The genius of Pascal made the fortunes of Jansenism.  He outlived his Cartesianism and became its most influential spokesman.  His Provinciales (1656) rendered abstruse questions of theology more or less intelligible, and invited the general public to pronounce an opinion on them.  His lucid exposition interested every one in the abstruse problem, Is man’s freedom such as not to render grace superfluous?  But Pascal perceived that casuistry was not the only enemy that menaced the true spirit of religion for which Jansenism stood.  He came to realise that Cartesianism, to which he was at first drawn, was profoundly opposed to the fundamental views of Christianity.  His Pensees are the fragments of a work which he designed in defence of religion, and it is easy to see that this defence was to be specially directed against the ideas of Descartes.

Pascal was perfectly right about the Cartesian conception of the Universe, though Descartes might pretend to mitigate its tendencies, and his fervent disciple, Malebranche, might attempt to prove that it was more or less reconcilable with orthodox doctrine.  We need not trouble about the special metaphysical tenets of Descartes.  The two axioms which he launched upon the world—­the supremacy of reason, and the invariability of natural laws—­struck directly at the foundations of orthodoxy.  Pascal was attacking Cartesianism when he made his memorable attempt to discredit the authority of reason, by showing that it is feeble and deceptive.  It was a natural consequence of his changed attitude that he should speak (in the Pensees) in a much less confident tone about the march of science than he had spoken in the passage which I quoted above.  And it was natural that he should be pessimistic about social improvement, and that, keeping his eyes fixed on his central fact that Christianity is the goal of history, he should take only a slight and subsidiary interest in amelioration.

The preponderant influence of Jansenism only began to wane during the last twenty years of the seventeenth century, and till then it seems to have been successful in counteracting the diffusion of the Cartesian ideas.  Cartesianism begins to become active and powerful when Jansenism is beginning to decline.  And it is just then that the idea of Progress begins definitely to emerge.  The atmosphere in France was favourable for its reception.

4.

The Cartesian mechanical theory of the world and the doctrine of invariable law, carried to a logical conclusion, excluded the doctrine of Providence.  This doctrine was already in serious danger.  Perhaps no article of faith was more insistently attacked by sceptics in the seventeenth century, and none was more vital.  The undermining of the theory of Providence is very intimately connected with our subject; for it was just the theory of an active Providence that the theory of Progress was to replace; and it was not till men felt independent of Providence that they could organise a theory of Progress.