Part 4 (1/2)
The mode of life of the Solitaries was simple in the highest degree.
They wore no distinctive dress. Their wants were supplied by the barest necessaries in the shape of lodging and furniture. From early morning, three A.M., to night, they were occupied in works of piety, charity, or industry. They met in the chapel after their private devotions to say matins and lauds, a service which occupied about an hour and a half, after which they kissed the earth in token of a common lowliness, and sought each his own room for a time. The round of devotion thus commenced was continued with a steady uniformity,-Prime at half-past six; Tierces at nine, and after this a daily Ma.s.s; s.e.xte at eleven; Nones at two; Vespers at four; and Compline closing the series at a quarter-past seven. {89} The Gospel and Epistles were read daily; and sometimes during or after dinner the Lives of the Saints. They dined together; and a walk thereafter formed the sole recreation of the day. Two hours in the morning, and two in the afternoon, were devoted to work in the fields or in the garden by those who were able for such tasks. Confession and communion were frequent, but no uniform rule was enforced. In this, as in fasting and austerities generally, each recluse was left to his own free will; and, as will be seen in Pascal's case, there was no need to stimulate the morbid desire for bodily mortification.
It was in the last month of 1654 that Pascal's final conversion and adhesion to Port Royal took place. His mind for some time before had been greatly agitated, as already explained-filled with disgust of the world and all its enjoyments. Then had come the accident at the Bridge of Neuilly, and about the same time, or a little later, a remarkable vision or ecstasy which he has himself described, and which has given rise to a good deal of useless speculation. During life he never spoke of this matter, unless it may have been to his confessor; {90} but after his death two copies of a brief writing were found upon him,-the one written on parchment enclosing the other written on paper, and carefully st.i.tched into the clothes that he had worn day by day. It is beyond question that Pascal must have been deeply touched by the event, whatever may have been its precise nature, the memorial of which he had thus preserved. The footnote shows the writing in the original, as printed by M. Faugere: there are some variations in the copies, but it seems most correctly given as below. It may be translated as follows:-
The year of grace 1654.
Monday 23d November, day of St Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology.
Vigil of St Chrysogone, martyr and others.
From about half-past ten o'clock in the evening till about half-past twelve.
Fire.
G.o.d of Abraham, G.o.d of Isaac, G.o.d of Jacob, Not of philosophers and of savants.
Cert.i.tude. Cert.i.tude. Sentiment. Joy. Peace.
G.o.d of Jesus Christ My G.o.d and your G.o.d.
Thy G.o.d will be my G.o.d- Oblivion of the world and of all save G.o.d.
He is found only by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Grandeur of the human soul.
Just Father, the world hath not known Thee, but I have known Thee.
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I have separated myself from Him- They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water.
My G.o.d, will you forsake me?-
Oh, may I not be separated from Him eternally!
This is life eternal, that they know Thee the only true G.o.d, and Him whom Thou hast sent, J.-C.
Jesus Christ- Jesus Christ- I have separated myself from Him; I have fled, renounced, crucified Him.
Oh that I may never be separated from Him!
He is only held fast by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Renunciation total and sweet, etc. {91}
It is difficult to make much of this doc.u.ment. Are we to suppose that Pascal, on the 23d of November 1654, thought he saw a vision, revealing to him the truth of Christianity, and the vanity of philosophy and the world? Even if Pascal did this, our estimate of the matter could hardly be much affected. But there is no evidence that he himself attached a supernatural character to the incident. He felt, no doubt, that a real revelation had come to him, that his mind had been lifted in spiritual ecstasy away from the love of all that for a time had hid from him the presence of G.o.d and of a higher world. The moment of this blessed experience had been sacred to him. He had tried to trace it in these broken characters, and in seasons of doubt or depression he may have sought to awaken a new fervour of faith and love by their contemplation.
This seems all the natural meaning of the incident; but, as some have endeavoured to attach to it a supernatural importance, so others, in whom the idea not only of the supernatural but of the spiritual only excites contempt, have tried to give to it a purely superst.i.tious character. It was Condorcet who first applied to the paper the epithet of Pascal's ”Amulette;” and Lelut has adopted the epithet, and written a volume more or less relating to it. He supposes the vision to have occurred to Pascal on the evening of the day when the event at Neuilly had upset his nervous system-always easily disturbed-and brought before him a frightful picture of his alienation from G.o.d, and the piety of his early manhood.
Facts mingled with the dreams of his excited imagination. He saw the horses plunging over the precipice, and an abyss seemed to open beside him-the abyss of eternity; when, lo! from the depths of the abyss there appeared a globe of fire (_un globe de feu_) encircled with the Cross; and the irresistible impulse was stirred in him to throw aside the world for ever, and embrace G.o.d,-”Not the G.o.d of philosophers or of savants,”
but ”the G.o.d of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob-the G.o.d of Jesus Christ,”
from whom he had been severed, but from whom he felt he never more would be severed; abiding in Him in ”sweet and total renunciation” of all else.
The idea, of course, is that Pascal's dream or vision was the result of physical derangement; and it may be safely granted that if the reality at all corresponded to Lelut's imaginary picture, this is its natural explanation. The story of the ”vision” and the ”abyss” are thus made, not without a certain appearance of probability, to fit into one another, and both into the accident at Neuilly; and a certain congruity of external and internal alarm is hence given to the great crisis of Pascal's life. Unhappily, however, there is a lack of evidence regarding the accident itself, {94} and, still more, the accompanying story of the abyss seen by Pascal at his side, which must make the reader cautious who has no theory to support. Voltaire, in his usual manner, made the most of Pascal's supposed delusions. ”In the last years of his life,” he said, ”Pascal believed that he had seen an abyss _by the side of his chair_,-need we on that account have the same fancy? I, too, see an abyss, but it is in the very things which he believed that he had explained.” He quotes also the authority of Leibnitz for the statement that Pascal's melancholy had led his intellect astray-a result, he adds, not at all wonderful in the case of a man of such delicate temperament and gloomy imagination. But Voltaire was not precise here, as in other matters about Pascal. He understood him too little to be a good judge of his mental peculiarities. All that Leibnitz really said was, that Pascal, ”in wis.h.i.+ng to fathom the depths of religion, had become scrupulous even to folly.” {95}
Whatever explanation we may give of the supposed incidents attending Pascal's conversion, there never was a more absurd fancy than that Pascal's mind suffered any eclipse in the great change that came to him.
He may have been credulous, he may have been superst.i.tious. The miracle of the Holy Thorn may be an evidence of the one, and the unnatural asceticism of his later years a proof of the other. But to speak of the author of the 'Provincial Letters,' of the problems on the Cycloid, and finally of the 'Pensees,' as if his intellect had suffered from his conversion, is to use words without meaning. All his n.o.blest writings were the product of his religious experience, and he never soared so high in intellectual and literary achievement as when moving on the wings of spiritual indignation or of spiritual aspiration.