[In the essay below, Brooks traces the progress of Condorcet's evaluation of Pascal, which began as admiration and eventually deteriorated into dismissive contempt of Pascal's religious beliefs.]

One of the more remarkable critics of Pascal toward the end of the eighteenth century was the youthful mathematician and social philosopher Condorcet. The purpose of this paper is to trace the interesting evolution of Condorcet's attitude from that of appreciative admirer of the genius of Port-Royal to disapproving critic of the Jansenist religious fanatic. To be sure, the interpretation of Pascal first published by Condorcet when he was not much beyond the age of thirty already shows him to be a disciple of the Enlightenment under the influence of his philosophe friends, Voltaire and Alembert¹. Nevertheless, a most striking feature of Condorcet's Eloge de Pascal (written around 1774), in contrast to the combative and antagonistic stance of his two Encyclopedist mentors, is the moderation and balance of his portrait of the author of the Pensées.

As a matter of fact, Condorcet's presentation of Pascal was much too sympathetic from Voltaire's viewpoint and he is reported as having commented: ‘si cet homme-là était un aussi grand homme nous sommes de grands sots nous autres de ne pouvoir penser comme lui; m. de Condorcet nous fera un grand tort s'il imprime cet ouvrage tel qu'il me l'a envoyé.’² Condorcet's appreciative comments on his fellow mathematician are all the more interesting in the light of the young marquis's own growing radicalism and anticlericalism. Not long before the appearance of his Eloge de Pascal, he had published anonymously in Berlin his Lettres d'un théologien (1774) that were so openly disobedient to authority that Voltaire hastened to deny authorship of the work and characterized it as ‘un ouvrage aussi dangereux qu'admirable’ and ‘un écrit funeste’. Condorcet had dared to threaten the clergy with apostrophes like: ‘N'espérez plus de paix: une voix terrible s'est élevée contre vous; elle a retenti d'un bout de l'Europe à l'autre. … Votre chute approche, et le genre humain que vous avez si longtemps infecté de fables, va enfin respirer.’³ These Lettres were so virulent and sure to arouse the animosity of people in power that, in alluding to their author, Voltaire characterized him as ‘Pascal second’.

Surely one reason for Condorcet's attraction to the scientific genius of Pascal was his own early interest and grounding in mathematics. He had done his schooling at the Collège de Navarre where the first chair in physics in France had been established in 1752 and which had become an institution particularly notable for its scientific spirit; he had also avidly read the Mémoires of Fontaine and the works of the Bernoullis, Euler and Alembert. Thus, his own early background had a definite mathematical orientation and his first published work was an essay on integral calculus produced at the age of twenty-two. Condorcet's early work in mathematics was purely analytical in character and shows him to be a disciple of Fontaine and Alembert concerned particularly with the problem of the integration of differential equations⁴. In 1772, however, only a few years before the publication of his Eloge de Pascal, the focus of Condorcet's mathematical interests changed from analysis to probability. He now wished to apply mathematics to a study of human conduct through the use of an adequate theory of chance. His mathematical preoccupations became less technical and were directed toward the adaptation of a calculus of probability to a scientific knowledge of man that might lead to a quickening of human progress and to the influencing of political power and public opinion. Thus, in 1785, he would write that ‘political arithmetic’ had become ‘l'objet presque unique de mes recherches’ (Œuvres, i.326).

This apparent dichotomy in Condorcet's own career is reflected in his biographical portrait of Pascal. Condorcet writes admiringly of Pascal's superior mathematical talents as a young man and mentions particularly his treatise on conic sections and his calculating machine. Condorcet saw the great value implicit in such a machine in permitting the scientist to easily perform all his necessary numerical calculations⁵; but, in the light of the progress that had already been achieved in the field of astronomy since the time of Pascal, he also saw that Pascal's device was already clearly outmoded. Condorcet proceeds to give a detailed account of Pascal's scientific experiments and accomplishments, and notes that after his work on fluids, Pascal's attention turns from mathematics and physics to the study of man. Thus, both Condorcet and Pascal begin their careers with an interest in pure mathematics and science but later became preoccupied principally with the moral and social problems of humanity.

Condorcet, however, sees science as an ally in the resolution of man's moral and social problems; he attributes Pascal's own preoccupation with the human predicament to a psychological need of his introverted mind. Realizing that neither science nor introspection could provide the ultimate answers to the problems disturbing him, Condorcet concludes that Pascal's only hope for peace of mind and certitude lay in religion, and that his lifelong project thus became an effort to prove the truth of religion based on a deeper understanding of human nature. Because of his own confidence in science and his own allegiance to the ideals of the Enlightenment, Condorcet ends the Eloge by disagreeing with Pascal's basic moral and religious point of view. But, in contrast to Voltaire, who sought principally to combat Pascal, Condorcet makes a more than adequate attempt to analyze and understand Pascal as a man, as a creator and as a thinker. At the outset of his Remarques sur les Pensées de Pascal, Voltaire had cast himself in the rôle of a defender of humanity against the author of the Pensées: ‘J'ose prendre le parti de l'humanité contre ce misanthrope sublime’ (M.xiv.28). On the other hand, the view of Pascal that emerges in Condorcet's presentation is that of the man of genius whose greatness survives the sectarian religious disputes of his time: ‘Les Provinciales et ses Pensées l'ont placé au rang des hommes éloquents et des grands écrivains; son nom, lié avec la découverte de la pesanteur de l'air, tiendra toujours une place honorable dans l'histoire de la physique; et son Traité de la roulette sera regardé comme un monument imposant de la force de l'esprit humain’ (Œuvres, iii.631-632).

Setting aside the polemical content of the Provinciales, Condorcet finds much to admire in the book's style and art. Indeed, by virtue of the author's great artistry, achieved through the happy combination of plaisanterie and éloquence, nobility and naturalness, finesse and impeccable taste, Condorcet considers the Provinciales transformed from a mere exercise in sectarian theology to something much more universal: ‘ses lettres devinrent le livre de tous les états, de tous les esprits, de tous les âges’ (Œuvres, iii.599). But, in judging the work's partisan quality, Condorcet not unexpectedly takes issue with Pascal's sectarian commitment: ‘en attaquant la morale relâchée des jésuites, et leur acharnement dans les disputes de jansénisme, il a respecté leur intolérance et leur fanatisme, et … il n'a vengé que les jansénistes au lieu de venger le genre humain’ (Œuvres, iii.602). Ultimately, however, it is the genius of Pascal, overshadowing both Jansenists and Jesuits, that emerges in Condorcet's analysis. Indeed, writing from the vantage point of history, Condorcet looks upon Pascal's genius as an example of the strength of intellect over power in its survival of the condemnation and decline of both Jansenists and Jesuits. To his credit, Condorcet was sufficiently free-spirited to admire the brilliance of Pascal while disagreeing with his basic point of view. This, no doubt, led to Voltaire's reference to the young critic, in a letter to Alembert, as ‘le panégiriste très raisonnable de Pascal’ (Best.19705).

In his own remarks on Pascal in the Lettres philosophiques, Voltaire's procedure was to pay momentary lip service to Pascal's genius and eloquence in the introductory paragraph of the twenty-fifth Lettre and then to undermine the Jansenist philosopher by a demonstration of the faultiness and reprehensibility of his thought throughout the rest of the commentary. As his adversary, Voltaire took exception to Pascal's fundamental analysis of human nature and to his general attitude toward mankind: ‘Il s'acharne à nous peindre tous méchants et malheureux: il écrit contre la nature humaine à peu près comme il écrivait contre les jésuites. Il impute à l'essence de notre nature ce qui n'appartient qu'à certains hommes; il dit éloquemment des injures au genre humain’ (M.xiv.28). Voltaire was of the opinion that, like all books bent on proving the truth of the Christian religion, the Pensées was a work of fantasy and illusion.

Needless to say, Condorcet was well aware of Voltaire's attitude toward Pascal. He alludes to it in the preface to his Eloge: ‘M. de Voltaire est le premier qui ait osé dire que tout ce que Pascal avait écrit n'était pas sublime; on l'a accusé d'envie, et on a fini par convenir qu'il avait raison’ (Œuvres, iii.576). While apparently minimizing the extent of Voltaire's hostility to Pascal, Condorcet himself looked upon the Pensées as another example of Pascal's brilliance. Unlike the patriarch of Ferney, he considered the author of the Pensées an excellent analyst of human psychology and of the foibles and misery of the human condition; Pascal's aim of showing man's need of the Christian religion in the Pensées was also deemed worthy of his genius. ‘Jamais on n'a démêlé, avec plus de finesse, tous les détails de la corruption et de la vanité. Jamais on n'a su fouiller avec tant de profondeur dans le cœur de l'homme, et jamais un mépris plus froid et mieux exprimé n'a montré la supériorité du génie qui a su pénétrer sa propre misère. … S'il m'était permis de hasarder mon opinion sur le projet de cet homme célèbre, je dirais que ce projet me paraît digne de son génie’ (Œuvres, iii.620).

Condorcet appears to accept Pascal's description of contemporary man as wicked and corrupt, although, in his positive concern with the concrete steps that might be taken to ameliorate the human condition, he refuses to concede that such corruption is general, natural or incurable. Voltaire, on the other hand, had refused to admit in his Remarques on Pascal that man was as corrupt as he had been depicted by his Jansenist opponent. Mankind was, in the opinion of the Voltaire of 1734, basically all right as it was. ‘Notre existence n'est point si malheureuse qu'on veut nous le faire accroire’, he had written. ‘Regarder l'universe comme un cachot, et tous les hommes comme des criminels qu'on va exécuter est l'idée d'un fanatique. … Penser que la terre, les hommes et les animaux, sont ce qu'ils doivent être dans l'ordre de la Providence, est, je crois, d'un homme sage’ (M.xiv.34). Years later, of course, Voltaire was to abandon this sanguine confidence and adopt a more activist attitude regarding the necessity of improving the lot of mankind. Curiously, while Condorcet went along with Pascal in his description of contemporary man, he became ever so much more optimistic than Voltaire by his expression of faith in the limitless and systematic progress of mankind in the Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain.

Condorcet and Pascal part ways in their vision of the future course of humanity. In the mind of the great philosopher of progress, the author of the Pensées became too attached to the ways of the past and to time-honoured opinion. Pascal's anti-scientific spirit was out of touch with the intellectual revolution of his age. Pascal's entire hope for man lay in religion and his goal was to convince men of their own weakness and to show them that their salvation lay in the miraculous and supernatural assistance of Christianity. For Condorcet, mankind's future was bound up with scientific progress, and human happiness would be perfected along with the perfection of science. Pascal believed that in ethics and human conduct, reason alone could not bring us to truth since self-interest, the passions and even the very love of virtue affect our judgment. By extension, little progress could be hoped for from the natural sciences without impetus from the moral sphere. As a man of science, Condorcet saw Pascal caught in a vicious circle of habit and tradition: if man casts aside reason and, in a state of fear and bewilderment, gropes for help in religion, he will turn to the religion of his youth whose absurdities and inconsistencies are concealed to him by the very habits inculcated during childhood. Habit and tradition were the enemies of the doctrine of progress in the ‘new philosophy’ that would bring about happiness for mankind. Pascal, Condorcet noted disapprovingly, not only did not believe in the progress of the ‘new philosophy’ but thought the whole idea rather dangerous (Œuvres, iii.634).

Toward the beginning of 1776, Condorcet acquired a manuscript copy of the Pensées. Of the opinion that the selective edition of the Pensées published by Nicole and Arnauld had been composed with the partisan interests of the Jansenists in mind rather than the good of the author, Condorcet assembled his own selection of Pensées deleted from the Port-Royal edition by the solitaires and published them in a limited 507 page in-octavo volume which he distributed to his friends. As his biographer Arago has pointed out (Œuvres, vol. i, p. lxxx), the new edition of the Pensées sins in the opposite direction through numerous and systematic omissions. Embracing only about one-tenth of the material included in modern editions, Condorcet's presentation of the Pensées significantly reduces Pascal's remarks on the Christian religion to a minimum with the result that the entire force of the apologia is largely diminished⁶.

This truncated and slanted version of the Pensées did not displease Voltaire who, noting the restricted circulation of the 1776 edition, volunteered to have the work reprinted at his expense. The gesture was a great compliment to the young Condorcet since Voltaire, the greatest living French author, would become his publisher and editor at a time when he had still written relatively little. But, as Arago has suggested, Voltaire probably had an ulterior motive: ‘Me tromperais-je, cependant, si je supposais qu'il se mêlait, à ces légitimes hommages de l'auteur du Dictionnaire philosophique, un peu d'animosité contre l'écrivain janséniste; que l'auteur de la Henriade, de Mérope et de tant d'admirables poésies légères, voyait avec une secrète joie attaquer l'infaillibilité de l'homme qui, placé aux premiers rangs parmi les prosateurs, avait osé dire même après la publication du Cid et de Cinna, que toute poésie n'était en réalité qu'un jargon?’ (Œuvres, vol.i, p.lxxxiii).

In his commentary on the Pensées, Condorcet specifically takes issue with Pascal on his anti-Stoicism and his attitude on human justice. Pascal had attacked the Stoic cultivation of indifference to the passions, desires and emotions as a basis for a rational and independent way of life. He had written about the impossibility of man's achieving inner contentment and security through a determined effort to ward off the effects of evil and pain: ‘les philosophes ont beau dire: “Retirez-vous en vous-mêmes, vous y trouverez votre bien”; on ne les croit pas; et ceux qui les croient sont les plus vides et les plus sots.’⁷ Pascal had naturally opposed the Stoics because his aim was to show the insufficiency of man, bereft of god and Christianity, to attain happiness. Condorcet, on the other hand, with his anticlerical attitude and his confidence in human progress, gave his approval to the Stoic philosophy of placing within human nature itself the substance of man's strength and happiness. If human progress was to be scientifically oriented, Condorcet could hardly have taken exception to the Stoic philosophy of self-reliance.

In his discussion of human justice, Pascal had distinguished between a normative concept of justice and its positive application. As a matter of course, he had expressed his approval of the application of ideal justice, but noted pragmatically that justice was impotent and meaningless unless accompanied by the necessary force for its implementation. On the other hand, the unjust use of force was tyrannical: ‘La justice sans force est contredite, parce qu'il y a toujours des méchants; la force sans la justice est accusée. Il faut donc mettre ensemble la justice et la force, et, pour cela, faire que ce qui est juste soit fort, ou que ce qui est fort soit juste’ (p. 1160). To emphasize the inconsistency and variability of human justice, as compared to divine justice, Pascal had noted how subject it was to dispute and opinion. Realistically, man had perverted justice so that it became equated with brute force: ‘Et ainsi, ne pouvant faire que ce qui est juste fût fort, on a fait que ce qui est fort fût juste’ (p. 1161). Condorcet took this last quotation out of context to suggest that Pascal approved the equation of justice and force and to note the similarity of Pascal's ostensible position to the Hobbesian notion of justice: ‘Pascal semble se rapprocher ici des idées de Hobbes, et le plus dévot des philosophes de son siècle est, sur la nature du juste et de l'injuste, du même avis que le plus irreligieux’ (Œuvres, iii.643). Soon to become an advocate of the American form of government and the author of a work setting forth America as a model for new policies in France, Condorcet disapproved of Hobbes's emphasis on the priority of power over law. Pascal is thus reprimanded by Condorcet's association of him with that point of view.

Condorcet's esteem for Pascal declines even further a few years later. He became one of the editors of the Kehl edition of Voltaire's works published from 1784 to 1789, in which he included an Avertissement on Voltaire's Remarques sur les Pensées de Pascal. The influence of Voltaire over Condorcet may be seen in the over-laudatory and uncritical biography of him that Condorcet wrote for inclusion in volume lxx of this posthumous edition of Voltaire's works. In the Avertissement, Condorcet no longer sees genius in Pascal's works, except in his contributions to mathematics and physics, and the author of the Eloge de Pascal now refuses to even grant him the title of philosopher or to agree that he was an observant commentator on human mores. His new estimation of Pascal now seems to coincide with Voltaire's views: ‘Ses Pensées sont un plaidoyer contre l'espèce humaine; ce n'est point, comme Larochefoucauld, un observateur qui peint les hommes corrompus, parce qu'il les a vus tels à la cour, dans la guerre civile, dans une société occupée de galanterie et de vanité … Pascal ne cherchait pas à connaître l'homme: voulant prouver qu'il est une énigme inexplicable, il semble craindre de trouver le mot de cette énigme’ (Œuvres, iv.292). No longer is Pascal regarded as the genius rising above theological and religious sectarianism. In a comparison of Pascal and Bayle, Condorcet emphasizes the limitations of Pascal as a submissive disciple of Jansenist theologians hampered by monkish pettiness. Pascal is now shown to be concerned only with the interests of priests and nuns; his pyrrhonism is seen as a result of his religious fanaticism; all in all, Pascal could almost pass for a Church father. Voltaire's relentless attack on Pascal, on the other hand, is presented as an example of ‘une philosophie douce, modérée, fondée sur l'expérience' (Œuvres, iv.294). Thus, in his final view of the philosopher of Port-Royal, Condorcet withdraws his early esteem for Pascal and refers to him as a Jansenist totally identified with the religious fanaticism that he and the other eighteenth-century philosophes found so repugnant.

Notes

1. that Condorcet's views on Pascal are largely a synthesis of those of Voltaire and Alembert is the conclusion of David Finch in his dissertation La Critique philosophique de Pascal au XVIII^e siècle (Philadelphia 1940), pp. 53-73. Voltaire had written against Pascal as early as 1728 and his Remarques sur les Pensées de Pascal were published in the Lettres philosophiques. Alembert's views were expressed in his Discours préliminaire to the Encyclopédie.

2. reported by Amélie Suard to Jean Baptiste Antoine Suard in her letter of 3 June 1775 (Best.18385).

3. Condorcet, Œuvres, ed. A. Condorcet-O'Connor and F. Arago (Paris 1847-1849), v.337-338. Future references to Condorcet's works will be to this edition and will be simply designated Œuvres.

4. for a study of Condorcet's mathematical thought and its relation to his social and political ideas, see Gilles-Gaston Granger, La Mathématique sociale du marquis de Condorcet (Paris 1956).

5. Voltaire sought to minimize even Pascal's mathematical contribution. On Pascal's calculating machine, he commented: ‘dans les montagnes de la Suisse, des Vosges et du Tyrol, on a vu des jeunes gens sans éducation construire des machines arithmétiques à peu près semblables’ (M.xxi.5).

6. for an analysis of Condorcet's edition of the Pensées see Finch, pp. 59-65.

7. Pascal, Pensées in his Œuvres complètes, ed. Jacques Chevalier (Paris 1954), p. 1190. In Condorcet's commentary, the cited passage is stronger: ‘les philosophes ont beau dire: Rentrez en vous même, vous y trouverez votre bien; on ne les croit pas, et ceux qui les croient sont les plus vides et les plus sots; car qu'y a-t-il de plus ridicule et de plus vain que ce que proposent les stoïciens, et de plus faux que tous leurs raisonnements?’ (Œuvres, iii.641).