The famous conversation with De Saci, when he entered Port Royal, must be taken as the chief key to Pascal’s own philosophical attitude. There is nowhere in any of the Thoughts so complete an exhibition of his point of view; and all the editors who have most entered into Pascal’s spirit—Sainte-Beuve, Faugère, and Havet alike—have recognised its importance. It is really, as Havet says, of the nature of an introduction to the ‘Pensées.’
In this conversation Pascal signalises what he believes to be the two great opposing systems of human philosophy at all times; the rational, dogmatic, or Stoical, on the one hand—the sceptical, or Epicurean, on the other. He takes Epictetus as the representative of the one; Montaigne as the representative of the other. In depicting dogmatism at other times, he seems to have Descartes especially in view; but in speaking of scepticism and Pyrrhonism (which is his own expression), it is always Montaigne that he has before him. Montaigne is Pyrrhonist par excellence; and undoubtedly page 180the famous Essays had greatly fascinated Pascal, like many others in his generation. He was constantly drawn to them as embodying one, and that a deep, phase of his own experience. He felt his own thought expressed in many pages of Montaigne, and had that favour for the Essays that every thoughtful man has for the book that makes his own experience alive, and brings it clearly before him. But he has, at the same time, made plainly intelligible his own differences from Montaigne, and marked with his usual boldness the limitations of his thought. If Pascal is Pyrrhonist, he is certainly not Pyrrhonist after the manner of Montaigne, deeply as he responds to many of the notes of the Essays, and at times seems to make them his own.
The conversation with De Saci took place in 1654, when Pascal first went to Port Royal des Champs, and De Saci became his spiritual director. We owe its preservation to Fontaine, from whose manuscript ‘Memoirs’ it was extracted, and first published in 1728 by Des Molets. After all the