623). French theologian, author of Praxis fori poenitentialis, etc. (1616), on cases of conscience.

Page 69.- 1. Théologie morale. His Universae Theologiae Moralis Problemata (1652), in seven volumes, not six. See page 66,

note 2.

2. in Praeloquio. The Introduction to the treatise. Page 70.

of de.

-1. vous ne faites plus difficulté. Notice the omission

Page 71.- 1. Héreau, or Ayrault, René (1567-1644), French Jesuit and writer, whose Moralia had been condemned by the University in 1644. Cited by Pascal from the seventh Letter on.

2. Lami. Francesco Amico (1578–1651), Italian Jesuit, chancellor of the University of Gratz, and author of the Cursus Theologiae (1640). Pascal had quoted him from the seventh Letter on.

3. Louvain. City of Belgium, the seat of a great university. The book censured was Lami's Cursus.

4. des Bois. I have found no other reference to this priest nor to the affair.

5. Officialité. The ecclesiastical court presided over by a bishop, archbishop or primate.

2. et ne témoignez craindre. Note the omission of the pronoun subject and of de after the verb.

Page 74. — 1. que faites-vous autre chose? what else do you do? Notice the construction below (page 75, lines 18-19). The first edition had qu'est-ce faire autre chose here also.

2. sinon montrer sinon de montrer. See below, page 75, line 19. Page 75. 1. que j'ai souvent expliquée. Particularly in the fifth and sixth Letters.

Page 76.

I. Vasquez, Gabriel (1551-1604). Spanish Jesuit, theologian and casuist. Pascal had cited his De Eleemosina already in his sixth Letter. He was one of Escobar's twenty-four.

2. Suarez, Francisco (1548–1617). Spanish Jesuit, writer of polemics and one of Escobar's twenty-four; professor of theology at Coïmbra. See previous Letters.

Page 77.

·1

1. saint Ignace. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556), the founder of the Jesuit order, which was sanctioned by Paul III in 1540. 2. vous ne pouvez pas tirer aucun avantage. Notice the use of pas with aucun.

3. selon l'Évangile. Matthew v, 39.

4. vous avez mieux aimé les ténèbres. Cf. John iii, 19.

Page 78.

. — 1. s'élèveront en jugement, etc. Cf. Luke xi, 31-32. 2. Vae duplici corde, etc. From the apochryphal book of Ecclesiasticus ii, 14. Pascal quotes the beginning and end of the verse.

PENSÉES.

The order of Pensées adopted here is the one established by Havet, the last of Pascal's editors, though that order does not seem to give the sequence of Pascal's thought. The plan Pascal may have had in mind is indicated in Article XXII, Pensée I, or Article XXIV, Pensée 26, of Havet, which are therefore printed here before the others. They contradict each other, to be sure, and thus reveal the confusion in the author's own thought, a confusion which renders the task of his editors so ungrateful. Should Art. XXIV, Pen. 26, be considered the final plan, then Article IX of Havet on the sceptics (extracts from which are to be found on pages 103-105) should precede Article I. It is to be remembered that the Pensées are simply a collection of notes, found in Pascal's papers. They were first edited in 1670.

Page 78.- 3. par la nature même. Read prouvé par la nature même. Supply prouvé also before Par l'Écriture, line 29.

Louis Racine (1692-1763) says

Page 79.-1. Les hommes, etc. that this pensée gave the outline for his poem De la Religion (1742).

verse.

ART. I. This Article is on man in his relation to nature, to the uniThe beginning was struck out by Pascal. It was an exhortation to man to judge himself relatively to nature's greatness.

2. la nature entière, etc. Montaigne is ever present in Pascal's mind, and this phrase seems to have been prompted by "cette grande image de nostre mere nature en son entiere maiesté" of the Essais (Book I, c. 25; vol. i, page 216, of Louandre's edition), and by the eloquent passage in the Essais, Book II, c. 12 (Louandre's ed. vol. ii, pages 274-275). The same reference holds true for "une pointe très délicate," in line 15.

3. au prix du vaste tour, etc. Pascal, in spite of his work in physics, still held to the old idea of a motionless earth around which the stars and sun moved. Yet Copernicus had been dead for more than a century (1543). Galileo had been condemned for holding the new belief in 1633, and possibly Pascal may have considered it contrary to Church doctrine.

4. embrassent. Separated from its subject and ending the sentence for emphasis. Several of the expressions found in this paragraph were rewritten by Pascal with a view to a clear and more forceful expression.

5. n'en approche. The preceding sentence had undergone two corrections: dans l'ample sein was first dans l'immensité, then dans l'amplitude. En evidently was forgotten. It cannot refer to sein, but may refer to immensité.

6. conceptions ... imaginables. A contradiction in terms?

7. C'est une sphère, etc. A fine period containing a thought which the medieval authors attributed to the philosopher Empedocles († a. 430 B. C.).

8. de=d'après. With this meaning in Corneille also.

9. j'entends l'univers. Pascal's view of creation was a space filled with an infinite number of planetary systems, each independent of the other, so that our universe or system is but a dungeon, a "canton détourné de la nature," in comparison with the boundless expanse.

These are

Page 80.1-3. humeurs... gouttes... vapeurs. terms used in the old school medicine. Pascal seems to make each a subdivision of its predecessor, but technically blood was a humeur. Vapeurs was also a term for hysteria.

4. de ce raccourci d'atome. Not to be taken scientifically, for Pascal does not suppose the atom to be indivisible. Notice that he would find in it the same infinity of systems and so on down to the mites which he finds in creation (line 20). In other words, he believes in the infinitely small as well as the infinitely great.

5. néant.

small elements.

The infinitely small. Page 81, line 14, the infinitely

6. la masse, the body.

Page 81.

1. avec elle.

From this point Pascal goes on to set

man over against infinity and thus demonstrate his weakness. About a

page and a half is omitted here.

2. Ce que nous avons d'être, What being we have. Cf. le peu que nous avons d'être in line 23.

=

Page 82.- - 1. reste zéro il reste zéro. Mathematically, however, It is difficult to see what Pascal meant here. Perhaps it is a slip of the pen.

4.

2. trop d'évidence. That is, our human imperfection cannot endure too absolute proofs. Cf. trop de vérité in line 1.

3. Beneficia, etc. This passage is from Tacitus' Annals, l. iv, c. 18, and had been cited by Montaigne in his Essais (Book III, c. 8; vol. iv, p. 43 of Louandre's edition).

4. trop et trop peu d'instruction. Supply empêchent l'esprit.

5. une tour. Like the tower of Babel. Pascal reaches the highest eloquence here.

The remainder of the first pensée, some two and a half pages, considers man's powerlessness to know the infinite, especially in his twofold function of mind and body.

6. Je puis, etc. See Descartes, page 29. Cf. pensée 11, page 83. Page 83. 1. L'homme n'est qu'un roseau. One of the finest passages in French literature. Cf. Havet's ed: Art. XVII, pensée 1, next to the last paragraph.

ART. II. The burden of this Article is the vanity of man. See La Rochefoucauld's Maximes and La Bruyère's Caractères: "De l'Homme."

2. nous. Havet does not doubt that this pensée was written by Pascal himself, though the autograph manuscript is now lost.

Page 84.1. contre =contre cela. See Descartes, page 15, note 5. 2. touchent. In the literal sense: so close as to touch us."

Page 85.-1. vains, frivolous, thoughtless. In the Latin sense of the word.

2. amuse, occupies.

3. L'homme, etc. Not strictly a pensée, but a separate treatise on self-love. What is printed here is only the conclusion. For like ideas, see La Rochefoucauld's Maximes.

4. une racine naturelle. Our "original sin."

ART. III. This Article is on man's weakness and human imperfections.

5. si on n'y songe pas assez, then one does not understand.