PASCAL, Blaise, one of the greatest geniuses and best writers that France has produced, was born at Clermont, in Auvergne, in the year 1623. His father, Stephen Pascal, born in 1588, and descended of an ancient family, was president of the court of aids in his province; and being a very learned man, and an able mathematician, he was a friend of Descartes. Having an extraordinary tenderness for this child, who was his only son, he quitted his office, and settled at Paris in 1631, that he might be at leisure to attend to his instruction; and young Pascal never had any master but his father. From his infancy he gave proofs of extraordinary capacity; for he desired to know the reason of every thing, and when good reasons were not given him, he would seek for better, refusing to yield his assent except upon such as appeared to him to be well grounded. It was feared that, with such a turn of mind, he might fall into free-thinking, or at least into heterodoxy; but this apprehension proved groundless.

What is told of his'manner of learning the mathematics, as well as of the rapid progress which he made in that science, seems almost miraculous. His father, perceiving in him an extraordinary inclination to reasoning, was afraid lest the knowledge of the mathematics might prevent his acquiring the languages. He therefore kept him as much as he could from all notions of geometry, locked up all his books on that subject, and even refrained from speaking of it in his presence. He could not, however, prevent his son from musing upon geometrical propositions, and one day surprised him at work with some charcoal upon his ’chamber floor, and in the midst of figures. Having asked the boy what he was doing, he received for answer, I am searching for such a property, which was in fact that demonstrated in the thirty-second proposition of the first book of Euclid. His father then asked him how he came to think of this’? It was, says Pascal, because I had found out such another thing; and so going backwards and using the names of bar and round, he came at length to the definitions and axioms which he had formed to himself. Does it not seem almost miraculous that a boy should work his way into the heart of a mathematical work, without ever having seen that or any other book upon the subject, or knowing any thing of the terms? Yet we are assured of the truth of this by Madame Perrier, and by several other writers, the credit of whose testimony cannot reasonably be questioned. Thenceforward he had full liberty to indulge his genius in mathematical pursuits. He understood Euclid’s Elements as soon as he cast his eyes upon them; and this need not seem strange, for, as we have seen, he understood them before. '

At sixteen years of age he wrote a treatise on Conic Sections, which was accounted by the learned a mighty effort of genius; and therefore it is not wonderful that Descartes, who had been a long time in Holland, should, upon reading it, have been inclined to believe that Μ. Pascal the father was the real author of the work. At nineteen he contrived an admirable mathematical machine, which was esteemed a wonderful thing, and would have done credit as an invention almost to any man conversant with science, far less to a mere youth. About this time his health became impaired, and he was in consequence obliged to suspend his labours; nor was he in a condition to resume them till nearly four years afterwards. About that period, having seen Torricelli’s experiment respecting a vacuum and the weight of the air, he turned his thoughts towards that subject; and in a conference with Μ. Petit, intendant of fortifications, proposed to make farther researches. In pursuance of this idea, he undertook several new experiments. In particular, having provided a glass tube, forty-six feet in length, open at one end, and sealed hermetically at the other, he filled it with red wine, that he might distinguish the liquor from the tube. He then elevated the latter in this condition; and having placed it perpendicularly to the horizon, stopped up the bottom, and plunged it into a vessel full of water to the depth of a foot; after which he opened the extremity of the tube, and the wine descended till about thirty-two feet above the surface of the vessel, leaving a considerable vacuum at the upper extremity. He next inclined the tube, and remarked that the wine rose higher; and having inclined it till the top was within thirty-two feet of the ground, making the wine thus run out, he found that the water rose in it, so that it was partly filled with that fluid, and partly with wine. He made also a great many experiments with syphons, syringes, bellows, and all kinds of tubes, employing different liquors, such as quicksilver, water, wine, and oil; and having^published an account of his experiments in 1647, he dispersed his work throughout all France, and also transmitted it to foreign countries. All these experiments, however, ascertained effects, without demonstrating the causes. Pascal knew that Torricelli conjectured that those phenomena which he had observed were occasioned by the weight of the air; and, in order to discover the truth of this theory, he made an experiment at the summit and foot of a mountain in Auvergne√called Le Puy-de-Dôme, the result of which led him to conclude that air had weight. Of this experiment he also published an account, and sent copies of it to most of the learned men in Europe. He likewise renewed the experiment at the top of several high towers, such as those of Nôtre Dame at Paris, St Jacques de la Boucherie, and some others; and he always remarked the same difference in the weight of the air at different elevations. This fully convinced him of the weight of the atmosphere; and from this discovery he drew many useful and important inferences. He also composed a large treatise, in which he thoroughly explained this subject, and replied to all the objections which had been started against it. As he thought this work rather too prolix, and as he was fond of brevity and precision, he divided it into two small treatises, one of which he entitled a Dissertation on the Equilibrium of Liquors; and the other, an Essay on the Weight of the Atmosphere. These labours procured Pascal so much reputation, that the greatest mathematicians and philosophers of the age proposed various questions to him, and consulted him respecting such difficulties as they could not resolve.

Some years after, whilst tormented with a violent fit of the toothach, he discovered the solution of a problem proposed by Father Mersenne, which had baffled the penetration of all those who had attempted it. This problem was to determine the curve described in the air by the nail of a coach-wheel whilst the machine is in motion. Pascal offered a reward of forty pistoles to any one who should give a satisfactory answer to the question. As no one succeeded, however, he published his own at Paris; but as he now began to be disgusted with the sciences, he did not put his real name to it, and sent it abroad under that of A. d’Et-tenvillc[7:17:108]. This was the last work which he published in the mathematics; and his infirmities now increased so much that he was under the necessity of renouncing severe study, and of living so recluse that he scarcely admitted any person to see him.

After he had laboured thus successfully in mathematical and philosophical disquisitions, he forsook these studies and all human learning at once. He was not twenty-four years of age, when the perusal of some pious books had inspired him with this resolution; and he became as great a devotee as any age has produced. He now devoted himself entirely to a state of prayer and mortification. He had always in his thoughts the great maxim of renouncing all pleasures and all superfluity; and this he practised with rigour even in his illnesses, to which he was frequently subject, being of a very feeble habit of body. He had no violent affection for those he loved; and he even thought it sinful, since a man possesses a heart which belongs only to God. He found fault with some discourses of his sister, which she thought very innocent; and subjected himself to severe mortification and abstinence.

But though Pascal had thus abstracted himself from the world, yet he could not forbear paying some attention towhat was passing in it; and he even interested himself deeply in the contest between the Jesuits and the Jansenists. The Jesuits, although they had popes and kings on their side, were yet decried by the people, who raked up afresh against them the assassination of Henry IV., and all the old stories which were likely to render them odious. Pascal went farther, and by his Lettres Provinciales, published in 1656, under the name of Louis de Montalte, made them the subject of the keenest irony and ridicule. These letters may justly be considered as a model of eloquence and humour. The best comedies of Molière have not more wit than the first part of them; and the sublimity of the latter part is equal to any thing in Bossuet. It is true, indeed, that the whole book was built upon a false foundation; for the extravagant notions of a few Spanish and Flemish Jesuits were artfully ascribed to the whole society. Many absurdities might likewise have been discovered amongst the Dominican and Franciscan casuists; but this would not have answered the purpose; for the whole raillery was to be levelled only at the Jesuits. The Provincial Letters were intended to prove that the Jesuits had formed a design to corrupt mankind; a design which no sect or society ever had or can have. Voltaire considers Pascal as the first of the French satirists; for Despreaux, says he, must be regarded as only the second. In another place, speaking of this work, he says, that examples of all the various species of eloquence are to be found in it. “Though it has been now written almost a hundred years, yet not a single word occurs in it savouring of that vicissitude to which living languages are so subject. Here then we are to fix the epoch when our language may be said to have assumed a settled form. The Bishop of Lucon, son of the celebrated Bussy, told me, that asking one day the Bishop of Meaux what work he would covet most to be the author of, supposing his own performances set aside, Bossuet replied, the Provincial Letters.” These letters have been translated into all languages, and printed in every possible form. Some have said that there were decrees of formal condemnation against them; and, further, that Pascal himself, in his last illness, detested them, and repented of having been a Jansenist; but neither of these statements seems to rest upon any good authority. Father Daniel wrote an answer to the Provincial Letters, entitled the Dialogues of Cleander and Eudoxus. These celebrated Letters appear to have been the joint productions of Arnauld, Nicoe, and Pascal. Nicoe and Arnauld supplied the materials, which Pascal worked up into those finished productions that fixed the language in which they were written, and have been admired by every succeed ing age, as well as by that in which they were first given to the world.

Pascal was only about the age of thirty when the Provincial Letters were published; yet he was extremely infirm, and soon afterwards his disorders increased so much that, conceiving his end to be fast approaching, he gave up all farther thoughts of literary composition. He resolved to spend the remainder of his days in retirement and religious meditation; and with this view he broke off all his former connections, changed his habitation, and spoke to no one, not even to his own domestics. He made his own bed, fetched his dinner from the kitchen, carried it to his apartment, and brought back the plates and dishes in the evening; so that he employed his servants only to cook for him, to go to town, and to do such other offices as he could not conveniently perform himself. In his chamber nothing was to be seen but two or three chairs, a table, a bed, and a few books. It had no kind of ornament whatever; he had neither a carpet on the floor nor curtains to his bed: But this did not prevent him from sometimes receiving visits; and when his friends appeared surprised to find him thus without furniture, he replied, that he had what was necessary, and that anything else would be a superfluity, unworthy of a wise man. He employed his time in prayer, and in reading the Holy Scriptures; and he wrote down such thoughts as this exercise inspired. Though his continual infirmities obliged him to use very delicate food, and his servants employed the utmost care in providing only what was excellent, he never relished what he ate, and seemed quite indifferent whether what they brought him was good or bad.

But although he had now abandoned intense study, and lived in the most temperate manner, his health continued to decline rapidly; and his disorders had so enfeebled his organs, that his reason became in some measure affected. He always imagined that he saw a deep abyss on his left side; and he never would sit down till a chair was so placed as to secure him from the fancied danger which he apprehended. His friends did everything in their power to banish this melancholy idea from his thoughts, and to cure him of his error, but without effect. Though he would become calm and composed for a little, yet the phantom would in a few moments return again and torment him with this painful delusion. The cause of his seeing this singular vision for the first time is said to have been the following. His physicians, alarmed on account of the exhausted state to which he was reduced, had advised him to substitute easy and agreeable exercise for the exhausting labours of the closet. One day, in the month of October 1654, having gone, according to custom, to take an airing on the Pont de Neuilly, in a coach and four, the two leading horses suddenly took fright opposite to a place where there was no parapet, and threw themselves violently into the Seine; but the traces having luckily given way, the carriage remained on the brink of the precipice. The shock which Pascal, in his languishing situation, must have received from this dreadful accident, may easily be imagined. It threw him into a fit, which continued for some time, and it was with great difficulty that he could be restored to his senses. After this period his brain became so disordered that he was continually haunted by the remembrance of his danger, especially when his infirmities prevented him from enjoying sleep. During the last years of his life, in which he exhibited a melancholy example of the humiliating changes which take place in this transitory world, and which, if properly considered, might teach mankind not to be too proud of those abilities, however splendid, which a moment may take from them, he attended all the stated prayers, visited every church in which relics were exposed, and had always a spiritual almanack, containing an account of all those places where particular acts of devotion were performed. On this occasion it has [7:17:109]been said that religion renders great minds capable of little things, and little minds capable of great things.

In company Pascal was distinguished by his amiable behaviour, his easy, agreeable, and instructive conversation, and his great modesty. He possessed a natural kind of eloquence, which was in a manner irresistible; and no one ever had the happiness of meeting him, without being at once instructed and delighted. His divine humility showed itself in all things, attempered with a grace and simplicity which imparted to it an indescribable charm. Towards the close of his life he employed himself wholly in pious and moral reflections, writing down those which he judged worthy of being preserved. The first piece of paper that he could find was employed for this purpose; and he commonly put down only a few words of each sentence, as he wrote them merely for his own use. The bits of paper upon which he had written these thoughts were found after his death filed upon different pieces of string, without any order or connection; but being copied exactly as they were written, they were afterwards arranged and published. He died at Paris on the 19th of August 1662, aged thirty-nine years.

The works of Pascal were collected in five volumes octavo, and published at the Hague by De Tune, and at Paris by Nyon, in 1779. This edition of Pascal’s works may be considered as the first published; at least the greater part of them were not before collected into one body, and some of them had still remained in manuscript. For this collection the public were indebted to the Abbé Bossu, and Pascal deserved to have such an editor. See remarks on his philosophical character in the First Dissertation, prefixed to this work.