t pages of criticism that
Sainte-Beuve ever wrote. It is sufficient to notice that the next
occupation of Pascal, after his conversion, was to write these eighteen
"Letters," which as prose are of capital importance in the foundation of
French classical style, and which as polemic are surpassed by none, not
by Demosthenes, or Cicero, or Swift. They have the limitation of all
polemic and forensic: they persuade, they seduce, they are unfair. But
it is also unfair to assert that, in these _Letters to a Provincial_,
Pascal was attacking the Society of Jesus in itself. He was attacking
rather a particular school of casuistry which relaxed the requirements
of the Confessional; a school which certainly flourished amongst the
Society of Jesus at that time, and of which the Spaniards Escobar and
Molina are the most eminent authorities. He undoubtedly abused the art
of quotation, as a polemical writer can hardly help but do; but there
were abuses for him to abuse; and he did the job thoroughly. His
_Letters_ must not be called theology. Academic theology was not a
department in which Pascal was versed; when necessary, the fathers of
Port-Royal came to his aid. The _Letters_ are the work of one of the
finest mathematical minds of any time, and of a man of the world who
addressed, not theologians, but the world in general--all of the
cultivated and many of the less cultivated of the French laity; and with
this public they made an astonishing success.

During this time Pascal never wholly abandoned his scientific interests.
Though in his religious writings he composed slowly and painfully, and
revised often, in matters of mathematics his mind seemed to move with
consummate natural ease and grace. Discoveries and inventions sprang
from his brain without effort; among the minor devices of this later
period, the first omnibus service in Paris is said to owe its origin to
his inventiveness. But rapidly failing health, and absorption in the
great work he had in mind, left him little time and energy during the
last two years of his life.

The plan of what we call the _Pensees_ formed itself about 1660. The
completed book was to have been a carefully constructed defence of
Christianity, a true Apology and a kind of Grammar of Assent, setting
forth the reasons which will convince the intellect. As I have indicated
before, Pascal was not a theologian, and on dogmatic theology had
recourse to his spiritual advisers. Nor was he indeed a syst