Coleman Francis X. J. - Neither Angel nor Beast

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

NEITHER ANGEL NOR BEAST

NEITHER ANGEL NOR BEAST

The Life and Work of Blaise Pascal

FRANCIS X. J. COLEMAN

Volume 9

First published in 1986

This edition first published in 2013

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1986 Francis X. J. Coleman

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Neither

ANGEL nor BEAST

The Life and Work of Blaise Pascal

FRANCIS X.J. COLEMAN

Routledge & Kegan Paul
New York and London

First published in 1986

by Routledge & Kegan Paul Inc.

in association with Methuen Inc.

29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Published in Great Britain by

Routledge & Kegan Paul plc

11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Set in 10 on 12 pt Linotron Garamond

by Inforum Ltd, Portsmouth

and printed in Great Britain

by T J Press (Padstow) Ltd

Padstow, Cornwall

CopyrightFrancis X. J. Coleman 1986

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Coleman, Francis X. J.

Neither angel nor beast.

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.

I. Pascal, Blaise, 1623-1662. 2. Philosophers

FranceBiography. I. Title.

B1903.C65 1986 230'.2'0924 [B] 85-28271

British Library CIP data available

ISBN 0-7102-0693-3

Man is neither angel nor beast; and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the beast.

Lhomme nest ni ange ni bte; et le malheur veut que qui veut faire lange fait le bte.

Pascal, Penses (329)

For Mary Arms Edmonds
18811966
scholar, linguist and bibliophile

CONTENTS

PLATES

between pages 84 and 85

Presumed portrait of Pascal, mistakenly attributed to Philippe de Champaigne. French School, seventeenth century (The Louvre)

Cardinal Richelieu, by Philippe de Champaigne (The Louvre)

Port-Royal des Champs, general lay-out. Gouache by Madeleine de Boullongne (Versailles)

Port-Royal des Champs, viewed from a hill. Gouache by Madeleine de Boullongne (Versailles)

Louis XIII, by Philippe de Champaigne (The Louvre)

Ex-voto of 1662, by Philippe de Champaigne (The Louvre)

Mre Angelique Arnauld, by Philippe de Champaigne (The Louvre)

The Crucifixion, by Philippe de Champaigne (The Louvre)

The dead Christ on his shroud, by Philippe de Champaigne (The Louvre)

The Last Supper, by Philippe de Champaigne (The Louvre)

Jrme Le Feron, provost of the Guilds of Paris, and the municipal body of the City of Paris, by Philippe de Champaigne (The Louvre)

Title page of the Provincial Letters, Cologne, 1657 (Edmonds Collection, Special Collections, Boston University Libraries)

Title page of the Penses, Amsterdam, 1709 (Edmonds Collection, Special Collections, Boston University Libraries)

Page from the folio of the Penses, folio 89 (Edmonds Collection, Special Collections, Boston University Libraries)

Portrait sketch of Pascal by his friend Jean Domat (Muse National des Granges de Port-Royal)

Death mask of Pascal (Muse National des Granges de Port-Royal)

Plates 111 Photo: Muses Nationaux, Paris

The research materials on which the present work is based are largely drawn from the collection of Mary Arms Edmonds, who was fascinated by the writings and historical milieu of Blaise Pascal. During her frequent trips abroad, Mrs Edmonds collected books and manuscripts connected with the history of Port-Royal and Jansenism, with the ultimate goal of writing a detailed analysis of Pascals life and writing. Unfortunately, her untimely death prevented her from fulfilling her goal. Although I have examined Mrs Edmondss notebooks concerning her project on Pascal, and read the marginalia in her own hand in her collection, I can make no claim that the present work is similar to the one that she had in mind, or even that it would have pleased her. I can only hope that it would have done so, since I am greatly indebted to her ardor for Pascal. Mrs Edmondss collection of works by and pertaining to Pascal is the best and most comprehensive in the United States, and second only to the holdings of the Bibliothque Nationale in Paris.

The collection is now in the archives of Special Collections of Boston University. I am also greatly indebted to Dr Howard B. Gotlieb, Director of Special Collections, for his vast support and patience in seeing the present work to its completion. Dr Gotlieb, the foremost curator of twentieth-century collections and memorabilia, has directed me to parts of the Pascal collection that I would otherwise have missed, and has encouraged the kind support of his own staff.

I must also thank Dr Dean S. Edmonds, Professor of Physics at Boston University, for his generous support of the present work. I have therefore dedicated it to the memory of his mother, Mary Arms Edmonds.

I should like to thank Mr John Pearson for his conscientious preparation of the manuscript.

All references to the Penses are numbered following the Bibliothque de la Pliade edition, Pascal: Oeuvres Compltes, edited and annotated by Jacques Chevalier (Paris, Gallimard, 1954). The numbering of the Pliade edition can readily be correlated with the earlier and less accurate edition by Lon Brunschvicg. E.g., pense 329 is 358 in Brunschvicgs edition. (Cf. Table de Concordance in the Pliade edition.) Louis Lafuma has another system of numbering Pascals Penses. The difficulties surrounding the manuscript are discussed in the present study in The Supreme Apologist, below, pp. 137ff. All translations are by the author.

I

Pascal was a mathematician, a physicist, an inventor, a theologian, a philosopher, and the greatest prose stylist in the French language. The son of a minor nobleman, Pascal was born at Clermont-Ferrand, in the Auvergne, in 1623. He began as a mathematical prodigy, developed into a student of physics, and completed his brief life in 1662 as a profound religious thinker. Pascal never attempted to base his theology on any particular philosophical system; indeed, he found skepticism to be the most convincing of all philosophies. To Pascal the long skeptical tradition beginning with the ancient Greeks provided the best arguments not only for the impossibility of constructing a philosophy, but also for subduing mans natural arrogance and for mans misery without God a theme that pervades all of Pascals philosophical and theological works.