Blaise Pascal, mathematician, theologian, and one of the
greatest writers of French prose, was born on June 19, 1623,
at Clermont-Ferrand, and died on August 19, 1662. His mother
died in his fourth year, and the father, an eminent lawyer,
took the boy with his two sisters to Paris. Pascal showed the
most astonishing mathematical genius; he produced at the age
of seventeen a profound work on conic sections, and devoted
the following years to physical researches and to
investigations in the higher mathematics. In 1654, Pascal,
having experienced a remarkable vision, which he recorded on a
parchment known as his "amulet," renounced the world and
entered on the ascetic life, in close relations with the
Jansenist community. Hence, in the interests of Arnauld, the
Jansenist leader, Pascal issued the famous "Letters Written to
a Provincial" ("Lettres Ecrites par Louis de Montalte a un
Provincial de ses Amis"), a series of eighteen tracts directed
with the keenest and bitterest irony against the casuistry of
the Jesuits. The "Letters" appeared during a period of
fourteen months, the first being dated January 23, 1656, and
the last March 24, 1657. They took the form of little
pamphlets, each of eight or twelve quarto pages; they had a
very large circulation, and created an immense impression
throughout Catholic countries. They are open letters, intended
really for the public and not for any individual.

_I.--LAX CASUISTS_

SIR,--I send you, as I promised, the chief outlines of the moral
teaching of these good Jesuit fathers, these "men so eminent in doctrine
and in wisdom, who are led by that divine wisdom which is more
trustworthy than all philosophy." Possibly you think that I speak in
jest. I speak seriously, or, rather, it is they who have spoken thus of
themselves. I only copy their words where they write, "It is a society
of men, or, rather, of angels, foretold by the prophet Isaiah." They
claim to have changed the face of Christianity. We must believe it,
since they have told us so; and, indeed, you will see how far they have
done so, when you have mastered their maxims.

I took care to be instructed by themselves and trusted to nothing which
my friend had told me. I had been told such strange things that I could
hardly believe them, until I was shown them in their own books; and then
I could say