A New Edition of Pascal

Extract

Pascal, to use a customary word of his own, is admirable. It is true that the satire of the Provinciales, however clever and amusing in its time, is out-of-date and unjust; that his scientific experiments and writings belong to the domain of the history of science. But his apology for Christianity, even in the fragmentary form of the famous Pensees, is an imperishable work. Into it he put all his knowledge and experience of the world, of human achievement, and of the divine things that were the absorbing pursuit of his mature file.

It is a happiness to re-read them, or a selection of them, in this new edition : to marvel once again at Pascal’s penetration and his ardent zeal, to feel once again the beauty and power of so many compelling pages and lapidary sentences ; especially as we are reminded in an early paragraph (No. 11) of what is in fact the goal of this long array of close reasoning and urgent pleading: ‘Jesus-Christ the object of everything, the cenfre to which everything tends.’—‘The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of Christians is a God of love and consolation, He is a God who fills the soul and heart of those whom He possesses, a God who makes them feel within themselves their wretchedness and His infinite mercy; who unites Himself with them in the depths of their soul; who fills it with humility, joy, trust, love; who makes them incapable of any other end than Himself.’