th
deeply. His greatest work, the _Provinciales_, appeared in 1656. He died
on the 19th of August, 1662, having long lived in retirement and
asceticism, giving much of his substance to the poor, and abandoning
himself almost entirely to religious, mathematical, and philosophical
meditation.

We have nothing to do here with his purely mathematical works or those
in natural science. The two books by which he belongs to literature, and
which have placed him among the foremost writers of his country, are the
_Provinciales_ and the so-called _Pensees_. The former were regularly
published by himself in his lifetime, though they were ostensibly
anonymous, or rather pseudonymous. The _Pensees_ consist of scattered
reflections, which were found in his papers after his death. They were
published, but, as has been discovered of late years, with much omission
and garbling, and the restoration of them to their authentic form has
been effected in comparatively recent times.

The famous title of _Les Provinciales_ is only a convenient abbreviation
of the original, which is _Lettres Ecrites par Louis de Montalte a un
Provincial de ses Amis et aux Reverends Peres Jesuites sur le Sujet de
la Morale et de la Politique de ces Peres_. This somewhat cumbrous
appellation has at any rate the merit of exactly describing the
contents of the book, except that Louis de Montalte is of course a
pseudonym. The letters were written at the height of the early struggle
(which had not yet been interfered with by the secular arm) of
Jansenists and Jesuits, and they inflicted on the famous society a blow
from which it has never wholly recovered, and from which it can never
wholly recover. The method and style of Pascal are entirely original,
except in so far as a slight trace of indebtedness to Descartes may be
observed in the first respect, and a slight debt to Montaigne and the
_Satire Menippee_ in the second. His great weapon is polite irony, which
he first brought to perfection, and in the use of which he has hardly
been equalled and has certainly not been surpassed since. The intricate
casuistries of the Jesuits are unfolded in the gravest fashion and
without the least exaggeration or burlesque, but with a running comment
or rather insinuation of sarcasm which is irresistible. The author never
breaks out into a laugh, never allows himself to be declamatory and
indignant. There is always a smile on his countenance, but never
anything more pronounced