TO DAY IN HISTORY

Southland Times, Issue 20516, 19 June 1928, Page 6

TO DAY IN HISTORY

JUNE 19 Born: James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England, at Edinburgh Castle, 1566; Blaise Pascal, French religious writer, at Clermont, in Auvergne, 1623; Philip van Limborch, Armenian theologian, Amsterdam, 1633; FieldMarshal Earl Haig, 1861. Died: St. Romuald, at Aucona, 1027; Piera Gaveston, favourite of Edward 11, executed at Gaversyke, 1312; Nicolaa Lemery, one of the fathers of true chemistry, at Paris, 1715; John Brown D.D, Scottish Dissenting divine, author of the “Self Interpreting Bible,” at Haddington, 1787; Sir Joseph Banks, naturalist, at Spring Grove, 1820. Events: Confederate raider Alabama sunk by Federal Monitor, Keersage, in the U.S. Civil War, 1864; Haase, Bernsten and Kautsky in German declare war cannot be supjx>rted by true Socialists, 1915; King George abolished foreign titles in the British Royal family and conferred British peerages on the Tecks and Battenbergs, 1917; British retook Meteren, Lys front and Allies make progress on Marere front, Toudern air station bombed, two Zeppelins believed to be destroyed, 1918. PASCAL. A mind of singular strength and keenness united to a fragile and sensitive body, afflicted with disease and tormented by austerity, constituted Blaise Pascal. As soon as he could talk he amazed everyone by his precocious intelligence. He was an only son and h*s father, learned man, and President of the Court of Aids in Auvergne, proud of his boy, resigned his office, and went to reside in Paris for the more effectual prosecution of the boy’s education. He had been taught something of geometry for which he showed a marvellous aptitude) but his instructors wishing to concentrate his attention on Latin and Greek, removed every book treating of mathematics out of his way. This passion was not thus to be defeated. One day Blaise was caught sitting on the floor making diagrams in charcoal and on examination it was discovered that he had worked out several problems in Euclid for himself. No check was henceforth placed on his inclination, and he quickly became a first rate mathematician. At sixteen he produced a treatise on Conic Sections which was praised by Descartes, and at nineteen he devised an ingenious caL culating machine. At twenty-four he experimentally verified Torricelli’s conjecture that the atmosphere had weight, and gave the reason of nature’s horror of a vacuum.

There Is no telling what might have been his success as a natural philosopher, had he not, when about twenty-five, come under the influence of overpowering religious convictions, which led him to abandon science as unworthy of the attention -of an immortal creature. The inmates of the convent of Port Royal had received the Augustinian writings of Bishop Jansen with fervent approval, and had brought upon themselves the violent, enmity of the Jesuits. With the cause of the Port Royalists or Jansenists, Pascal identified himself with his whole heart, and an effective and terrible ally he proved. In 1656 under the signature of Louis de Montalte he issued his “Lettres Ecrites a un Provincial par un de ses Amis,” in which he attacked the principle and practices of the Jesuits with wit, sarcasm and eloquence. The “Provincial Lettres” have long taken their place among the classics of universal literature by common consent. Jansenism has been defined as Calvinism in doctrine united to the rites and strictest discipline of the Church of Rome; and Pascal’s life and leaching illustrate the accuracy of the definition. His opinions were Calvanistic and his habits those of a Catholic saint of the first order of merit. His health was always wretched, his body was reduced to skin and bone, and from pain he was seldom free. Yet he wore a girdle armed with iron spikes, which he was accustomed to drive in upon his fleshless ribs as often as he felt languid or drowsy. His meals he fixed at a certain weight, and whatever his appetite, he ate neither more nor less. All seasonings and spice he prohibited, :m<l was never known to say of any dish, "Tnis is very nice.” Indeed he strove to be unconscious of the flavours of food, and used to gulp it to prevent his palate receiving any gratification. For the same reason he dreaded alike to love, and to be loved. Towards the sister who reverenced him as a sacred being, he assumed an artificial harshness of manner —for the express purpose, as he acknowledged of repelling her sisterly affection. He rebuked a mother who permitted her own children to kiss her, and was annoyed when someone chanced to say that he had just seen a beautiful woman. Writing of his death one old writer says: “He died in 1662 aged thirty-nine, and the examination of his body revealed a fearful spectacle. The stomach and liver were shrivelled up and the intestines were in a gangrenous state. The brain was of unusual size and density and, strange to say, there was no trace of sutures in the skull, except the sagittal, which was pressed open by the brain as if for relief. The frontal suture instead of the ordinary dovetailing which takes place in childhood, had become filled with a calculus or non-natural deposit, which could be felt through the scalp and obtruded on the ‘dura mater.’ Of the coronal suture there was no sign. His brain wan thus enclosed in a solid, unyielding case or helmet with a gap at the sagittal suture. Within the cranium, at the part opposite the ventricles were two depressions filled with coagulated blood in a corrupt state, and which had produced a gangrenous spot on the ‘dura mater.’ How Pascal, racked with such agonies from within, should have supplemented them with such afflictions from without, is one of those mysteries, in which human nature is so prolific. Regarding himself as a Christian, and a type of others, well might his say, as he often did, ‘lllness is the natural state of the Christian.’ ”

In his last years Pascal was engaged on a “Defence of Christianity,” and after his death the fathers of Port Royal published the materials he had accumulated for its construction as the “Pensees de Pascal.” The manuscripts, happily, were preserved—fragmentary, elliptical, enigmatical, interlined, blotted, and sometimes quite illegible though they were. Some years ago, M. Cousin suggested the collation of the printer! text with the autograph, when the startling fact came to light that “The Thoughts” the world for generations had been reading as Pascal’s had been garbled in the most distressing manner by the original editors, cut down, extended, and modified according to their own notions and apprehensions of their adversaries. In 1852, a faithful version of “The Thoughts” was published in Paris by M. Ernest Havet, and their revival in their natural state has deepened anew our regret for the sublime genius which perished ere its prime.