The New Lifetime Reading Plan

The second Moliиre is the strange man who turned his own sad life into comedy: his illness into The Imaginary Invalid; his tragic marriage into The School for Wives; and, I think, his own bittersweet view of his society into The Misanthrope. Moliиre will never be a great favorite of the English-speaking world. His characters are conceived in the French classic tradition (when they are not even simpler reincarnations of the Italian commedia delParte). That is, they are not individuais, as Hamlet and Falstaff are, but walking and mainly talking incor- porations of single passions or ideas. From our viewpoint his plays are lacking in action. Finally he has none of the richness or unexpectedness of our Shakespeare [39]. Moliиre is ali logic and neatness.

Yet if we are willing to accept the French classic notion of a play as a kind of organized argument, constructed in accord with the rules of rhetoric, Moliиre is suddenly seen to be a master. We do not have to know much about the rules he fol- lowed (or quite often broke) to enjoy his thrusts at exaggerated conduct, his constant sense of the ridiculousness of human behavior, and the curious sadness that underlies much of his most hilarious comedy. "It's a strange business, making nice honest people laugh," says Dorante in The Critique of the Schoolfor Wives. Moliиre must have found it so.

For those who do not know French he offers only moderate enjoyment. Somehow in English he sometimes sounds what he was not—simpleminded. I rather like the translations by either Donald Frame, Richard Wilbur, or Morris Bishop. Try The Schoolfor Wives, Tartuffe, The Misanthrope, and The Would- Be Gentleman. There are four other equally major plays: The Miser, Don Juan, The Imaginary Invalid, and The Learned Ladies.

C.F.

47

BLAISE PASCAL

1623-1662 Thoughts (Pensйes)

Pascal is a seeming oddity, for he possessed in the highest degree a number of traits not usually combined in a single per- sonality. First and foremost, he is a scientific and mathematical genius. Second, he is a master of prose style; indeed he is often thought of as the norm of classic French prose. Third, he is an acute though unsystematic psychologist. Fourth, he is a God- thirsty, tormented soul, a kind of failed saint. To a freethinker such as Eric T. Bell, author of the fascinating Men of Mathematics, Pascal ruined his life by his preoccupation with religious controversy: "On the mathematical side Pascal is the greatest might-have-been in history." It is hard to make a sen- sible judgment. Pascal was Pascal. The man who in love and terror cried out for God, and the man who thought of the omnibus and invented the syringe are somehow indivisible.

At twelve, before he had been taught any mathematics, Pascal was proving Euclid for himself. At sixteen he had writ- ten a trail-blazing work on conic sections, of which we possess only fragmentary indications. At eighteen, he had invented the first calculating machine and so became one of the fathers of our Computer Age. At twenty-four he had demonstrated the barometer. He did classic work in hydrostatics, and most of us remember PascaPs Law from high school, provided we were lucky enough to attend a high school that offered physics. In mathematics he is famous, among other matters, for having discovered and shown the properties of a notable curve called the cycloid. For its beauty and also for its power to excite con- troversy, this has been termed the Helen of geometry.

His major contribution, not merely to science but to thought in general, is perhaps his work in the theory of proba- bility, the glory of which he shares with another mathemati- cian, Fermat. It is interesting to recall that the ascetic Pascal was stimulated to his great mathematical discoveries by a gam- blers' dispute involving the throw of dice. The ramifications of probability theory, writes Bell, "are everywhere, from the quantum theory to epistemology.^,>

As mathematician and physicist, Pascal will rank higher than he will as moralist and religious controversialist. Yet in these latter fields his influence has been considerable. Just as Montaigne [37], who both fascinated and repelled Pascal, stands for one mood of mankind, so Pascal stands for another. Montaigne lived at ease with skepticism; Pascal's heart and mind cried out for certainties. Montaigne contemplated the sad condition of man with interest, humor, and tolerance. Pascal, who had brilliant wit but no humor, regarded it with terror and despair, from which he was saved only by throwing himself on the breast of revealed religion.