REESE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Deceived . c7^^-. . Accession No. /^ */ O 3 . C/.ns No PORT-KOYAL EDUCATION SAINT-CYRAN; ARNAULD ; LANCELOT; NICOLE; DE SACI ; GUYOT ; COUSTEL ; FONTAINE ; JACQUELINE PASCAL EXTRACTS, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY FELIX CADET INSPECTOR GENERAL OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION TRANSLATED, WITH AN INDEX, BT ADNAH D. JONES NEW YORK CHAS. SCRIBNER'S 1898 TABLE OF CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. Origin of the Petites Ecoles of Port-Royal Ideas of Saint-Cyran on Education His collaborators, Lemaitre, de Saci, Fontaine The real masters : Lancelot, Nicole, Guyot, and Coustel Analysis of their works Wallon de Beaupuis, Arnauld . . , . 1 Of the education of girls at Port-Royal according to the constitution of the monastery and the rule of Jacqueline Pascal . . . ... 46 Reasons which led to the closing of the schools and the destruction of Port-Royal General criticism . . 58 EXTRACTS. SAINT-CYRAN. Origin of the Petites Ecoles . 69 LANCELOT. Charity of M. de Saint-Cyran towards children . 71 LANCELOT. Saint-Cyran's literary theory . 82 DE BEAUPUIS. Regulations for the school of Le Chesnai . . 86 DE SACI. Letter on Education . . 92 FONTAINE. Conversation between Pascal and M. de Saci on Epictetus and Montaigne . . 95 LANCELOT. A new method of learning to read . . .110 Of the Verb . . . . Ill ARNAULD. Questions of grammar . . . .117 ARNAULD. Regulation of studies . . . 123 NICOLE. Design of the New Logic . . . 128 Reply to the principal objections . . .132 Of bad reasoning in civil life . . . 139 Rules of the method in the sciences . . .152 iv Table of Contents. GUYOT. On teaching reading and writing. Exercises in transla- tion, elocution, and composition . . .154 NICOLE. General views on the education of a Prince . .167 Special advice concerning studies .' . .171 Of the means of preserving peace with men . .181 ARNAULD. Eulogy on Descartes' philosophy . . .193 COUSTEL. Rules for education . . ... 201 Of civility and politeness in children . . .211 ARNAULD. On the persecutions of Port-Royal . . .218 MERE AGNES. Constitutions of the monastery of Port-Royal . 221 JACQUELINE PASCAL. Regulations for the children of Port-Royal 226 BESOGNE. Sister Anne Eugenie, mistress of the boarders . . 245 NICOLE. A recreation at Port-Royal . ... 247 APPENDIX. A study of the writers of Port-Royal by Father Bouhours . . . ... 249 INDEX . 256 PORT-ROYAL EDUCATION. INTRODUCTION. THE Petites Ecoles of Port-Eoyal had but a short and troubled existence. Their foundation goes back to the year 1637, 1 but their real organization only dates from 1646. Several times broken up in consequence of theological disputes excited by Arnauld, or because of the war of the Fronde, they were finally closed by the king's command in March, 166 1. 2 They hold, nevertheless, an honourable place in the history of pedagogy. If they lasted but a short time they shed a brilliant light, and exercised, as much by the character and talents of the masters as by the reform in methods of teaching and the books which they produced, a considerable influence, which on certain points is still active. The first idea of their foundation belongs to the illustrious Duvergier de Hauranne, abbe of Saint-Cyran. 3 He was so pro- foundly moved by the importance of the education of the young, that he did not scruple to apply to this work the saying in the 1 In 1637 we see the beginning of this celebrated community of recluses, which was formed outside the monastery of Port- Royal, and which brought up in the knowledge of letters and the practice of Christian piety a few children of good birth, whose parents wished to spare them the irregularities which were too general among young men attending college. (Preface to the Necrologe de Port-Royal.) 2 The nuns were allowed to receive boarders again from 1669 to 1679. (See note to p. 47.) 3 Born at Bayonne in 1581, he was appointed to the Abbey of Saint- Cyran, in La Brenne, "a desert country where everything was lacking," said Lancelot (Mem. sur M. de Saint-Cyran y t. i. p. 288), on the frontiers of Touraine, Berry, and Poitou. Port-Royal Education. gospel referring to salvation : "But one thing is needful" In his eyes the well-being of families, of the State and of the Church had its source and origin in this; all irregularities had no other origin or cause than bad education. Thus ,he thought no expressions sufficiently strong to condemn the negligence of parents in respect to this, nor any commendations sufficiently high to praise the devotion of persons who dedicated themselves to the education of young children. "There is no occupation," he said, " more worthy of a Christian in the Church, there is no greater charity after the sacrifice of one's life. . . . The guidance of the most tender soul is a greater thing than the government of a world." He was indignant, as if it were an absurdity and a folly, at men seeking after the positions of seneschal and master of the stables, and looking upon the education of reasonable creatures as the lowest employment. 1 "I confess," he said to Fontaine, "that I should consider it a religious duty if I could be of use to children." "I should have been delighted to pass my whole life in it," he wrote to Lancelot. At the period when Vincent de Paul began to devote himself to the work of the Foundling Hospital, Saint-Cyran had for a moment "the desire of sending far and wide to collect young orphans in order to rear them in his abbey." In fine, when his ideas were more settled, his scheme was simpler, and it would require all the decision of Father Kapin to arouse in him the least ambition of taking the education of the young out of the hands of the Jesuits. The letter that he wrote from the prison of Vincennes speaks of a sort of "nursery for the Church," in which he would have brought up "six children chosen throughout the 1 It has required much time to change men's ideas on this point. Two hundred years after Saint-Cyran, Channing notes with pleasure the progress made : ' ' Men are beginning to understand the dignity of the schoolmaster. The idea is dawning on us that no employment is comparable to that of the education of the young in importance and value. That the talent of training the young in energy, truth, and virtue is the first of all the arts and sciences, and that consequently the encouragement of good masters is the most sacred duty that society has to fulfil towards itself." (CEuvres Sociales, trans. Laboulaye, p. 177.) Our schoolmasters ha ye no longer to strive against the indifference and contempt of society ; they have to guard themselves against the feeling of pride that their new position in public opinion might cause in them. It is only in this way that they will preserve the sympathy of everyone. Introduction. city of Paris." In a conversation, related by Lancelot, referring to another school which he was to entrust to M. Singlin, Saint- Cyran said "that he was far from making grand plans, that he did not wish to do anything brilliant, and that he should be contented to bring up there a dozen children at most in Christian virtue." (Lancelot, Memoir -es, t. i. p. 291.) His arrest and detention at Yincennes from 1638 to the death of Richelieu, whom he survived but a few months, did not permit him to carry out this modest plan. He had to restrict himself to personal efforts on several occasions, 1 but especially to excite, by his example and exhortations, devotion as dis- interested as his own, but better guided, and therefore more efficacious. He sometimes said that he would have gone to the world's end to find a competent master. (Lancelot, t. i. p. 129.) Sain t-Cy ran, then, was really the inspirer and mover of the pedagogic work of Port-Royal, 2 and there is a real interest in carefully seeking out his principal ideas on education. I purposely set aside all his theological principles on the original fall of man, on the natural corruption of human nature, on the eternal damnation of infants dying unbaptized, and all the consequences which he logically deduces from them as to the end of education, and the direction to be given to it. Modern pedagogy is a secular science which must not wear the garb of any religious system. It cannot accept discussion on this ground, which has only a purely historical interest. Its starting-point is different, as is also its end. The child is, . l We see him in prison educating the young child of a poor widow. Lancelot (t. i. p. 133) shows him to us engaged in educating the two sons of the lieutenant of whom he had much to complain on account of his ill- treatment. 2 We read, nevertheless, in the supplement to the Nicrologe de Port- Royal, p. 398: "The establishment of the Petites Scales de Port-Royal was due to the solicitation of this illustrious magistrate (Jerome Bignon). M. de Saint-Cyran had often conversed with him about his views on the Christian education of children, and M. Bignon, after having long pressed him to put them in execution, demanded, as a tribute due to their mutual friendship, that the pious abbe should undertake to bring up his sons, Jerome and Thierri Bignon, in a Christian manner. It was on their behalf that the Petites coles were started outside Port- Royal de Paris by MM. Lancelot and De Saci, while their sister, Marie Bignon, was educated within the convent. " 4 Port- Royal Education. in its view, a personality necessarily imperfect, in which good and evil are mingled, and not a child of perdition, as Guyot said, who must be snatched from the devil. It takes seriously, but not tragically, this severe and delicate work of education that Saint-Cyran calls " a tempest of the mind." (Letter to M. de Eebours.) It does not consider that the chief object of education is to preserve baptismal innocence in children by withdrawing them from the world and even from their families, to work solely for their salvation, and, by preference, within the walls of a cloister. It proposes to develop in them the knowledge of truth and the practice of virtue, to prepare them to fulfil the various duties that await them in life, profoundly convinced that the surest way of fulfilling our destiny, whatever r it may be, is first to act our part as men. Saint-Cyran demands in the first place that the family should completely cede its rights to him. If he undertakes the charge y of a child, he wishes "to be entirely its master " ; whether it be the son of the Duchesse de Guise, or the child of a poor ' cabinetmaker, this condition is a sine qua non. 1 Then he attaches a very great importance to the choice of his scholars, to discerning whether they are apt for study, or fit only for manual labour. "It is very remarkable," observes Lancelot with some reason (t. ii. p. 194), "that he is in no- wise guided by their natural abilities in making this distinction, but by the seeds of virtue which he sees that God has sown in their hearts." A young child, eight or nine years old, who appeared a prodigy of intellect, had been put into Lancelot's hands. Saint-Cyran in prison wished to see him, and on the statement of his master that nothing had been observed in him that proceeded from corruption, but only a strange eagerness for knowledge, joined to great inquisitiveness and an ardent 1 Mme. de Maintenon dreads the influence of the family no less. She writes to Mme. de la Maine, March 5th, 1714 : " The first impressions given to children in most houses are almost always vicious ; we see them come to us untruthful, thieves, and deceitful .... They must be shown that we know very well that they have seen these things done in their families, but that they must not do them any more." The girls of Saint-Cyran could only see their relations once every three months for half an hour at most. Introduction. 5 desire to obtain advantages, "he decided off-hand that it was not at all necessary to put him to study, and this was absolutely carried out." He added that "sometimes out of a hundred children not one ought to be put to study." His fear was lest he should burden the Church with a number of people whom she had not called, and the State with a multitude of / idle persons who thought that they were above everybody because they knew a little Latin, and who considered themselves dis- honoured by following the profession in which their birth would have placed them. Those only in whom great docility and sub- ./mission, with some mark of piety and an assured virtue, had been perceived ought to receive intellectual culture. 1 "We shall not be surprised that he paid little attention to\ physical education. Christian spirituality has been too much in fault in regarding the body as the origin of the passions, and of irregularities of conduct, and as an enemy to be fought and mastered; it was the Kenaissance, that is to say, the return to classical antiquity, which enlarged the domain of pedagogy and restored their due share to hygiene, games, and physical exercises. Rabelais and Montaigne in the sixteenth century, Locke in the seventeenth, Rousseau in the eighteenth, Hufeland in the nine- teenth, brought about the success of this salutary reaction, and convinced educators that it was necessary to attend to the child's health before thinking of his intellectual and moral culture. These pre-occupations of modern pedagogy seem scarcely to have attracted the attention of Saint-Cyran, who was too much engrossed by his religious ideas. Only one passage, and that of small importance, has a bearing on the method of feeding. 2 But he seems to me to have very well understood the necessity 1 Our ideas are broader and more generous, and we open the book of knowledge to all. There is nothing better or more necessary for the proper working of our political institutions ; but it would be wise also not to cast all minds in the same mould, and, in order to make enlightened citizens, not to inspire them with a distaste for manual labour. Our curricula, well filled, too uniform, and not sufficiently adapted to the needs of the various localities, are, perhaps, not irreproachable in this respect. 2 He recommends, in a conversation with Lemaitre, the watching over the inclinations of children which tend towards "idleness, untruthfulness, and eating, on account of their constitution which demands it" and the accustoming them " to eat all kinds of vegetables, cod-tish, and herrings." 6 Port-Royal Education. of not overpressing the child by too early intellectual labour. " I should think I had done a great deal," he says very sensibly, " although I had not advanced them much in Latin up to the age of twelve years, by causing them to spend their early years in the close of a house or monastery in the country, and by giving them all the pastimes suitable to their age." The monastery excepted, this reminds us of the negative education extolled by Kousseau. Saint-Cyran sacrificed intellectual to moral education too much. "He remarked," said Lancelot (t. ii. p. 195), "that, generally speaking, knowledge did more harm than good to the young. And once he made me attentively consider this saying of St. Gregory Nazianzen, who said that the sciences had entered the Church, like the flies in Egypt, to cause a plague." His sombre and exclusive theory ill qualified him to appreciate literary beauties. Is it not strange to hear him say seriously during a visit to Port-Koyal to the children who were studying. Yirgil, " You see that author ? He has procured his own damnation, yes, he has procured his own damnation, in making these beautiful verses, because he made them through vanity and for glory ; but you must sanctify yourselves in learning them, because you must learn them to please God, and render yourselves fit to serve the Church." What a strange idea ! To study like " a college scapegrace," Eousseau would say, the fourth book of the ^Eneid, even the Eclogues of Alexis and Gallus (Saci and Guyot trans- lated these works for their pupils), with the aim of pleasing God and serving the Church. What a narrow and strained conception of the utility of poetry. Is it not sufficient to justify such a study that it purifies the taste, ennobles the feelings, and excites admiration by the contemplation of the beautiful 1 What fanaticism to condemn with so much assurance those who have rendered us this eminent service by their masterpieces. Let us first recommend to our masters for the teaching of morality the precept that the Mother Agnes recalls to the memory of a sister on the subject of religious instruction, "There are some truths that should rather be felt than learnt." (Lettres, t. ii. p. 444.) What practical results can we expect to obtain if we teach duty like a theorem in geometry 1 It is not a question of setting out learned abstractions, logical deductions, or Introduction. \ methojdical classifications. The heart and conscience must be educated, moral feeling must be awakened and strengthened, the love of what is good must be inculcated, good habits must be formed. Saint-Cyran will be of use to us, especially in what concerns moral education. A real knowledge and a sincere love of children inspired these pedagogic directions which I sum up from Lancelot : Before all things, to gain their confidence by a calculated gentleness, by a really paternal love, and a seemly familiarity ; to bear their faults and weaknesses patiently ; to show still more charity and com- passion towards those who are seen to be more unformed and backward ; not to dishearten them by a too severe look and a too imperious manner ; to know how to condescend discreetly to their humour for a time, in order to strengthen these young plants, sometimes even to ask instead of commanding; to descend to their level in order to raise them to our own ; to watch continually in order to preserve these tender souls from evil, sometimes to punish ourselves for their faults, for which we should always fear we may be partly responsible, either through hastiness or negligence ; to pray to God before correcting them, in order not to give way to a movement of ill-temper ; to warn them at first only by signs, then by words, reprimands, and threats ; to deprive them of some pleasures, and to resort to corporal punishment only in the last extremity ; plus prier que crier, to ask rather than scold, he said, by a happy play of words; or, to sum up all in the formula that v pleased him, to speak little, bear with much, and pray more. But for him the principal points in the good education of children were the good example to be set them, together with perfect order in the school. Lemaitre, the great orator, the first of the solitaries of Port- Royal, was also one of the earliest to second Saint-Cyran in the execution of his projects, The young Andilly and Saint- Ange were entrusted to his care. A touching passage in the Memoirs of Dufosse shows him at work : "I remember that, scholar though I was, he often made me go to his room, where he gave me very solid instruction in studies as well as in piety. He read to me, and made me read 8 Port-Royal Education. various passages from the poets and orators, and pointed out all their beauties, both their strong sense and their diction. He taught me 'also to read verse and prose as they should be read, which he did admirably himself, having a pleasing voice, and all the other qualities of a great orator. He also gave me several rules for good translation, in order to enable me to advance in it." 1 It is well known that he took charge of the education of Eacine. His younger brother, M. de Saci, who, after Saint-Cyran and M. Singlin, was the director of Port-Eoyal, took part incidentally in the teaching. With Lancelot, Saint-Cyran had especially entrusted him with the education of the two sons of M. Bignon. His letter, which we publish under the title of Patience and Silence, is an admirable page of pedagogy. His influence on classical studies was more considerable ; to him we owe a trans- lation of the Fables of Phsedrus, 2 and of three comedies of Terence. 3 It is to be noticed with what "ingenious charity" the man of letters, enamoured with noble antiquity, endeavours to conciliate the cultivation of good taste with respect for morality, and the quite new importance that he attaches to the study of the French language. "... Many persons of quality complain nowadays with great reason," says he in the preface, " that when their children are taught Latin it seems that they unlearn French, and that in aspiring to make them citizens of ancient Home they are made strangers in their own country . . . After having learnt Latin and Greek for ten or twelve years we are often obliged to learn French at thirty." ly> His intellect, full of fire and light, with a certain charm and sprightliness, and his especial talent for poetry, were celebrated at Port-Eoyal. Fontaine has preserved his first piece. It is a letter of thanks, half prose, half verse, to his mother for a 1 Mtinoires pour servir A I'hist. de Port- Boy al, 1739, p. 156. 2 The Fables of Phsedrus, the freedman of Augustus, translated into French with the Latin opposite, to serve for a good understanding of the Latin tongue, and for translating well into French. (1647.) 3 The Comedies of Terence (Andria, Adelphi, Phormio), translated into French and rendered with propriety, by changing very little, to serve for a good understanding of the Latin tongue, and for translating well into French, by the Sr. de Saint- Aubin. (Paris, 1647.) Introduction. present of four purses that she made to him and his three brothers. Forced wit and an affected style give themselves free scope. "We see in it," he says, "in a small space, the most illustrious prisoner in the world (gold) ; and our hands have enchained him who disposes of the liberty of all men : " That superb metal, to which so many mortals Dedicate so many vows, raise so many altars ; Son of the Sun of the Heavens and Sun of the earth," etc. The four purses, of different colours, are compared at first to a beautiful flower-bed, then to the whiteness which when the sun is hidden adorns "That great blue veil that covers all the sky" ; then to the lily and the rose, which ' ' Both redouble their natural beauties " ; then to the sun's rays on the " soft ivory " of the snow ; at last " to the thousand deep red roses " of the- dawn. "I shall always admire these purses as marvels, and I shall love them as my little sisters, since they are in some sort your daughters, and I am truly your very humble and very obedient son, De Saci." This poetical talent, such as it was, was utilized in 1654 to reply to the facetious jests of the Jesuits in their almanack entitled, The Rout and Confusion of the Jansenists. De Saci, with the applause of Arnauld 1 (Saint-Cyran would have energetically condemned such a freak), composed, in trifling verses of eight feet, the Enluminures de Valmanacli des Jesuites. I will only quote* one specimen, which has at least the historical value of verifying how superior the Jansenists were to the Jesuits pen in hand : " There are none, even your booksellers, Who do not value your adversaries, "Whose fine books have always, Notwithstanding your noise, so great a vogue. But yours, so magnificent, Are the seniors in the shops, And always stay at home As if they were in prison. * Arnauld undertook, at a great expense of erudition and logic, to justify this pamphlet, in his Application des regies dcs Pbres a V almanack. io Port- Royal Education. Every other book is asked for, Seen, prized, and bargained for ; But they are recluses, Whom no man has ever seen. All the leaves collected Are ream on ream piled up And, the attics being full of them, They are the guardians of the shops. There the mice run over the pages Of your admirable works, And the troop of noble rats Make them their food and their good dishes." (6th illustration, p. 24.) Naturally, Lancelot applied to de Saci to versify the Garden of Greek Roots (1657). The prologue well preserves the imprint of its author : " Thou, who cherishest the learned Greece, Where of old wisdom flourished ; Whence theological authors Have borrowed their sacred terms To be of our great mysteries The august depositaries, Enter this GARDEN, not of flowers Which have only useless colours, But of nourishing ROOTS Which make learned minds." ,- In truth, de Saci, wholly given up to piety, looked with some ; contempt on all secular studies, and thought that reading the I classical authors was 3angerous for those who could not " pick up I some pearls from the dunghill, whence arose even a hlack smoke which might obscure the wavering faith." Religion is his sole thought : " The chief end of education ought to be to save the children and ourselves with them." We see him in his admirable conversation with Pascal, firm and intrenched in his faith, despise the fine - drawn reasoning of Epictetus and Montaigne, and enthusiasm for science, "those dangerous viands served up on handsome dishes" to people "who are sleeping, and who think they eat while sleeping." Fontaine describes him admirably in this passage : "No one ever saw M. de Saci take an interest in those inquisitive sciences (the system of the world by Descartes, animal - machines). Introduction. \ i Smiling good-naturedly when anyone spoke to him of these things, he showed more pity for those who paid attention to them than desire to attend to them himself. He said to me one day, speaking to me privately on the subject, that he wondered at the action of God with regard to these new opinions; that M. Descartes was with respect to Aristotle like a robber who came to kill another robber and carry off his booty; that Aristotle, little by little, had at last become the master of the ministers of the Church. ' I saw at the Sorbonne,' he said to me, 'and I could not see it without a shudder, a doctor who quoted a passage from the Scriptures, and another who boldly refuted him by a passage from Aristotle. . . . Aristotle having usurped such authority in the Church, was it not just that he should be dispossessed and over- thrown by another tyrant, to whom, perhaps, the same thing would happen one day?" (Memoires, t. iii. p. 75.) What a narrow-minded opinion, and what a prejudice ! Sainte- Beuve answers him roundly : " Jansenius made a disturbance in the bosom of the Church; Descartes made a revolution every- where." (t. iii. p. 120.) We recall his smart paradox on the inutility of travelling : " Travelling was seeing the devil dressed in every fashion German, Italian, Spanish, and English." De Saci's chief work was his translation of the Bible, of which the publication, begun in 1672, was not finished till 1707, twenty- three years after his death. Beading and meditating on the sacred books, and making their reading and meditation easier for the faithful, was the chief business of his life. "With my Bible," said he, " I could go to the end of the world." It is curious and interesting to mark the hesitation and the scruples of the translator. He had translated at first in a style that his friends thought too elevated, and then too bald. He set to work a third time, trying to keep a middle course. Sainte-Beuve amends the cutting sentence of Joubert, "De Saci has shaved, powdered, and curled the Bible, but at least he has not rouged it," by this sprightly remark, "It would suffice to say that he has combed it." (t. ii. p. 362.) The celebrated translator passed judgment on himself a few months before his death : "I have endeavoured to remove from the Holy Scripture 12 Port- Royal Education. obscurity and inelegance ; and God has willed until now that His Word should be enveloped in obscurities. Have I not, then, reason to fear that giving, as I have tried to do, a clear version, and one perhaps sufficiently correct with regard to purity of language, is resisting the designs of the Holy Spirit ? I know very well that I have not aimed at the graces and niceties that are admired in society, and that might be sought at the French Academy. God is my witness how much horror I have always had of these ornaments. . . . But I cannot hide from myself that I have endeavoured to render the language of Scripture clear, pure, and conformable to the rules of grammar. . . . Shall I not, then, have reason to tremble if the Holy Ghost, having until now set aside the rules of grammar, and having visibly despised , them, I now take the liberty of reducing it to these rules . . . T' \(Fontaine, Memoir es, t. iv. pV^322.) Evidently de Saci had not such soundness of taste as he had tenderness of conscience and ardour in devotion ; but with these few reservations, how much admiration this pure and regular life, so enamoured of perfection, so lull of self-sacrifice and charity, deserves ! One touching trait will suffice to depict this noble soul. When he came out of prison in 1668 what will it be thought that he demanded of the friendship of Le Tellier, who was afterwards chancellor ? "He begged him to use his influence with the king to obtain permission from his majesty that from time to time persons of whose fidelity there could be no doubt should go to the Bastille to see what was going on there, in order that poor prisoners who spend years there without anyone even remembering why they have been imprisoned, should not be left in perpetual oblivion." (Leclerc. Vies interessantes, t. iv. p. 56.) But the real masters of Port-Eoyal were those who were entrusted with the teaching at the time of the organization of the Petites Ecoles in 1646. Lancelot and Nicole, Guyot and Coustel, under the management of M. Wallon de Beaupuis, but in reality under the powerful influence of Arnauld, the heir to the authority of Saint-Cyran and the author or inspirer of most of the classical books of Port-Eoyal. The most distinguished master was Claude Lancelot. Of all fthe recluses of Port-Eoyal he devoted himself the most entirely Introduction. 1 3 to education, and composed the greatest number of classical works. He was born at Paris about 1615. Having early resolved to devote himself to God's service, he entered in 1627 the com- munity of Saint Nicolas du Chardonnet, where he remained ten years studying the fathers of the Church, and regretting that he did not find men like St. Chrysostom, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine. "If there were only one," said he, "I would start at once and go and seek him, even to the world's end, to throw myself at his feet and receive from him so pure and beneficial a guidance." (Memoires, t. i. p. 5.) It was then that he heard the abbe* of Saint-Cyran spoken of as a man of the early centuries, and he put himself under his spiritual direction with unbounded submission and admiration. " I confess," he said, " that it was one of my devotions to pause sometimes and contemplate M. de Saint-Cyran as one of the most living images of Christ that I had ever seen. (Mem. t. ii. p. 204.) He entered Port-Royal January 20, 1638, a few months before the arrest of Saint-Cyran, to share the life of penitence of the early solitaries, then not very numerous. They were soon obliged to disperse, but in order not to abandon the task that had been entrusted to him, Lancelot was sent to La Ferte-Milon with M. Yitard, then twelve or thirteen years old, in order to take charge of his education. On his return to Paris in October, 1639, he started for the abbey of Saint-Cyran, whence he returned in October, 1640, to take charge of the two children of M. Bignon, the Advocate-General, and afterwards of a little boy whom Saint-Cyran sent to him, the care of whom he shared with de Saci because he was occupied in the mornings in the sacristy of Port-Royal. He published in 1644 the New Method of Learning the Latin Tongue with Ease. The preface and the address to the reader state precisely the reform introduced into the teaching. The rules are given in French. The "minutiae of grammar" are rejected. " I have been careful to avoid some observations that seemed to me not very useful, remembering the excellent saying of Quintilian, that it is part of the science of a really skilful grammarian to know that there are some tlii.pgs thai: are n t ^^x *0* THE "J'V UNIVERSITY 1 ~~s 14 Port-Royal Edttcation, worth knowing. But I hope," he adds, "that the substantial and judicious remarks of these authors, 1 in order to thoroughly understand the ground of the Latin language, . . . will show with how much reason the same Quintilian said that those are I very much deceived who laugh at grammar as a low and despic- | able art, since, being to eloquence what the foundation is to the * edifice, if it is not firmly established in the mind all that is added to it afterwards will fall to the ground." He praises this maxim of Ramus : "Few rules and much practice," an excellent recom- mendation that Fenelon supports with his authority. 2 \ Thus Lancelot claims to do in six months what Despautere would take three years to do. In a letter to Bussy, Corbinelli advises him to teach his daughter Latin by the method of Port- Royal : "There is only enough for a fortnight." (30 July, 1677.) Nothing shows that this was a joke on the pretension to improvise knowledge. It is only a rather strong illusion of an admirer. Lancelot had charge of the teaching of Greek and mathematics at the school in the Rue Saint-Dominique de 1'Enfer in 1646. He gave, in 1655, the New Method of Learning the Greek Language with Ease. M. Egger, a very competent judge, notes the marked advance of this work on the books of Clenard, Vergara, and Yossius : " The barbarous quatrains that Lancelot mixes with the rules in prose in his methods have quite gone out of fashion now. But, then, it was something to employ the French language instead of Latin ; it was something to have set out the declensions and conjugations at greater length ; to have facilitated the effort of memory necessary for pupils in learning the vocabulary of a dead language by the choice of the most useful words." (De Vhellen- isme en France, vol. ii. p. 60.) It was not the fault of Port- Royal that the study of Greek was not again held in honour 1 He says that he had read the works of Sanctius, a celebrated professor of Salamanca, of Scioppius and Vossius, learned Dutchmen (1577-1649); he does not appeal at all to the authority of the Portuguese Jesuit Alvares, whose grammar Father Rapin accuses him of copying, but without showing any proof of it. (Mem. Introduc., p. 125.) 2 "The great point is to bring a person as soon as possible to the practical application of the rules by frequent use ; then he will take pleasure in noticing the details of the rules that he followed at first without remarking them." (Lettre d I'Acad&nie Franqaise, 2.) Introduction. among us. We know with what success Lancelot imparted the knowledge of this language and the taste for its literature to Racine. In 1657 appeared the Jardin des ratines grecques. It would not be very useful to pause on this work, which would not interest our readers. The learned Diibner, otherwise a great partisan of the pedagogic reforms of Port-Royal, does not hesitate to call itv " Ostrogothic." M. Egger declares that this book, by its errors! and want of criticism, "has been one of the greatest obstacles toi progress in grammatical methods among us." (De Vhellenisme en* France, vol. i. p. 112.) After being long used in class, it was suppressed by a ministerial decree of December 4, 1863. Two passages in the preface deserve to be noticed. One relates to Comenius and his method, Janua linguarum reserata (the gate of languages opened), 1631. "A work estimable in itself," said Lancelot, "but not sufficiently proportioned to the title it bears, and the intention of its author." After having tried it, he thinks it long and difficult, without interest for the children, and, in fine, of very little use, because of its want of method. There is a good page of pedagogy to be gathered here. "Besides requiring an extraordinary memory to, learn it, and that few children are capable of it, I can assert, after several experiments that I have made, that scarcely any are able to retain it, because it is long and difficult and, the words being never repeated, they have forgotten the beginning before reaching the end. Thus they feel a constant dislike for it, because they always find themselves, as it were, in a new country, where they recognize nothing : the book is filled with all sorts of unusual and difficult words, and the first chapters are of no assistance for those that follow; nor these for the last, because there is no word in one which is found in the others." And he adds, with his consum- mate experience in teaching: "What might be called the Entrance to languages ought to be a short and easy method to lead us as quickly as possible to the reading the best written books, in order to learn not only the words that we lack, but also what is most remarkable in the turn and most pure in the phrase, which is, without doubt, the most difficult and most important part in every language/' 1 6 Port- Royal Education. The other judgment is not so well founded in reason. For the etymologies, he quotes especially the Origines franfaises of M. Menage, "who alone is worth a multitude of authors, because, besides drawing from the ancients, he has carefully collected what the most able men of our own times have that is curious upon this matter." If there is a book that deserves the discredit and oblivion into which it has fallen, it is assuredly this one. The philological caprices of Menage have passed into legends. It was easy for Father Bouhours to amuse himself at his expense, to the great delight of Mine, de Sevigne. 1 " M. Menage especially excels in etymologies, he says with lively raillery. His mind seems to be made expressly for this science; sometimes he even seems to be inspired, so lucky is he in dis- covering where words come from. For example, did he not need a sort of inspiration to discover the real origin of jargon and baragouin? Jargon, according to him, comes from barbaricus. Here is its genealogy in direct line : barbarus, barbaricus, baricus, varicus, uaricus, guaricus, guargus, gargo, gargonis, JARGON. Baragouin is a near relation of jargon : barbarus, barbaracus, barbaracuinus, baracuinus, baraguinus, BARAGOUIN. Nothing is clearer nor more precise. And I have no doubt that M. Menage is very pleased with himself at this new discovery; for formerly he did not think that jargon and baragouin were of the same country, nor came from the same stem. He insists, in his Origines de la langue fran$aise, that jargon is Spanish and baragouin Bas-breton, ... so true is it that words like men come from where one wills. However this may be, we are indebted to M. Menage for a great deal of similar knowledge ; it is he who, with that faculty of divination that M. de Balzac attributes to him, has discovered that laquais came from verna, vernula, vernulacus, vernulacaius, lacaius, laquay, LAQUAIS ; that boire a tire-larlgot came from fistula : fistula, fistularis, fistularius, fistu- laricus, laricus, laricotus, LARIGOT. . . All that is very fine and curious." 1 " I read the angry books of Father Bouhours, the Jesuit, and of Manage, who tear each other's eyes out and amuse us. They say what they think of each other, and often insult one another. There are, besides, some very good remarks on the French language. You cannot think how amusing this quarrel is." (16 September, 1676.) Introduction. 1 7 In 1660 Lancelot, under the supervision of Arnauld, 1 edited one of the most important works of Port-Koyal, the Grammaire gnu' rale et raisonnee, containing the grounds of the art of speaking, explained in a clear and natural manner, the reason for what is common to all languages, and the principal differences that are met with in them, with several new remarks on the French language. This compendious but incomplete work was a bold conception for the time, the influence of Descartes and his unflinching confidence in the power of the reason are felt in it. It incited the researches of the philosophical grammarians of the eighteenth century, du Marsais, Duclos, Condillac, and de Tracy. This was the best that could be done until the discovery of Sanscrit, with a wider knowledge of languages and their filiation and history permitted Grimm, Humboldt, Bopp, Burnouf, Diez, Michel Breal, and Littre to substitute the sure method of history, phonetics, and comparison for the brilliant but barren speculations of philosophical abstraction. If we no longer share the enthusiastic admiration of the worthy Kollin for this work, and no longer see the sublime genius of the great man, we still remain struck with this vigorous spirit of analysis and this luminous method. At the same date the indefatigable master, under the name of M. de Trigny, completed his grammatical teaching by giving the Nouvelle Methode pour apprendre facilement et en peu de temps la langue italienne, and the Nouvelle Methode pour apprendre facile- ment et en peu de temps la langue espagnole. He had recourse to the learning of Chapelain for these two works. The second was dedicated to the Most Serene Infanta of Spain, Donna Maria Teresa, " whom all France already looks upon as her queen." A passage in the Preface to the Italian Method should be pointed 1 " The General Grammar is the result of conversations that M. Lancelot, who was entrusted with the teaching of languages in the schools of Port- Royal, had with this great man, in the moments that the doctor was able to give up to the desire that he had to learn with him. M. Lancelot wrote out the answers that M. Arnauld gave to his questions ; and thus was composed the first work that went deeply into the art of speaking, and developed the first foundations of the Logic." (Fie de messire Ant. Arnauld, Paris et Lausanne, 1783, t. i. p. 218.) 1 8 Port-Royal Education. out to those engaged in teaching, for the proper management of the grammatical studies both of teachers as well as of students : I" Whosoever wishes to learn a language with facility should as soon as possible join use and practice with precept. " For the Italian, for instance, the declension of the article, and the auxiliary and regular verbs some three or four pages are all that it is necessary to know in order to begin construing an author. "After that the rules for the irregular verbs may be learnt, or at least read attentively ; the rest of the grammar may almost be left to the teacher to be applied in practice.'' With respect to the grammar of the French language, which is obviously lacking in the collection, and which was demanded abroad, 1 particularly by Daniel Elzevier, the famous bookseller of Amsterdam, Lancelot replied to Dr. Saint-Amour, who had to make the proposal, "that he had several times resolved upon undertaking this work, but that he had always found so many difficulties, and so little likelihood of being able to surmount them, that he had been obliged to give it up." Saint- Amour returned to the charge two or three times, but always without success, Lancelot never ceasing to object how much " he had been repelled every time he had wished to undertake it." ) After all, the Port-Koyalists rendered a greater service to the French language than drawing up its grammar: they gave it an important place in classical studies by their methods drawn up in French, and no longer in Latin ; and by their translations they invigorated it from the sources of antiquity, and cleared it of pedantry and scholasticism. They won theology for it as Descartes did philosophy and Corneille the high style of poetry. The grave and learned works that issued from Port-Koyal, more attentive to matter than form, to truth and virtue than to beauties of style, drew admiration even from its enemies. Father 1 Among ancient works that the study of our language produced we may cite : PALSGKAVE, 1' Esclaircissement de la langue fran(;oys& (1530); Louis MtfGRET, le TretU de la grammere fran^oeze (1550); RAMUS, Gramere fransoeze (1562). VAUGELAS in 1647 published only detached remarks on the French language, and not a methodical treatise. In 1714 FENELON expressed a wish that the French Academy would add a grammar to its dictionary. Introduction. \ 9 Annat had not more brilliantly combated Pascal than the learned Father Petau had attacked Arnauld, and Father Rapin does not stint his praises of the book on Frequent Communion (1G43), "Nothing had been seen better written in our language." (Menwires, t. i. p. 22.) He does not do less justice to Pascal "Men had," he says, "so little experience of a manner of writing resembling that of the Letters to a Provincial, that they could form no conjectures sufficiently clear to point to anybody with certainty, because they had never seen anything of this character in our language." (Memoires, t. ii. p. 380. j 1 Mme. de Maintenon, whose profound antipathy for " those gentlemen of Port-Royal " is well known, asserts that the works "contain a venom so much the more dangerous as their style is more pleasing to the natural taste, and elevates the mind. For myself, I have never liked any of their books, although they are very fine." (Instruction a la classe bleue, 1705.) The influence of these models for the perfecting of the language was deep and lasting. " By employing themselves for twenty years after the Provincials in dexterously finding fault with the style of Pascal the Jesuits learnt to write well. By ironically pointing out the rather uniform gravity, 2 the long periods, and at times unusual expressions of the other writers of Port-Royal, they tried their hand at a style which was more easy and flowing without being less correct. 3 (Yillemain, Preface du Dictionnaire de V Academie.) This service was more valuable than the composition of a French Grammar. To return to Lancelot. When in 1661 the Petites Ecoles were 1 There is no one, even to the venomous Father Brisacier, who does not admit the literary merit of the Heures de Port-Royal ; he calls them ' ' a sink of errors, a grenade of impiety, a common sewer of all the works of Calvin collected in good French under the specious title of Office de la Vierge" Quoted by ARNAULD, la Morale pratique desjesuites, t. viii. p. 162. 2 A curious note of Bossuet on his reading, dated 1669, contains this information: "Some books of MM. de Port-Royal, good to read because gravity and grandeur are found in them, their prefaces by choice ; but their style has little variety. Without variety there is no pleasure." (FLOQUET, Etudes sur la vie de Bossuet, t. i. p. 378.) 3 Father Bouhours, the author of the Entretiens d'Ariste et d* Eugene (1671), must especially be named. The second dialogue is entirely devoted to a serious study of the language of Port-Royal. 2O Port-Royal Education. finally closed by the king's command, he had been for some time in charge of the education of the Due de Chevreuse, as we see by the address of a letter of Chapelain : "A M. Lancelot, precept eur du Marquis de Luynes, a Port-Royal" In 1663 he published four treatises on poetry Latin, French, ^Italian, and Spanish. He was probably working on that Recueil de poesies chretiennes et diverses, dedicated to Mgr. le prince de Conti, which appeared in 1671 in three volumes under the name of ... (the reader may guess a hundred times), under the name of La Fontaine; his friendship for Eacine and Boileau brought him into contact for a short time with Port-Eoyal. In offering this collection to the prince, he acknow- ledges that he has done little more than lend his name. " Those who by their labour have brought it to this state Might offer it to thee in more brilliant terms ; But, fearing to emerge from that profound peace Which they enjoy in secret, far from noise and the world, They engage me to bring it to the light for them." Lancelot had for two years been entrusted with the education of the princes de Conti. Fontaine has preserved the interesting report that he sent to M. de Saci on the employment of the day by his pupils, and the distribution of their studies. He preferred to resign his position in 1672, rather than consent to take his pupils to the theatre. His inflexible strictness cannot escape the reproach of inconsistency justly thrown on him by Sainte-Beuve : "Of what use is it, Lancelot, to teach children so well Greek, Spanish, Italian, and the niceties of Latin and to forbid them afterwards to go to the theatre and hear Chimene, to permit neither the Jerusalem, the Aminta, Theagene, the Anthology, nor all Catullus? This prohibition and inter- diction extended, in fact, beyond childhood, and in part existed for grown-up men. Was it possible? Was it reasonable? Of what use was it to teach so much and so well, if it were not to put men in a position to use this knowledge later? Why should I not enjoy the honey and the flowers of this Greek whose Roots I have devoured? The child who will write Berenice said this to himself one day, and he leaped over the Introduction. 2 1 obstacle. He flew over the hedge like the bee." (Port-Royal, t. iii. p. 531.) This was the end of the pedagogic career of Lancelot, who henceforth devoted himself to the religious life in the abbey of Saint-Cyran under the direction of M. de Barcos. On the death of this abbe, in 1678, great troubles arose in the abbey, and Lancelot was exiled, on the pretext of Jansenism, to Quimperle in the remotest part of Britanny, 1 where he died on April 15, 1695, leaving behind him a venerated memory. The history of French pedagogy cannot leave in oblivion the name of this educator who devoted himself unreservedly to children, and who so well understood that pedagogy should be in the heart still more than in the head, and that the master should feel " the love of a father " for his pupils. " A preceptor who was not in that frame of mind would never do anything .... If, on the contrary, he were so, this love would make him find more ways of being useful to his scholars than all the advice that might be given him." (Letter to M. de Saci on the education of the princes de Conti.) shed more lustre than Lancelot by his talents as a writer moralist, so much praised by Mme. de Sevigne and Voltaire. In reality he was much less the man of Port-Royal. He scarcely knew Saint-Cyran, and did not altogether admire him when he compared him to a field, " capable of producing much, but prolific in briars and thorns," and he even went so far as to speak of his gibberish. He acknowledges that he kept himself a little aloof. " I was for five or six years in a place where they usually opposed to de Saci, M. Singlin, M. N. and M. 1ST. on one side and myself on the other." (Essais, t. vii. p. 180). On the death of de Saci he did not approve of the marks of veneration and tenderness lavished by the nuns on their beloved confessor ; and he wrote to Mile. Aubry, begging her not to mention it, that for thirty 1 Nothing more is heard of him except one curious circumstance related by Arnauld to M. du Vaucel and Mme. de Fontpertuis, March 16 and 17, 1689. James II., King of England, who had been dethroned, arrived at Kimperlay (sic}. ' * A great supper was awaiting him in the abbey where brother Claude Lancelot is .... M. d'Avaux seated him at table by his side . . . Who would have thought that a monk exiled to Britanny would have had the honour of supping with a king ? " 22 Port- Royal Education. years he had suffered from this unreasonable assiduity of the devotees. M. de Beaubrun, in the interesting portrait that he has drawn of Nicole, goes so far as to say : " He was a jansenist, perhaps, only through fear of displeasing M. Arnauld, since after 1689 he wrote to Father Quesnel that for more than thirty years he had had the thoughts that he had expressed in his treatise on la Grace general^ that is to say that he was writing in favour of Jansenism, while he had in his mind a system diametrically opposed to it." (Vie manuscrite, a passage quoted by Sainte- Beuve, t. iv. p. 516.) ^Nicole, besides, was less exclusively attached to the Petiles Ecoles. He divided his time between the care of his pupils, his theological studies, and his preparation for the licentiate's degree, which he did not renounce until 1649. A manuscript biographical notice from Holland thus describes the more restricted part that he took : " M. Nicole only directed the studies of the young people at Port-Royal. The young gentlemen were themselves much in- clined to study ; they only needed to have the best passages of the Greek or Latin authors pointed out to them. M. Nicole was there to inspire them with the taste for them. M. Nicole was to them rather an adviser than a master, as this name is understood now." (Quoted by Sainte-Beuve, t. iv. p. 599.) His talent as a teacher was very remarkable. Father Rapin (Mem. t. ii. p. 254) relates that Singlin heard him discourse on an eclipse of the sun, got him to talk on various subjects, and brought him under the notice of Arnauld, who hastened to associate him with himself, and being unable to do without him, soon carried him off to the schools. He was well qualified for teaching belles-lettres and philosophy. "M. Nicole," says Besogne (t. v. p. 225), "studied under his father all the authors of profane antiquity, both Greek and Latin. 1 At the age of fourteen he had finished the usual course of the humanities, he had so much aptitude and penetration of mind joined to a most excellent memory. It was sufficient for 1 Nicole, Essais de morale, t. viii. p. 193, admits that he had not read Demosthenes Introduction. 23 Jrim to read a book once in order to retain its substance, and at an advanced age he told his friends that he had forgotten nothing that he had read in his youth. He knew his Virgil and Horace perfectly. A short time before his death he gravely recited a number of verses of the ^Eneid. The author who pleased him most, and whom he willingly re-read for his good latinity, was Terence. He was accustomed to say that the best passages of these authors were like fine models that it was necessary to have in the mind in order to write fine works; that a man who was not provided with these fine models, and who undertook to compose, might indeed write fine things, but it was as if he printed in Gothic characters; while he who had made these fine passages his own was in a position to print in fine Roman characters, which it was a pleasure to read." This extensive and varied knowledge, this wide and curious reading, which give a peculiar character to Nicole among the solitaries of Port-Royal, lacks, however, the keen feeling for beauty. A passage in one of his letters is truly singular for a professor of the humanities ; he does not conceal his contempt for the impassioned admirers of the ancients : " For myself," he adds, " / take pleasure in discovering the falsehoods and great delusions in these same books. I find a quantity of them. 7 ' This is a very unfortunate turn of mind, and would be calcu- lated to vitiate and sterilize all literary teaching. " The pleasure of criticism," says La Bruyere, "takes from us the faculty of being deeply touched by very fine things." Nicole has an unfortunate kind of prejudice against the whole of ancient literature. Recalling to mind that Saint-Cyran never read the books ofi heretics " without having performed the exorcisms of the church, I because he said that they were written by the spirit of the devil, and that there was in these books an impression of error," he adds, " But do not all the books of the pagans come from the same source?" (t. xii. p. 176.) 1 Happily he corrected this 1 It is unpleasant to see Port-Royal, which stigmatized the ineptitude of Father Garasse, in agreement with him on this point, in better terms, however : " It is true that the greatest captains in the world, who in old times filled the earth with the signs of their triumphs, are now like hodmen 24 Port-Royal Education. sally himself, and felt the moral value of ancient literature. (See p. 180.) What shall we say of several of his criticisms on French literature 1 ? Did he not arouse the anger and ingratitude of Eacine by calling the dramatic poets public poison ersl The great Corneille, whose theatre breathes in the highest degree heroism and the sentiment of duty, finds no favour in his prejudiced eyes, and he pronounces, even in the case of the Cid and Horace, the words corruption, barbarism, criminal aims. " One cannot better prove the danger there is in all comedies than by showing that those even of this author are contrary to the spirit of the Gospel, and that they corrupt the mind and heart by the pagan and profane sentiments that they inspire." (Les Visionnaires, Avertissement, p. 22.) Bossuet, unfortunately, has not been more just towards Corneille. The genius of Pascal also has partly escaped Nicole. He proclaims him, indeed, "one of the great minds of this age" (Essais, t. iii. p. 3); he quotes the Pensees as one of the most useful works to put into the hands of princes (see p. 179); but he goes so far as to call him " a gatherer of shells," and nearly made the abbe de Saint-Pierre, to whom he said this enormity, doubt the discernment of the moralist. (Ouvrages de morale et de politique, t. xii. p. 86.) With what strange freedom, in a letter to the Marquis de Sevigne, he reproaches Mme. de la Fayette with wishing to impose admiration of these Pensees without " telling us more particularly what we ought to admire in them," and to reduce us "to pretend to think admirable what we do not understand ! " We cannot but praise the wisdom and prudence of the editors, while regretting it, that in publishing the Pensees they thought of excising some passages in which the royal majesty was treated with small respect, some assertions which furnished matter for new discussions, and some attacks on the " worthy Fathers." and stable - boys in hell ; it is true that the devil has taken the greatest philosophers of Greece, the wisest councillors of the Areopagus, the most famous orators of Rome, the haughtiest princes of heathendom, the most learned physicians of the universe ; it is true that they are all in the pay of Lucifer." (P. GARASSE, Doctrine curieuse, p. 867.) Introduction. 25 We can understand, strictly, that Arnauld should write to M, Perrier, who defended the work of Pascal : " A man cannot be too precise when he has to do with such ill-natured enemies as yours. It is much more to the point to avoid carping criticisms by some slight change, which only softens an expression, than to be reduced to the necessity of making apologies. . . ." (20 Nov., 1660.) But that anyone should have the idea of correcting Pascal's style, of remodelling his phrases, of changing such and such a familiar and original expression, such and such a lively and dramatic turn, shows an aberration of mind, an absence of criticism, and a want of taste that we cannot describe; and wo have some trouble to understand that this was, in great part, the work of him whom Bayle calls the finest pen of Port-Eoyal, and whom the papal nuncio named the golden pen. 1 This imperfection of his literary sense, taste, and imagination is equally betrayed in the only book relating to the teaching of belles-lettres on which Nicole worked, Epigrammatum delectus (A Selection of Epigrams, 1659). A preface and a dissertation, both in Latin, indicate the aim and plan of the work to culti- vate the mind, and to protect the morals. The worthy Nicole " shuddered with horror at the sight of the obscenities of Martial and Catullus, whose works eternal oblivion or the flames ought to have destroyed." But as " remedies are drawn from the viper and flowers are found among poisons," he sets to work to make a selection of the most elegant pieces. He would perhaps have acted as wisely in not including the construing of these authors in a programme of classical studies. This kind of work is of a very limited and secondary character. The dissertation on true and false beauty, on the nature and the different kinds of epigrams, notwithstanding the praises of Chapelain 2 , ill-satisfies the reader. Father Vavasseur, " the best humanist of his time," in the opinion of the abbe d'Olivet, the 1 See in Havet's edition, especially pp. 13 and 267, two specimens of this literary profanation. 2 9 September, 1659, letter to d'Andilly : " I have seen nothing better written in the didactic style, nothing more judicious, more chaste, more clearly set forth in the nature of the epigram, in fine, more instructive. " 26 Port-Royal Education. historian of the French Academy, has roughly handled him, and not without reason. "Was it not sufficient for the theory of this kind of poetry which only admits of a few verses to demand naturalness and simplicity, a witty and pointed turn, grace and delicacy? Instead of that, Nicole discourses gravely on the nature and source of the beautiful ; he lays down this principle, sufficiently vague, however, that it is especially in conformity with the nature of things and with our nature; he reduces its conditions to three the agreeableness of the tone, the propriety of the words, and the truth and naturalness of the thoughts ; he thinks that he has thoroughly examined his subject, although he admits himself that all this has little to do with the epigram, in proclaiming the weakness of human nature as the reason of metaphors. It is this that appears so chaste to Chapelain. Nicole then explains how, in consequence of these premisses, he has been obliged to reject from his collection false, mytho- logical, equivocal, hyperbolical, doubtful, vulgar, spiteful, verbose, or common epigrams. After which, but a little late, he takes in hand the definition and form of the epigram, and admits two kinds the sublime, grand, and magnificent kind, and another a little lower in style but more useful in application. The best thing in this ill-balanced dissertation is the ideas rather carelessly thrown out at the end, where Nicole, without circumlocution, praises, especially in the epigram, the ingenious point that penetrates the mind deeply, or its simplicity and play- fulness, and the art of treating the subject without excess or defect, without obscurity or complication, by cleverly leading up to the effect ; and he quotes Martial, who is a master of this art. Martial and Port-Royal ! Does not the approximation of these two names excite the most legitimate astonishment 1 All Nicole's dissertation, however, falls to pieces at this simple remark of Voltaire : " The epigram should not be placed in a higher rank than the song ... I should advise no one to apply himself to a style that may bring much disappointment and little glory." ((Euvres, t. xxxix. p. 212.) Nicole took a large share in the composition of the Logic, or the Art of Thinking, but the firmer hand and more liberal mind of Arnauld are perceived in this work. Arnauld, alone Introduction. 27 at Port-Royal, is sincerely Cartesian ; he declared himself a partisan of the new philosophy on the appearance of the Discours de la Methods in 1637. In his lectures at the college of Le Mans 1 he dictated the new principles to his pupils. When he sent to Father Mersenne his objections to the Meditations of Descartes, which appeared in 1641, he wrote these explicit words : " You have known for a long time in what esteem I hold the person of M. Descartes and the value I set upon his mind and teaching." In June, 1648, he writes to Descartes himself that he has "read with admiration and approved almost entirely of all that he has written touching the first philosophy " (Le. Metaphysics). He held these opinions all his life. It was in vain that Leibnitz, in that interesting correspondence from 1686 to 1690, which has been published in our time, showed him how much was lacking in the philosophy of Descartes, that he was not satisfied with the definition of the body by extension nor with that of the soul by thinking, nor 2 of the conditions of the perfection of God and of the immortality of the soul, nor of the automatism of animals. Arnauld remains convinced of the soundness of the doctrine of Descartes, and does not cease taking up its defence. In 1692 he repels the attacks of Huet, Bishop of Avranches, as in 1680 he had done those of Lemoine, Dean of the Chapter at Vitre. He appeals to the principles of Descartes against the Calvinists in the Perpetuite de la foi, so far as to make Jurieu say that the theologians of Port-Royal were more attached to Cartesianism than to Christianity. (Politique du clerge de France, p. 107.) Elsewhere he sadly wonders that the Inquisition has not put the works of Gassendi, who had employed his whole mind to ruin spiritual philosophy in favour of the doctrines of Epicurus, in the Index, and that it had, in fact, placed the Meditations of Descartes in it. 1 At Paris, in the rue de Reims, then in 1682 rue d'Enfer ; in 1761 it was united with the College Louis le Grand. 2 Bossuet supports him : " Every time that M. de Leibnitz," he replies to him, " undertakes to prove that the essence of the body is not in its actual extent any more than that of the soul in actual thought, I declare myself on his side. (CEuvres, t. x. p. 97.) Port- Royal Education. Nicole is much less firm in his attachment to Cartesianism. With his turn of mind, readily sceptical in everything that does not relate to faith, he takes pleasure in disparaging philo- sophy. "If I had to live over again I think that I would so act as not to be put in the number of the Cartesians any more than in that of others. ... In truth, the Cartesians are worth little more than the rest, and are often prouder and more self-sufficient; and Descartes himself was not a man who might be called a pious person." (t. viii. p. 153-156.) We shall be less astonished at seeing a professor of philosophy treat with so little respect him whom history calls the father of modern philosophy when we read the judgment that he pronounced on the real founder of ancient philosophy, " Socrates .... is a man full of small ideas and petty reasoning, who looks only on the present life, a man who finds pleasure in discoursing on truths for the most part useless, and which only tend to enlighten the mind with respect to a few human objects/' (t. xi. p. 119.) It would be difficult to have a more narrow and unjust prejudice and to decry thus gratuitously one of the most real glories of humanity ; the immortal thinker who recalled men to the study of themselves, who preached to them temperance and justice and the dignity of labour, who courageously opposed the sophists, the ethics of pleasure and passion, the politics of force, and who crowned this disinterested and useful life by a heroic death. Although, then, Nicole passes for the author of the two discourses prefixed to the Logic^ the merit of the firm and courageous attitude of the authors towards Aristotle and scholasticism must especially be attributed to the influence of Arnauld. 1 Arnauld only speaks of the first of these discourses in this note to Mme. de Sable : "All that I can do to reconcile myself with you is to send you something that will amuse you for half an hour, and in which I think you will see expressed a part of your ideas respecting the folly of mankind. It is a discourse that we have been thinking of prefixing to our Logic. You will oblige us by sending us your opinion of it when you have seen it, for it is only persons like yourself that we would have for judges of it." (19 April, 1660.) It is in the second, which answers the objections, that the hand of Arnauld is visible. 8 13 Y 1 Introduction. 29 In the struggle of the Cartesian philosophy to free modern thought from the heavy yoke of Aristotle and scholasticism, we know with what prudence 1 Descartes had in 1637 undertaken the destruction of the ancient philosophy by proclaiming the right of free examination, provisional doubt, and the criterion of evidence. " My intention is not to teach here the method that each man must follow to properly guide his reason, but only to show how I have tried to guide my own.'' (Discours de la Methods, i.) " . . . . Setting forth this writing only as a history, or, if you like it better, as a fable. . . . My design has never extended further than trying to form anew my own proper thoughts, and to build on a foundation which is entirely my own." (ii.) He writes to Father Mersenne in 1641: "I will tell you, between ourselves, that these six meditations contain all the foundations of my physics ; but do not say so, if you please, for those who favour Aristotle will perhaps make more difficulty in approving of them; and I hope that those who read them will insensibly get accustomed to my principles, and will recognize their truth before perceiving that they destroy Aristotle's.'' We shall understand this prudence if we remember that Giordano Bruno, who, among other misdeeds, had opposed the philosophy of Aristotle at Paris, was burnt at Eome in 1600; that Vanini, in 1619, at Toulouse was condemned for his philo- sophical opinions to have his tongue cut out and afterwards to be hanged and burnt ; that Galileo, who had been severely admonished in 1616 by the congregation of the Index, had to go to Eome in 1633 to solemnly abjure his theory of the move- ment of the earth v The Logic of Port-Eoyal, published in 1662, lays down clearly and boldly the right of human reason before the jurisdiction of authority : " It is a very great restraint for a man to think himself obliged to approve of Aristotle in everything, and to take him as the guide to the truth of philosophical opinions. . . . The 1 Bossuet thinks it excessive : " M. Descartes has always feared to be remarked by the Church, and we see him take precautions against that, some of which run to excess." (Lettre a M. Postel, docteur de Sorbonne, 21 mai, 1701.) 30 Port- Royal Education. world cannot remain long under this constraint, and insensibly regains possession of natural and reasonable liberty, which consists in approving what it judges to be true and rejecting what it judges to be false." To appreciate at its real worth the boldness of these resolute declarations, we must remember that in 1670, the general of the Jesuits wrote to all the houses of the society to oppose Descartes' philosophy, and that shortly afterwards the University presented a petition to the Parliament to forbid its teaching. The Arret Burlesque, composed by Boileau in 1675, did ample justice to it. " The Court having examined the petition .... setting forth that for several years an unknown person, named Reason, had attempted to enter by force the schools of the said University .... where Aristotle had always been recognized as judge, with- out appeal, and not accountable for his opinions , . . ; having examined the treatises, entitled Physics of Rohault, Logic of Port- Royal . . . "The Court .... has maintained and kept, maintains and keeps, the said Aristotle in full and peaceable possession of the said schools. . . . And, in order that in the future he be not molested, has banished in perpetuity Eeason from the schools of the said University; forbids him to enter them and disturb or molest the said Aristotle in the possession and use of the same, on pain of being declared a jansenist and friend of innovations. ..." The greatest merit of the Port-Royal Logic is to have intro- duced Cartesiansm into teaching. It proclaims aloud that it has borrowed some reflections "from the books of a celebrated philosopher of this age, who has as much clearness of mind as there is confusion in the others." It sets forth, like Descartes, in the name of the famous axiom, " I think, therefore I exist," the evidence of conscience as the criterion of truth, and the four rules of his Method as the best guarantee against error, and for discovering the truth in human sciences. It was indeed the spirit of Descartes that suggested to the authors their small confidence in the rules of logic, and the infalli- bility of the syllogism, their title of "Art of thinking " instead of " Art of reasoning," their carefulness in forming the judgment by replacing the abstract and conventional examples by instructive Introduction. 3 1 examples taken from the different branches of knowledge, to give to logic at once more interest and especially more practical utility, and to bring it out of the school and make it useful for the study of the sciences as well as for the conduct of life. These solid merits have made this work a classic. Excepting certain defects of plan and proportion, easily explicable by the haste in which the work was composed, by the collaboration of two authors, and by the successive additions that they made to it, there is really but one fault, but it is a grave one, to be found with the Logic, namely, that it is so full of the spirit of Descartes that it escapes the influence, not yet very marked it is true, of Bacon. 1 A theologian and geometrician, Arnauld has explained the method of deduction, and completely neglected the method of induction, observation, and experiment which are suitable to the physical and natural sciences. It was in vain that the illustrious Chancellor of England, in the Novum Organum, in 1620, with the enthusiasm of an apostle, had invited men to lay aside the sterile dogmatism and the compilations of pretended scholars, and to interpret the great book of nature by a patient observation of facts; 2 "not to cling, so to say, to empty abstractions and pursue unrealities like the common logic, but to anatomize nature, to discover the real properties of bodies, and their well-determined actions and laws in matter" (Nov. Org. ii. 52.); to give up the syllogism as "an instrument too weak and coarse to penetrate into the depths of nature." (Nov. Org. i. 13.) A very remarkable chapter, in which we recognize the delicate hand of Nicole, his talent for analysis and his gentle raillery, namely, that on fallacies in life, permits us to study the moralist under his true aspect. We know what an impassioned cult Mine, de Sevigne did not cease to profess for the moral philosophy of Nicole, notwithstanding 1 Nevertheless we find the Advocate-General Bignon, one of the great friends of Port-Royal, speaking at length of Bacon to a traveller who came from England. (Vie par 1'abbe Ferau, vol. ii. p. 92.) Descartes, in his Letters (t. ii. pp. 324, 330, 494), approves of Bacon's method, and thinks it proper for those who wish to work at the advancement of the sciences. He always calls him Verulamius, from the barony of Verulam that he possessed. 2 " What it is necessary, so to say, to attach to the understanding is not wings, but on the contrary lead, a weight which may restrain its flight," he says in his figurative language. (Nov. Org. i. 104.) 32 Port- Royal Education. the bitter criticisms of her son, 1 who openly declared the Trait e de la connaissance de soi meme "distilled, sophisticated gibberish in several passages, and, above all, wearisome almost from one end to the other." She proclaimed it "admirable, delightful"; she is "charmed" with it; it is a pleasure which "carries her away." She felt a lively pleasure in seeing "the human heart so well anatomized, and its depths searched with a lantern." "It is a treasure to have such a good mirror of the weaknesses of our heart." (vol. i. 71.) This patient, ingenious, sometimes playful and gently satirical analysis of weaknesses, eccentricities, pre- judices, and illusions gave satisfaction to her fine and delicate mind, as the purity and severity of the morality did to the nobility of her sentiments and the respectability of her life. The Essais de morale comprise six volumes, to which may be added two other volumes of Letters, which are not the least interesting part of the works of Nicole. No comprehensive plan binds these various Essais together, because they were composed from day to day as opportunity offered. The first are well developed and very methodical treatises, in which the author feels himself at his best, because he finds something "to prove and to settle." Then they are only very short articles, and at last simple detached thoughts. Nicole rarely raises his voice to the pitch of the keen eloquence of Pascal ; he lacks authority and real passion in order to move us profoundly ; he leaves us cold, and makes us smile rather than tremble when, for instance, he represents the whole world under the power of the demon, as " a place of execution . . . full of all instruments of men's cruelty, and filled on the one side with executioners, and on the other with an infinite number of criminals abandoned to their rage. . . . We pass our days in the midst of this spiritual carnage, and we may say that we swim in the blood of 1 Ch. de Sevigne thus terminates a letter to his mother : " And I tell you that the first volume of the Essais de morale would appear to you just as it does to me, if La Marans and the abbe Tetu had not accustomed you to fine and elaborate things. This is not the first time that gibberish appears to you clear and easy ; of all that has been said of man and the heart of man, I have seen nothing less agreeable ; those portraits in which everyone recognizes himself are not there. Pascal, the Port-Royal Logic, Plutarch and Montaigne speak very differently ; this man speaks because he wishes to speak, and often he has not much to say." (2 February, 1676.) In t reduction. 3 3 sinners, that we are all covered with it, and that this world which bears us is a river of blood." (De la crainte de Dieu.) He does not succeed better in his picture of the conscience of the sinner at the moment that he appears before his judge ; he compares it to "a vast but dark chamber, that a man works all his life to fill with adders and serpents. . . . When he is thinking least of it, the windows of this chamber opening all of a sudden and letting in the broad daylight, all the serpents awake suddenly, and spring- ing upon the wretch, they tear him to pieces with their bites," &c (Du jugement.) To represent the primitive corruption of Tuoii, "let us imagine," says he, "a universal plague, or, rather, an accumulation of plagues, pests, and malignant carbuncles with which the body of a man may be covered, &c. ; this is an image of the state in which we are born." (De la connaissance de soi- meme.) There is always the same weakness and impotence with the same exaggeration. Sometimes Nicole gives a smart and clever touch, that sets off the expression and renders the truth pleasing. Here are two passages of a letter which deserve to be extracted : "The young children of our villages have a very amusing custom when they go in procession after Easter. He who carries the bell separates himself with a few companions a quarter of a league from the main body of the procession, and if he meet another bell they come to action ; they knock their bells against each other, and do not finish the contest until one of the bells is broken. After which there is nothing more to be said, for no one can doubt on which side victory is. It is much to be wished that it were the same in the conflict of caprices, and that the one that is broken should be so plainly and incontestably broken that there could be no doubt about it," &c. (Essais, t. vii. p. 31.) And a few pages further on : "I should even dare to tell you (provided that you do not take my comparison too literally, and that you do not take it into your head to conclude that I accuse you of drunkenness) that I should wish that one should do with regard to imputations that -which they say that the Breton girls do with regard to the fault which prevails in that country, which is that of getting intoxicated ; for, as they suppose that there is no man who is exempt from it, they will not marry one, it is said, D 34 Port-Royal Education. without having seen him drunk, in order to know by that whethe he is merry or quarrelsome in his cups." (Essais, t. vii. p. 35.) We have said that the jansenists use long and cumbrou , sentences. This quotation is a sufficiently demonstrative proof o / it. The matter is here spoilt, as if designedly, by the form. Bu / at Port-Koyal it was thought derogatory to Christian humility t< ' pay attention to style, and Nicole declares to Mme. de la Fayett< ; that he does not think it a great evil to be a bad author, (t. viii p. 261.) The neglect that he suffered because he would not take up th quarrels of Port-Koyal to the end inspired this gentle and wi^ raillery : "It is the same with friends as with clothes. Some are onb good for summer, others for winter, others for spring and autumn But as we only put off our summer clothes after the season 1 past, and keep them for another year, it is necessary in the sam< way to keep our friends, although they may not be good at al times, and to reserve them for those when they may be useful Some are only good for the month of July, that is to say, whei there is no cold to fear, and their number is sufficiently great. 1 (Essais, t. vii. p. 167.) But most often Nicole, without bestowing much care on th< form (he declares that he is incapable of a double attention) follows his thought, and conducts his fine and delicate analysii at a uniform and rather monotonous pace. He has been unde: no illusion with regard to this, and his declaration is mos explicit : "As there are painters who, having little imagination give all their characters the same features, there are also peopL who always write in the same manner, and whose style is alway: recognizable. No one ever had this defect more than I. " Nicole wai not the man to make Bossuet change his opinion on the judgmen already delivered by him in 1669 : "The style of MM. de Port Koyal has little variety; without variety there is no pleasure. 3 We know the passionate outburst of J. le Maistre : " Nicole, th< coldest, the greyest, the most leaden, the most insupportable o: the bores of that great and tedious house." We are here a long way from the enthusiasm of Mme. d( S^vigne' : " What language ! what skill in the arrangement o: Introduction. 3 5 the words ! One thinks one has only read French in this book." (12 January, 1676.) It is precisely in the arrangement of the words and the turn of the phrase that Nicole seems to us absolutely wanting in skill. The expression is well chosen, exact, sometimes profound, often fine and delicate. But it most often loses a portion of its good qualities and charms, because it disappears as if drowned in a drawling and cumbrous sentence, overloaded with incidental or subordinate propositions, which the habitual employment of the present participle makes still heavier. Here is a sufficiently striking example. Nicole has been moved by the gloomy theories of La Rochefoucauld, and he writes : " So many secret affectations glide into friendships, that I scarcely dare to say that I love anyone, for fear that all I feel for him may not be reduced to loving myself, there being nothing more usual than only to love in others the favourable sentiments that they have for us, when we imagine we love what God has put in them." (t. vii. p. 40.) On reading such phrases, and they abound in Nicole, we might say, " What a creditable scruple ! What tact in putting us on our guard without discouraging us by a bitter and trenchant condemnation of friendship ! " But we should never say, " What skill in the arrangement of the words ! What a writer ! " La Kochefoucauld draws this praise from us at the very time that we repudiate these distressing calumnies against the human heart. Notwithstanding her admiration, Mme. de S^vigne* had too much good sense and soundness of judgment not to take exception several times to the essence of the ideas, and not to point out contradictions in them. Even in that famous Traite de Vart de vivre en paix avec les hommes, of which she said she would like "to make broth and swallow it, 7 ' she agrees with her daughter that if peace and union with our neighbour are so precious, and require so many sacrifices, "there is no way after that of being indifferent to what he thinks of us," and that she is "less capable than anyone of understanding this perfection which is a little above human nature." Her judgment is more severe on the Traite de la soumission a la volonte de Dieu: "See how he represents it to us as sovereign, doing all, disposing of all, regulating all. I agree to it, that is what I believe ; and if, on 36 Port-Royal Education. turning over the leaf, they mean the reverse, to keep on good terms with both sides, they will have on that, with respect to me, the fate of those political opportunists, and will not make me change." (25 May, 1680.) Would anyone believe that she is speaking of her beloved Nicole in that curious letter of July 16, 16771 "There is the prettiest gibberish that I have ever seen in the twenty-sixth article of the last volume of the Essais de morale, in the treatise de tenter Dieu. That is very amusing; and when, besides, we are sub- missive, that morality is not unsettled by it, and that it is only to confute false reasoning, there is no great harm ; for if they would keep silence, we would say nothing; but to wish to establish their maxims by every means, to translate St. Augustine for us, lest we should ignore him, to publish all that is most severe in him, and then to sum up, like Father Bauny, for fear of losing the right of scolding ; that is provoking, it is true. . . . May I die if I do not like the Jesuits a thousand times better ; they are at least consistent, uniform in doctrine and morals. Our brethren speak well and conclude ill ; they are not sincere ; here I am in Escobar. You see very well, my daughter, that I am playing and amusing myself." On looking closely into the Essais of Nicole it would not be difficult to point out many exaggerations and inexact ideas, false wit, "refinements of spiritual ity," a certain want of vigour and authority, of impulse and enthusiasm for what is good. 1 Is it well to preach such enervating doctrines to prepare us to cultivate our faculties in order that we may better fulfil our destiny and courageously perform the duties of life ? " Man's real science is to understand the nothingness of the world, and his true happiness to despise it." (t. vii. p. 3.) "The world is but a great hospital full of patients." (t. vii. p. 209.) "The conversation of the world is almost constantly the school of the devil." (t. x. p. 198.) "The devil is the greatest author and the 1 Joubert, who calls Nicole "a Pascal without style," and praises, not the form, but "the matter, which is exquisite," admits, however, that in his Essais "the morality of the gospel is perhaps a little too much refined by subtle reasoning." (Vol. ii. p. 165.) Thus Nicole undertook to show an officer "a hundred deadly sins of which he had never heard, and which he did not know at all." (Essais, t. vii. p. 151.) Introduction. 37 greatest writer in the world, as well as the greatest speaker, since he has a share in most of the writings and speeches of men." (t. xii. p. 176.) "If Christ brought any science into the world it was that of despising all the sciences which are the subject and foundation of the vanity and curiosity of men." 1 (t. xi. p. 89.) What shall we say of the reflections suggested to him by his asthma ^ " The world values only the talents of action, and to be good for nothing is to be a subject for its abhorrence. This, however, is a very false judgment, which has its source only in the vanity natural to man, and if we were well rid of it we should find more happiness in the deprivation of the talents that I call the talents of impotence than in all the great qualities." (t. vii. p. 162.) There can be nothing better than for the moralist to put us on our guard against the dangers of ambition. But is it not forcing the note and missing the aim to lay down this principle : " No person is permitted to endeavour to raise and better either himself or his family'"? (t. xi. p. 321.) What father of a family, seeking very legitimately to prepare a better position for his children, would take seriously the reasons appealed to by Nicole, that it is render- ing our salvation more difficult, and forsaking the example of Christ, whose whole life was only a continual abasement and humiliation 1 Mme. de Sevigne thinks that description of society very amusing in which, thanks to cupidity, very obliging people build and furnish our houses, weave our stuffs, carry our letters, run to the world's end to fetch provisions and materials, or cheerfully render us the lowest and most laborious services. The idea is neither correct nor sound. It has a paradoxical turn, which 1 How much better Bossuet keeps within bounds and reconciles every- thing : "I am not one of those who make much of human knowledge, yet, nevertheless, I confess that I cannot contemplate without admiration the wonderful discoveries that science has made in order to investigate nature, nor the many fine inventions that art has found to adapt it to our use. Man has almost changed the face of the world. . . . He has mounted to the skies ; to walk more safely, he has taught the stars to guide him in his travels ; to measure out his life more evenly, he has forced the sun to render an account, so to say, of all his steps." (Sermons, 4 e semaine de careme. ) Such language honoured the pulpit ; Nicole only made a oanting discourse. 38 Port- Royal Education. would make it accepted with more propriety in a humorous writer. In a serious moral lesson it is needful to adopt another tone, and to speak in better terms of that admirable harmony of economical interests that Bastiat has so eloquently described, and which so happily inspired the fine sonnet of M. Sully- Prudhomme. The poet, awaking from a dream, in. which he believes himself for an instant abandoned by the labourer, the"' weaver, and the mason, and seeing with pleasure everybody at work, far from stigmatizing them with the name of grasping, finds only a cry of thankfulness in his heart : " And since that day I have loved them all ! " Is not that grave discussion of seventeen pages on this strange question, May a person entirely devoted to God have his portrait taken for his friends and neighbours mere sentimentalism 1 Christ did, it is true, send to Abgarus, King of Edessa, the impression of His countenance on a cloth, but that was to induce him to be con- verted. " It would be criminal in us to wish to be considered and loved as the Son of God wished to be considered and loved." (t. viii. p. 196.) And the scene of the staircase? A female devotee was showing Nicole out ... to honour the steps of Jesus Christ ! Notwithstanding his edification at the reply, he endeavoured, but in vain, to show her that useless steps could no more honour those of Christ than words without deeds and without necessity could honour His words, " She did not well understand my reply, and continued to honour Jesus Christ by showing me out." (t. vii. p. 185.) Even in serious matters Nicole, by his turn of mind, gives a euphuistic character to the moral lesson, and thus impairs its gravity. Ancient philosophy and Christianity have both recommended as one of the most useful exercises the examination of the conscience, the regulation of the employment of time, incessant watchfulness over our bad propensities, in order to remedy the evil at once. Let us listen to Nicole : " To facilitate this practice, let her. imagine that a person who resembles her, that is, who has the same maladies as she has, asks her advice, and that she prescribes all that conies into her mind; let her write Introduction. 39 down her thoughts on this subject, and let her play the directress with respect to this person, who will not be different from herself. There is nothing but what is reasonable in that, for we are, in fact, double. It is a sort of game that I propose, but which will not fail to relieve the mind." (t. vii. p. 47.) After having written much to dissuade from marriage, doesi he not ruin his whole argument by this subtle distinction, that hej has spoken "as a mere advocate" and not "as a judge," on by this comparison with a person who, being questioned about? two roads, contents himself with showing the one he knows best? As he pleases himself immoderately in his letter to Mile. Aubry, the directress of the school that he founded at Troyes in 1678, in developing that affected allegory of the pustules (envy, jealousy, malignity), and as he is proud of his analysis, how the Hotel of Kambouillet would have applauded ! " You did not yet know that one of your duties was to cleverly pierce these pustules of the soul ; I tell you so now." (t. viii. p. 58.) To resume, it would be difficult to conclude, with Mme. de Sevigne, that all that "is of the same stuff as Pascal." And if we cede this point, it would be on condition of immediately adding this witty repartie of M. V. Fournel : " Yes, but the tailor is different." His contemporaries boast of his "golden pen." Nicole lacks many things for posterity to ratify this eulogy. Like all the writers of Port-Royal, by an exaggerated scruple of piety, he treats the question of style too disdainfully as a vanity. He is < little concerned about negligence of style, the matter alone deserves his attention. Truth appears to him worthy of respect, however she may be clothed. The only question is to know if we are not wanting in respect and compromising her influence by refusing her the garb that is most becoming to present herself to the world and to succeed. Nicole says elsewhere to Mme. de La Fayette that he does not write for the public, but only to employ himself and occupy his mind ; l that his writings were not made 1 Nicole even says, humorously enough, of an apology that he had com- posed, that his only aim was *' to procure sleep ... It seems to me that it is a very legitimate purpose to wish to sleep." When his system of General 40 Port- Royal Education. to be printed. When the opportunity made him hastily take up the design of publishing them, "being very much occupied with other things, I satisfied myself by reading them over quickly, paying special attention to the matter. So that not being capable of a divided attention, I am astonished how many inexact expres- sions have escaped me. 1 All that I can do, then, is to beg intelligent persons to say nothing about them, and to let this edition be exhausted under favour of the indulgence of the public. I shall be more exact another time if I have leisure ; and if not I shall put up with the reputation of writing badly, which is not a great evil." But, then, why print? Posterity only collects and preserves well-finished works. Voltaire is a little premature in this prophecy: "The Essais de morale, which are useful to mankind, will not perish." (Siede de Louis XIV. , Ecrivains.) D'Aguesseau, like Rollin, had already recommended to his son only " the first four volumes of the Essais de morale, which are more carefully finished than the rest, and in which it is easier to perceive a plan and regular order." (4th Instruction.) In our time M. Silvestre de Saci has reduced to one volume his Choix de petits traites de morale (1857, 16mo), and doubtless the few readers of an author formerly so much appreciated might easily be counted. He suffers the natural law of retaliation. He has not thought sufficiently of us, and we forget him. What a disillusion would not Mme. de Sevigne suffer on vainly seeking the name of her favourite author in the fine study of M. Prevost- Paradol on les Moralistes fran$ais. The eminent critic has not given him the most humble place between Montaigne, La Boetie, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere, arid Vauvenargues. There is among the Essais de morale a tract which more especially interests us, De ^education d'un prince. It does honour to the educators of Port-Eoyal. We extract a few thoughtful pages, in which the reader will find useful subjects for meditation. What a fine and broad definition ! " The aim Grace was attacked, he answered the objections by repeating his saying : " It is a sort of narcotic that I have always used." (Quoted by Sainte-Beuve, t. iv. p. 492.) 1 We read in the same letter : " I should not dare to say to what the corrections that I might make, if I had leisure, would amount, there are so many things to observe when negligence of style is to be avoided." Introduction. 41 of instruction is to carry the mind to the point that it is capable of attaining." This is a manly sentence that redeems many dis- couraging phrases on the vanity of curiosity and on the contempt for the sciences. Nicole is not less happy, both in thought and expression, when he points out to the masters that their part is "to expose to the inward light of the mind" the object of their lessons, and that without this light " instruction is as useless as wishing to show pictures during the night. The mind of children is almost entirely full of darkness, and only catches glimpses of small rays of light. Thus everything consists in husbanding these rays, in augmenting them, and in exposing to them what one wishes them to understand. . . . We must look where there is light, and present to it what we wish to make them understand." A perusal of this little tract cannot be too much recommended. A great deal of practical advice on the different branches of teach- ing will be found in it. It is one of the most authoritative and suggestive books of Nicole. After Lancelot and Nicole, the most eminent name is that of Coutel, or Coustel (1621-1704). Lemaitre, in a memoir inserted in the Supplement au Necrologe, enters in May, 1650, the arrival at Port-Eoyal des Champs of " M. Coutel, Picard, S9avant en grec et en latin." Since the establishment of the Petites Ecoles in the rue Saint-Dominique-d'Enfer (1646) he had been placed in charge of a division of six pupils. It was only in 1687 that he drew up the Rules for the Education of Children, a work dedicated to Cardinal Furstemberg, whose nephews he had educated. It is the most complete and methodical work of Port-Royal on pedagogy that remains to us. The matter is worth much more than the form. Coustel was far from being a good writer, but he was an earnest and devoted teacher, modest and sensible, who knew children well and loved them. The prolixity, negligence, and commonplace of his style condemned him. to a prompt oblivion. As to Guyot, it is strange that the historians of Port-Koyal have not given him a short notice. Besogne declares that "nothing is known of him." Guyot was, however, one of the masters on the first foundation, and is the author of numerous publications. We owe him A New Translation of the Captives of Plautus, 1666 ; Moral and Political Letters of Cicero to his Port-Royal Education. friend Atticus, 1666 ; A New Translation of a New Collection of the Best Letters of Cicero to his Friends, 1666 ; Letters of Cicero to his Common Friends, and to Atticus, his Particular Friend, 1668; 1 A Political Letter of Cicero to his Brother Quintus, and Scipio's Dream, 1670; A New Translation of the Bucolics of Yirgil, 1678; Moral and Epigrammatic Flowers from Ancient and Modern Writers, 1669. And at the beginning of several of these works he has developed, in very extended and important prefaces, several of the pedagogic reforms in the realization of which he had collaborated in the Petites Ecoles. The reason of the silence of Port-Royal on this master, who played such an active part, has been given by Barbier, in a notice on Th. Guyot (Magasin encyclopedique, August, 1813); he did not remain faithful to Port-Royal. One of his works, published in 1666, is dedicated to Messeigneurs de Mont baron, students with the R.R. P.P. Jesuites at the College of Clermont, " that celebrated school," says he, " that piety has dedicated to science and virtue." He disowned his old friends in their mis- fortune, and paid court to their relentless persecutors. Nevertheless, some extracts from one of his prefaces, on teaching reading, on the study of the French language, and on the advantages of oral in- struction, will be read with interest. It is proper to devote a few lines at least to the austere and venerable Wallon de Beaupuis, director of the Petites Ecoles de Port-Royal. Born at Beauvais in 1621, he commenced his studies in the college of that town, partly under the celebrated Godefroi Hermant; then, after a fourth year of rhetoric with the Jesuits at 1 The translator causes a smile when, under pretence of politeness, he introduces into the letters of Cicero and his friends our French forms : "Monsieur wtre frere, madame votre m&re, mademoiselle votre fille t madame votre femme," transforms Balbus into M. Lebegue, and Pomponius into -M. de Pomponne ! But what is more serious is that in an excellent preface, which sums up all education in " precision of mind and rectitude of will," he several times compares the child to a bird in a cage ! "By restraining and confining him within the limits of a strict discipline, as in a cage, to teach him to be wise and virtuous ..." (p. 114). "As far as possible, all the openings of the cage, which give to this spirit the greatest desire to go out, must be closed. Some open bars .... to live and be in health ; this is what we do with nightingales to make them sing, and to parrots to teach them to talk" (p. 127). "More than one cage is necessary for him to live and to render him capable of instruction " (p. 137). Introduction. 43 Paris, he studied philosophy with Arnauld at the College of Le Mans, and then theology at the College of Clugny. The book on Frequente Communion won him over to Port-Royal, where he was admitted in 1644. He was entrusted with the charge of the school in the rue Saint-Dominique; then, in 1653, with that of Le Chesnai, of which he has left us the regulations. He was engaged, besides, in collecting extracts from the Fathers to aid Arnauld and Nicole in the composition of their works. After the breaking-up of the Petites Ecoles he was ordained priest, notwithstanding his re- sistance, and was for some time preceptor to the two young Periers, Pascal's nephews ; then, in 1676, he had the direction of the seminary at Beauvais. Disgraced at the end of three years, and deprived of all employment, he passed the remainder of his life in the most austere retreat, without any other recrea- tion than an annual journey to Port-Royal. He died in February, 1709, at the age of 87, bearing witness to himself that "by the grace of God he had sought always and above everything the supreme good." His work at Port-Royal was more religious than pedagogic. Dr. Antoine Arnauld 1 deserves a place of honour among the pedagogues of Port-Royal, although the great business of his life had been to fulfil the last vow of his dying mother, that of Saint- 1 An tome Arnauld was born at Paris, February 6, 1612. He was the twentieth child of the celebrated advocate Arnauld, who, in 1594, had defended the University against the Jesuits with so much vehemence. This was the most illustrious conquest of Saint-Cyran during his imprisonment. Entirely devoted to Port - Royal, to which he made a donation of his property, priest and doctor in 1641, he devoted his life to the defence of religion and morality. His very numerous works, almost exclusively polemical, form no less than forty-two folio volumes. The greater number have suffered the fate reserved for this kind of books. "The fire and division becoming extinct," says La Bruyere, "they are like last year's almanacks." His treatise, De la frequence Communion (1643), deserves special mention. "This book caused something like a revolution in the manner of understanding and practising piety, and also in the manner of writing theology. ... It was, to say truth, the first manifestation of that Port-Royal of Saint-Cyran, which until then had remained rather in the shade, in a sort of mystery conformable to the character of the great director." (SAINTE-BEUVE, t. ii. p. 166.) Almost always compelled to hide and to fly, he died in exile at Brussels, 8 August, 1694. His burial place was kept secret, lest the Jesuits should have him disinterred, as they did Jausenius. 44 Port-Royal Education. Cyran, and his own oath as doctor, namely, the defence of the truth. It was in the midst of his constantly-recurring struggles against the Jesuits Sirmond, Petau, Nouet, Brisacier, Annat, and Maimbourg, against the faculty of theology, against the assembly of the clergy, against the archbishops of Paris, Perefixe, and Harlai, against the archbishop of Embrun, against the doctors Morel and Lemoine, against Eichard Simon, against Jurieu, against the bishops of Lavaur and Yabres, against Malebranche, against the calvinists, and against Nicole himself, that the inde- fatigable athlete, as if in play and to fill up his scanty moments of leisure, composed his most justly estimated works. The Grammaire generate et raisonnee is, to tell the truth, all his own. His letter to some members of the Academy on the difficulties of French syntax bears witness to the power and acuteriess of his criticism, and would alone suffice to justify the estimate of Bossuet a sound and powerful arguer. We know the occasion on which he composed the Logic, or the Art of Thinking. " One day," says Besogne, "when M. Arnauld was conversing with several persons, among whom was the young due de Chevreuse, the son of the due de Luines, he told this young nobleman that if he would give himself the trouble he would engage to teach him in four or five days all that was worth knowing in Logic. The proposition surprised the company a little. They conversed about it for some time. At last M. Arnauld, who had made the offer, resolved to make the trial. He set to work to compose a short abridgment of Logic, which he hoped to finish the same day. But, while reflecting, so many new thoughts occurred to his mind that he employed four or five days, during which he formed the body of the work. The paper was put into the hands of the young duke, who reduced it to four tables, and by learning one each day he knew the whole at the end of four days, so that the prediction of four or five days came true to the letter." (t. v. p. 524.) He composed his Elements of geometry in the same way, at a moment's notice, so to say, during a slight illness, in a few days of liberty in a country house at Le Chesnai, "without any book." And if we may believe a note of the editor, Pascal had judged this work so favourably that he had burnt an essay on this science Introduction. 45 when he saw the manner in which Arnauld had remedied the confusion imputed to Euclid. Is it not very touching to see him engrossed with a question of pure pedagogy in the midst of the worry of persecution, and at a time when he was obliged to hide? "You will laugh," he writes, January 31, 1656, to the Mother Angelique, "at what gives me occasion to write to you. There is a little boy about twelve years old who does not know how to read. I wish to try if he can learn by M. Pascal's method. I therefore beg you to finish what you have begun to set down in writing." (t. i. p. 101.) It is not impossible that the Mother Angelique laughed when she received this letter; 1 we, however, are not tempted to do so ; we admire the good heart that reveals itself with such amiable simplicity. M. Sainte-Beuve has devoted the last chapter of his third volume to the most eminent students of Port-Koyal (Jerome and Thierry Bignon, Eacine, Le Nain de Tillemont, &c.). I am happy to fill up a grave lacuna by adding the name of Boisguilbert to his list. In the Advertisement to the reader, in one of his translations, the precursor of the economists, whom history has finally avenged of the scorn of Voltaire, thus expresses himself : " Although it seems that in our days all the sciences have been carried to the highest point that they can ever attain, we may say that that of making Greek and Latin writers speak our language has gone further, nothing being able to be added to the works of those gentlemen of the Academy, of Monsieur d'Andilly, who seems to have surpassed himself in his Josephus, and of those famous anonymous writers so celebrated throughout France; so I shall candidly confess that if I am sufficiently happy that this small work is not found very imperfect, I owe it to some education that 1 I judge so by this detail that the abbe Racine relates : Some of the sisters asked the Mother Angelique whether their novices and boarders would not be restored to them. "My daughters," she replied, "do not trouble yourselves about that. I am not anxious about whether your novices and boarders will be restored to you, but I am that the spirit of retirement, simplicity, and poverty shall be preserved among us. Provided that these things continue, laugh at all the rest." (Abrfye de Vhistoire ecclesiastique, t. x. p. 541.) 46 Port-Royal Education. I received among them in my youth." 1 (Roman History, by Herodian, 1675.) The thinker and patriot, whose enthusiastic eulogy 2 Michelet so justly made, is not one of the least glories with which Port- Eoyal may adorn herself. OF THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS AT PORT-ROYAL. "At Port-Koyal," writes M. Cousin, "the women are, perhaps, more extraordinary, and assuredly quite as great as the men. Is not the Mother Angelique the equal of Arnauld by her intrepidity of soul and elevation of thought*? 3 Is Nicole much above the Mother Agnes 1 She has more energy with as much gentleness. And did not their niece, the Mother Angelique de Saint-Jean, use, in the government of Port-Royal, a prudence, ability, and courage that her brother, the minister, might 4 have envied her] Who among the men has dared and struggled more, and has suffered more, and more patiently than all these women? They also have known and braved persecution, calumny, exile, and prison. . . ." (Jacqueline Pascal, p, 491.) But if these persons are morally equal, is it the same with their pedagogic work ? We have not, so to say, any information about the education of the girls at Port-Royal. 5 We know, in 1 The names of Boisguilbert and his brother are, in fact, mentioned in the Ties inter essantes et edifiantes, p. 86. 2 "May we see on the bridge of Rouen, opposite Corneille, the statue of a great citizen who, a hundred years before 1789, sent out from Rouen the first sound of the Revolution with as much vigour and more gravity than Mirabeau did later ! " 3 " M. d'Andilly said to me, 'Count all my brothers, iny children, and myself as fools in comparison with Angelique.' Nothing that has come out of those parts has ever been good which has not been amended and approved by her ; she is steeped in all the languages and sciences ; in fine, she is a prodigy." (Lettre de Mme. de Stvigne', 29 Nov., 1679.) Sainte-Beuve equally pays homage to this great mind : "No character in our subject appears to us more truly great and royal than she she and Saint-Cyran." (t. iv. p. 160.) 4 M. de Pomponne, secretary of state, charg6 d'affaires etrangeres from 1671 to 1679. 8 Here are a few dates of the establishment of the schools, and a few figures for the number of pupils. In 1609, the date of the reformation of the monastery by the Mother Angelique, the Sister Louise Sainte-Praxede de Lamoignon was appointed mistress of the boarders, as being the most Introduction. 47 a general manner, that it was much praised and sought after. Testimony in its favour is not wanting. "A great number of girls brought up in this monastery," says Racine, "might be cited who have since edified the world by their wisdom and virtue. j We know with what feelings of admiration and thankfulness I they (women of quality) have always spoken of the education \ that they had received there." The abbe Fromageau, who was sent by the archbishop of Paris, May 9, 1679, to make an inquiry by the king's order, dwelt at length, Besogne relates (t. ii. p. 507), " on the excellent education that was given to the children of whom he mentioned, as an example, the young demoiselle Bignon." A few days after, the archbishop "ex- hausted himself in eulogies of the virtue of the nuns, and of the excellent education they gave to the children. 1 And when the president de Guedreville, whose daughter was a boarder at Port-Royal, came to inquire what grave reason caused the dis- missal of the boarders, the prelate assured him of the irreproach- able management of the house, and of the excellence of the education that was received there." 2 But there is an absolute want of proofs. Where are the programmes of studies? What methods did the mistresses employ? What books did they put into the hands of their pupils? What traces have they left of their teaching and of capable of any of the twelve professed nuns of Port-Royal. The monastery was transferred in 1626 to the faubourg Saint- Jacques (now the MaterniU). The house of Port-Royal des Champs was re-opened in 1648. In 1661, at the time of the closing of the schools, there were 21 boarders in Paris, and 20 at the Champs. Besogne gives the list of them. (t. i. p. 412.) At the " peace of the church" in 1669, the boarders were again admitted into the two houses, henceforth completely separated. But on the death of the duchesse de Longueville (1679), the king ordered them to be definitely sent back to their parents. Besogne counts then 42 pupils. Nicole had founded a girls' school at Troyes in the preceding year. The teaching sisters, or black sisters, who were in charge of it were ordered not to teach any more in 1742, and in 1749 were dispersed. This last information is furnished us by M. Th. Boutiot. (Histoire de ^instruction publique et populaire d Troyes pendant les quatre demiers siedes, 1864.) 1 " There was nothing to find fault with in the education that she gave to the children, he told the abbess ; on the contrary, nowhere was it so good." (Hist. gen. de P.-R. y t. vii. p. 318.) 2 Clemencet makes him say: "They train the boarders perfectly well, not only in piety and morals, but also by forming their minaa ; there is no place where they would be better for all things than there. 48 Port-Royal Education. I their system of education *\ Eacine indeed tells us : " They were jnot satisfied with training them up in piety ; they also took great [pains to form their minds and reason, and laboured to render them equally capable of becoming some day either perfect nuns or excellent mothers." (Abrege de Vhistoire de Port-Royal.) The programme certainly is excellent ; it is very unfortunate that the proofs in support of it are absolutely wanting. The respectable du Fosse" (Memoir es pour servir a TJiistoire de Port-Royal, p. 378) extols the merits of Mother Angelique Arnauld, who for twenty-seven years was at the head of the community. He praises her ability " in making shrines, like the most clever architects, or wax figures better finished than those that are seen at Benoit's ; in writing letters that touch the heart and elevate the mind " ; he praises her sound piety, her profound ^ humility, her ardour for penance, and her contempt of the world. |Ent-tliere is not a word relating to education. And, in fact, the Mother Angelique in her Entretiens et Conferences has never treated a question having a bearing on education. Once only a sister consulted her about the absence of mind that children caused her. The answer was so short that the poor sister did not understand it, and dared not press the matter. On the other hand, there are many passages not very en- couraging as to the intellectual development of the pupils. Page 377 : " The demon delivered a discourse on philosophy which lasted two hours, the most lofty and elegant that this philosopher had ever heard. He was quite delighted with it; but the moment it was finished he forgot it so entirely that he could not even remember a single word . . . ; this discourse, which appeared so admirable and was so useless, shows that all human sciences are but vanity, and that they are often more hurtful than useful, because they puff up the mind.'* Page 399 : " Eejoice, ye poor and unlearned, without books, without reading or elevated conversation, in preparing your vegetables, in boiling your pot, if you are satisfied with your condition, if you are contented to be the least in the house of God, if you have no desire for another condition; the Son of God came for you. Have no care, He Himself will convert your heart : fear not the lack of instruction." Introduction. 49 Judging from the writings of the Mother Agnes, teaching appears to be an unpleasant task imposed on the sisters: 1 "You must not, if you please," we read in a letter of March 18, 1655, to the sister Marie-Dorothe'e Perdreau, " desire to be exempt from the service of the children, although it may be unpleasant to you ; for, since we receive them in this house, the lot may fall upon you as well as another." The Constitutions force them, nevertheless, on this course, while recommending them to apply themselves to their task with "great disinterestedness, dreading this task on account of the many opportunities there are for making mistakes, for diverting oneself too much, and losing the spirit of meditation, which it is not easy to preserve in such a great employment." Want of professional qualification, far from being taken into consideration in the interest of the children, is precisely a motive for the superiors for choosing the nuns who, v for the work of their salvation, need to be humbled and to suffer. "Do not put forward as an excuse," the Mother Agnes writes again, " that you do not discharge this duty well, and that you make many mistakes, for it is for that very reason that perhaps it will be found fitting to leave you there still, that you may better understand your incapacity . . . God permits the children not to behave to you as they ought that these insubordinate pupils may make you suffer and humble yourself. " (Faugere, t. ii. p. 465 and 461.) This is doubtless very edifying but not very pedagogic, and the] children appear to be sacrificed too much to the moral advanced ment of their mistresses. We cannot, however, but pay tribute] to their devotedness and self-abnegation. They are also, as far as it is possible to judge by the very rare passages that refer to them in the voluminous writings of Port-Royal, imbued with an admir- able sense of their responsibility. " She was so humble," says the Necrologe of D. Kivet, speaking of the sister Marie de Sainte- 1 Dufosse admits it implicitly : ' ' Although the order which obliged the nuns of Port-Royal to dismiss their boarders (1669) caused them much distress on account of the young girls who were so unjustly deprived of a pious education, it was, nevertheless, easy to console themselves on their own account because of the relief that they received from it, and the in- comparably greater peace that this release procured for them." (M6m. pou scrvir d rhistoire de P.-R t p. 177.) SO Port-Royal Education. Aldegonde des Pommares, deputy mistress, "that she took upon herself almost all the faults that the children committed, always thinking that they would not have happened except for her want of discretion or through having spoken to them roughly." (Page 5.) Similar testimony is borne to the, sister Anne-Eug6nie by Besogne in an interesting page that we have extracted. The Constitutions of the monastery of Port-Eoyal and the Regulations for the children, by Jacqueline Pascal, the only documents that we possess, bring before us a very monastic education. First, the parents must renounce their authority over their children and " offer them to God, unconcerned whether they are to be nuns or in society, according as it shall please God to ordain." Vocations will not be forced, but, as Jacqueline Pascal recommends, " one may make use of the opportunity to say some- thing about the happiness of a good nun .... to show that the religious life is not a burden, but one of the best gifts of God." Thus the greater number of the young women renounce the worldly life. Everything contributes to this. Although the Constitutions contain this article : " The girls may be kept until the age of sixteen years although they do not wish to be nuns," the Mother Angelique gave notice to Mine, de Chaze that her daughter, who was about fifteen, " did not wish to be a nun, and that it was necessary to remove her." (Leclerc, Vies interessantes et edifiantes des religieuses de Port-Royal, t. iii. p. 28.) We may conjecture how marriage was spoken of there. Saint- Cyran, in one of his Lettres chretiennes et spirituelles (they figure in the list of reading books drawn up by Jacqueline Pascal), writes: "If there were 100,000 souls that I loved like yours, I should always wish, in imitation of Saint Paul, never to see them involved (in matrimony), and would do my utmost to prevent them entering it." (t. i. p. 170.) His successor, the abbe Singlin, continues this teaching. We see him at work in the Vies interessantes by Leclerc. The sister Elizabeth de Sainte- Agnes de Feron entered Port-Royal at the age of seven years. When her mother thought of marrying her " Singlin strongly represented to her all that she had to fear in an engagement of this kind. She had always had a great distaste and a terrible Introduction. 5 1 dread of marriage." (t. ii. p. 388.) In conformity with these ideas, the Mother Agnes Arnauld wrote, in 1634, to her nephew Lemaitre to dissuade him from his project of marriage : " My dear nephew, this will be the last time that I shall use this title. . . . You will say that I blaspheme this venerable sacrament to which you are so devoted, but do not trouble yourself about my conscience, which knows how to separate the sacred from the profane, the precious from the abject" 1 We know with what practical good sense Mine, de Maintenon counteracted this false delicacy, and exclaimed one day : " This is what brings ridicule on conventual education ! " The boarders wore the white habit and the veil of the novices. It is not given to those who at first show some dislike to it. How was that long day filled which began at four or half-past four o'clock for the elder and at five for the younger children ? With regard to studies, we only see reading and writing mentioned, and on festivals one hour's arithmetic. The only reading books mentioned refer to piety : The Imitation of Christ, Fr. Luis de Granada, la Philothe'e, St. John Climacus, The Tradition of the Church, The Letters of M. de Saint-Cyran, The Familiar Theology, The Christian Maxims, contained in the Book of Hours ; The Letter of a Carthusian Father, lately trans- lated; The Meditations of St. Theresa on the Pater-noster, &c. The morning reading is taken from the service for the day or from The Life of the Saints, and is to serve for the subject of private conversation during the day. No other books are left with the children than their Hours, Familiar Theology, The 1 This is the language of the pr&ieuse Armande : " Cannot you conceive what, as soon as it is heard, Such a word offers to the mind that is repulsive ? By what a strange image one is smitten ? To what an offensive object it leads the thought ? Do you not shudder at it ? and can you, sister, Persuade yourself to accept all the consequences of this word ? " To which the charming Henriette answers so sensibly : ft The consequences of this word, when I consider them, Show me a husband, children, and a home, And I see nothing in all that, if I can reason on it, To offend the mind or make one shudder." Les Femmes savantes, acte i. sc. 1.) 52 Port-Royal Education. [Words of Our Lord, The Imitation of Christ, and a Latin and (French Psalter. I The regulation recommends to " exercise the memory of the children very much " in order to open their mind, to occupy them and prevent them thinking evil." But further on we see that they have to learn by heart " The Familiar Theology, the Service of the Mass, The Tract on Confirmation, then all the hymns in French in the Hours, then all the Latin hymns in the breviary ; and when they have come into the monastery young, there are many who learn the whole Psalter. They have not much difficulty, provided that they are exhorted and forced a little." We might suspect it. As to writing, " they write their copy or they transcribe some- thing when they are very good and are permitted to do so." We are very glad to learn from an enemy that the French language was taught them formally. "There was always," says Father Rapin, "a certain spirit of politeness in these illustrious penitents, who could not belong to a party which had learnt to write and speak well to its contemporaries without feeling the effect of this spirit. . . . Everything there was polished, even the little boarders whom they took the trouble to rear in purity of language as much as in virtue, and it was in conversing with them that Doctor Arnauld found so much pleasure in notic- ing that great number of new expressions that he had the art to utilize in his works, and of which he made a special study." (Memoires, t. ii. p. 276.) Let us add needlework, housekeeping, singing by notes, and we shall have gathered all we are able to learn of the programme of studies. There is no trace of the teaching of history or the natural sciences. With regard to outside news, " they receive the announcement of the taking the veil by some sisters or some note requesting their prayers for some person or some pious undertaking." We may at least remark in this teaching, which appears to us so inadequate, some good scholastic usages. "At the end of a lesson, three or four children are set to repeat what was told them the day before. They are not questioned in turn, in order to keep them ou the alert ; sometimes one, sometimes another is Addressed, . , Introduction. 53 As to the younger children, they must not be left idle, but their time must be divided, making them read for a quarter of an hour, play for another quarter, and then work for another short time. These changes amuse them, and prevent them forming the bad habit to which children are very prone, of holding their book and playing with it or with their work, sitting sideways and constantly turning their heads." By as much as Jacqueline Pascal is distressingly laconic, when it is a question of the intellectual development of the pupils, by so much does she please herself in setting out in detail the monastic side of their education. We are rather shocked by the system of repression to which the girls are subjected. On every page of the Regulations one word constantly reappears, cold and pitiless, namely, silence : l perfect silence while rising and dressing, strict silence till the Preciosa of prime, very strict silence while at work after breakfast at half- past seven, silence during the household work, increased silence during the writing lesson, silence during the two hours' duration of the service and masses in the monastery, even when they do not attend it, silence in the refectory, complete silence during work till vespers, silence after the evening angelus, even in summer, when they are walking in the garden, great silence while un- dressing and going to bed at eight o'clock. Will the poor little mutes at least regain a little liberty, and give themselves up to the joy of their age " in play- time, when it seems they have a right to say many thing to amuse and recreate themselves M 1 Not by any means, except the very young ones, who are left to play. As to the rest, the mistresses take care to speak to and converse with them, in order to help them to say reasonable things which will enlarge their minds. i Evidently these absolute precepts must have been very much modified in practice. The wise caution that precedes the Regulations for children (see p. 226) proves this. " It would not always be easy nor even useful to put it in practice with this severity, for it may be that all children are not capable of such strict silence and so strained a life without being depressed and wearied, which must be avoided above all things." The Mother Agnes writes, about 1660, to Mme de Foix, coadjutrix, of Saintes : " Our boarders are not con- strained to keep silence, but they are carefully watched, in order that they may not converse about trifles." 54 Port-Royal Education. Besides, they are forbidden to speak of their confessions, of the singing of the sisters, of the penances of the refectory, of their dreams, and of the parlour. They are not allowed to speak in an undertone, on pain of repeating aloud what they have said. | Play-time, however, is almost always taken up with work. "Except the very little ones, who always play, all work without losing their time, and they have made it such a habit that nothing wearies them so much as the recreations on festivals. " J What an admission ! Two extracts (see pp. 245 and 247) permit us to penetrate into Port-Eoyal at this period of the day. One shows us the Sister Eugenie taxing her ingenuity to amuse the children who cannot play without her. The other, more curious, sketches a lively scene in which the children, taking part in the disputes of the day, amuse themselves by bringing Escobar to trial ! Keligious exercises occupy a place very disproportionate to the age of the children, if the aim were not to train them all for the religious life. 2 Prayer is not only the beginning and end of every lesson, it recurs every hour; when the bell rings for a service in the choir work is interrupted to repeat a prayer. The scholars hear mass every day "on their knees; it has been found that this posture is not so uneasy when one has become used to it early." They go to terce and vespers on Sundays and Thursdays, to the high festivals, to the feast-days of saints, 1 There is a question of recreations in the examination of the Sister Jeanne de Sainte-Domitille. " The little girls, the priest tells her, laughing, have answered : ' Alas ! recreation, we did not waste our time over that, we did nothing but weep for our sins.' 'This last answer/ replied the sister, smiling, * conies as little from the children as the preceding. In the matter of recrea- tion they passed two hours a day in it very gaily, and have always been very pleased to go into that house, which has plainly appeared by the sorrow they showed in leaving us.' " (Histoire des persecutions des religieuses, p. 171.) 2 Leclerc says of Mdlle. du Fargis, a boarder from the age of seven years : "The Mother Angelique took special care in training her in virtue, and in inspiring her with contempt of the world and of herself. She soon had the consolation of seeing that her pains and instructions produced excellent results in this young pupil. In fact, when she was of an age to choose her state of life, she formed the resolution to be a nun. " Her father cast himself at her knees. The constancy of the young novice appeared even too- heroic to the Mother Angelique, who said to her, * You must humble your- self ; you are too strong.' " Introduction. 5 5 doctors, and others, if they ask and deserve this favour. At eleven o'clock scrutiny of conscience. The elder girls may repeat their sexts. After recreation they sing the Veni Creator in pre- paration for religious instruction ; then they are allowed the favour of telling aloud one of their faults, "they are accustomed to do so readily." 1 At four o'clock the elder girls may obtain the favour of going to vespers. At last the evening recreation ends with complines, which they may recite in summer while walking in the garden. We cannot approve of this excess of religious practices any more than of that spirit of mortification which presents work solely as a penance, which exempts from the collation at the age of fourteen, and exhorts the children " to take sufficient nourishment as not to become feeble." 2 At that age the body needs to grow and be strengthened. How much more sensible and humane is Mme. de Maintenon when, in describing a reasonable person, she shows him " eating with a good appetite, not like a glutton with his head in his plate, but gracefully and cleanly, and, since it has pleased God that we should find pleasure in eating, he takes it unaffectedly, and without any scruple." The Mother Angelique solemnly protests before God, in a fine letter written to the queen on her death-bed in 1661, that they were not at all occupied in the monastery with the theological controversies raised by Saint- Cyran and Arnauld. Father Eapin replies by a dilemma which is not wanting in force. "If these questions are essential to faith, why deprive this house of know- ledge necessary to salvation? If they are not so, but are im- 1 Mme de Maintenon absolutely forbids this practice to the Ladies of Saiut- Cyr : " Cultivate carefully in your young ladies the sentiments of honour .... and do not exact from them practices that might weaken that glory and make them bold ; for example, making them acknowledge publicly humiliating faults, thinking that this would be recalling the custom of public confession, which the Church has thought it right to suppress." (Entretien, 1703.) Mine, de Maintenon is aiming here at the jansenists, who had begun to revive this ancient custom. 2 Besogne, praising the love of the Mother Angelique for mortification, relates that the most devout of the young girls prided themselves on emula- tion, and that it very nearly cost three of them very dear who " took it into their heads, in order to mortify themselves in imitation of the nuns, to gather weeds in the garden, pound them up, and swallow the juice." (t i p. 42.) 56 Port-Royal Education. material, why make so much clamour about them everywhere? Why resist the Pope and trouble the Church for affairs of so little importance, that they may be ignored without any bad consequences'? Is it likely that the heads of this party are so zealous in teaching their maxims to the whole kingdom, and that Port-Royal alone, where they reside, is left in ignorance of the mysteries that are taught there V 9 (Memoires, vol. iii. p. 163.) Two anecdotes related by Mme. de Main tenon at'Saint-Cyr would tend to confirm the reasoning of the Jesuit father : "When the king forbade boarders to be placed at Port-Eoyal Mme. la comtesse de *** withdrew her daughter, who was only twelve year old ; she brought her to court, where she began to disparage all that M. de Perefixe had done in his visit to Port-Royal. She was inexhaustible, and I could not understand how a child could speak with such boldness. During this very visit of the arch- bishop he made a speech to try and gain them over. After a rather long speech he asked a little boarder of nine or ten years old, who had been listening attentively, if she was beginning to be convinced of the truth of what he said. She answered him with an astonishing boldness, ' I admire the depth of the judgments of God to have given us a prelate as ignorant as you are.' And all the nuns applauded this answer. This is the submission and humility that their directors inspire in them." (Lettres historiques et edifiantes, vol. ii. p. 227.) No doubt the testimony of an impassioned enemy, and one very much inclined to raillery, must be a little distrusted. But putting together these facts and the recreation scene where the boarders amused themselves by bringing Escobar to trial, we conclude that they were not so entirely strangers to the religious disputes of the time. The contrary would be altogether unlikely. But what an odious imputation, justly stigmatized by Arnauld (la Morale pratique des jesuites, t. viii. p. 209), theological hatred has cast on these nuns, "as pure as angels," said archbishop Perefixe, by reproaching them with being " as proud as demons ! " One of the thousand pamphlets to which the quarrel between the Jesuits and jansenists gave rise, le Pays de Janstnie, accuses them of giving their pupils lessons in immodesty, in consequence of the Introduction. 57 doctrine of Jansenius and Saint-Cyran on grace. 1 " Do not think, my daughters," he impudently makes them say, "that the grace of God is always with us. Alas, no ! There are wretched times when we are indeed compelled to sin. What should we do if God withdraws Himself? That often happens, however. Are we not indeed unfortunate? Chastity is commanded to us, and sometimes we are deprived of the strength necessary to preserve it. Kemember that, my daughters, your salvation is at stake if you ignore it, and you may have need of it at some time. There are husbands who would not be so cruel to their wives if they had studied theology, for they would know that grace is often denied us, and that in that case they should rather pity our weaknesses than be angry for the faults into which we fall by the absence of the succour that God refuses to us, either to punish our infidelities or to teach us by a necessary lapse that we can do nothing without Him. It is thus," continues the pamphleteer, " that they bring up the young to that patience that results in the greatest ignominy of the sex, when solicitations are warm and opportunities present. For although they do not intend to give lessons in immodesty to their young scholars, the doctrine nevertheless leads to it." You admit it, then, venomous logician, all this argument carried to excess is nothing but an insult and a calumny. Attack opinions, but do not outrage persons. Such a proceeding, always culpable, is especially so here towards pious women whose morality no one ever thought of throwing suspicion on. It is an unqualified infamy. Setting aside the exaggerated anxiety, the suspicious watchful- ness, the constant nervousness that the nuns of Port-Royal, under the inspiration of Saint-Cyran, bring to the accomplishment of their task, we must acknowledge the accuracy of their principles with respect to moral education. To unite a strength which restrains children without repelling them to a gentleness that wins them without enervating them ; vigilance and patience ; no partiality for the more agreeable and pretty children; no familiarity; great evenness of temper, for 1 Relation du pays de Jansenie, by the Capuchin Zacharie, under the name of Louis Fontaine (1658). 5 8 Port- Royal Education. too much laxity soon leads to too much severity, and it is much more painful for children to suffer these variations than to be always kept to their duty ; seldom to admonish for slight faults, even to pretend not to perceive them; to reprimand without bad temper or offensive terms; "they must be convinced that they are only reprimanded for their good"; to be sparing of words in reprimanding; 1 to chastise even without speaking, in order to prevent the children telling untruths or seeking excuses ; to work upon their character with discretion in private con- versations; to win their entire confidence, and to be on guard against their cunning ; to infuse this idea into them, namely, that their progress in what is good will be measured, not by extraordinary actions, but by the accomplishment of their every- day duties, "by the fidelity they shall bring into the smallest regulations of the schoolroom, by the support they shall give their sisters, by the charity with which they shall serve them in their needs, and by the care they shall take to mortify their faults." Here, in few words, and without pretension, is an excellent line of conduct. On the whole the girls' schools of Port-Eoyal affect the history of pedagogy less than the boys' schools. These mark an epoch of / notable reforms and real progress. If we often disagree with their venerable masters, if we have neither the same starting- point nor the same goal, if pedagogy has cast off their theological ideas, what advantage may we not still draw from a close inter- course with them. What legitimate lessons they may continue to give us on the proper aim of studies, on the art of managing children and training their minds and hearts. Their works, one of the glories of French pedagogy, still deserve to be read and pondered. Their example especially ought to continue living. A more absolute and disinterested devotedness to the great work of education has never been seen, nor a more watchful conscience, a more sincere and active love of childhood, nor a keener desire to render study easy and attractive. How did these humble schools raise the implacable hatred (M; 1 " Nothing weakens a reprimand more than a great many words." [me. de Maintenon, letter to a mistress, 1692.) Introduction. 59 of the Jesuits, a hatred that was not extinguished, even after the dispersion of the scholars and the exile or imprisonment of the masters, until the day that the very buildings were razed and destroyed and the tombs profaned I 1 What do I sayl This hatred is not yet extinct, it is again revived under our eyes, and at the present time dreams of annihilating the works, and even the very names, of our pious solitaries and their friends. 2 If the Jesuits feared for a moment to see the education of youth slip out of their hands, and their colleges lose their prosperity, 3 as Kacine and several writers of Port-Royal assert, they must have been promptly reassured ; for the Pctites Ecoles could only be a brilliant and short-lived institution, the individual I \ work of a few eminent masters, which was ill-adapted for' imitation, and which, by its narrow limits, confined to a very small number of select pupils, could not respond to the needs of public instruction, and consequently had no future prospects. The cause of the quarrel must evidently be sought less in . the scholastic success of the masters of Port-Royal than in their I growing favour with the public as spiritual directors and as( writers. Father Canaye explains it candidly in that curious conversation with the Marquis d* Hocquincourt, related by Saint- Evremond who was present : "It was not their diversity of 1 A letter of Feb. 2, 1712, gives frightful details ; the writer had them from an eye-witness. The labourers who disinterred the bodies, and broke them when they could not lift them entire, "drank, laughed, sang, and derided those persons whom they found thus in the flesh. But the most horrible thing was that there were ten dogs in the church devouring the flesh which still remained on those limbs which were separated from the bodies, and no one thought of driving them away." (LECLERC, Vies inte'ressantes, t. iv. p. 59.) 2 The Catalogue mensuel de I'&uvre pontificale des vieuxpapiers (the office is at Langres, Haute-Marne), in its number for April and May 1885, points out to the pious fury of devout souls 33 works to be destroyed. The names of Arnauld, Nicole, Pascal, Saci, Saint-Cyran, Duguet, &c., figure in it. A note, written in a jovial style, explains that the jansenists who did so much evil in former times snore peacefully on the shelves of libraries, and that now is a very favourable moment for laying hands on them and thrusting them all at once into the sack. Comment seems to me needless. 3 The testimony of Bacon in favour of their talent as educators is often quoted. It is proper to set in the balance the very superior authority, in my opinion, of Leibnitz: " I am far from thinking like Bacon," he writes, 11 who, when it is a question of a better education, is content to refer to the schools of the Jesuits." ((Euvres, t. vi. p. 65 ) 60 Port-Royal Education. opinions upon grace nor the five propositions which had set them at loggerheads. The ambition of governing men's con- sciences did it all. The jansenists found us in possession of the government, and they wished to take it from us. . . ." (CEuvres de Saint-Evremond, t. ii. p. 156.) Victors along all the line, both as writers and directors of conscience, the jansenists had necessarily to succumb before the double opposition of the Church and the State. Captivated by perfection and holiness, conceiving a very high idea of religion and morality, pushing the requirements of the Christian life, the responsibility of the priesthood, and the terrible grandeur of God to the extreme, they had bewailed the disorders of the clergy, of the Court of Eome, 1 and the monastic orders, and, like Vincent de Paul, Frangois de Sales, de Be'rulle, de Ranee, and Bourdoise, had felt deeply the need of a complete reform. With the generous but somewhat chimerical idea of restoring Christianity to its primitive purity, they expressed themselves in sharp and energetic terms on the corruption of morals and discipline in the Church. Saint-Cyran sorrowfully said that for five or six hundred years God had been destroying His Church. 2 He repeated the melancholy saying of Fra^ois de Sales : " There is scarcely one competent confessor in ten thousand ! " Jansenius, his companion in studies, wrote to him on April 5, 1621 : "After the heretics, no people in the world 1 The satirical Gui Patin is not the only person who complains of the abuse of nepotism at the Court of Rome, under the pontificate of Innocent X. (1644-1655): "The Signora Olympia, sister-in-law of the pope, who governs him body and soul, also governs the papacy. It is said that she sells everything, seizes and receives everything . . . which has drawn a joke from Pasquin, 'Olympia, olim pia, nunc harpia.'" (Lettres, t. i. p. 363.) The Venetian ambassador, Contarini, writes officially: "Donna Olympia sells, taxes, lets, gets presents made to her for all Government transactions, for pardons and justice ; she is surrounded by a band of agents and extortioners." (Quoted by de Chantelauze, Le cardinal de Retz et I'a/aire du chapeau, t. i. p. 296.) Pamphlets were affixed to the church doors: "Olympia primus, pontifex maximus." A medal represented her with the tiara on her head and St. Peter's keys in her hand ; Innocent X. in woman's dress holding a distaff and spindle. a Vincent de Paul in his deposition remembered only the second half of the phrase ; but the Mother Angelique had noted down the first in writing. (See the letter of Lemaitre in the Memoires pour servir d I'histoire de Port-Royal, t. ii. p. 207.) Introduction . 6 1 have more corrupted theology than those brawlers of the school that you know. If it had to be corrected in the ancient style, which is that of truth, the theology of this time would have no appearance of theology for the greater number of persons." Arnauld, in his fine book, De la frequents communion, in 1643, protested with unparalleled energy against the moral and religious condition of his contemporaries : " Also it is a horrible thing that never have so many confessions and communions been seen, and never more disorder and corruption . . . that there was never more impurity in marriages . . . more profligacy among the young . . . more excess and debauchery among the common people. Who does not know that for twenty years fornication has passed among men of the world as a slight fault; adultery, one of the greatest of all crimes, for a piece of good fortune ; cheating and treachery for court virtues; impiety and free- thinking for strength of mind . , . fraud and lying for the knowledge of sale and trading; the rage for constant gaming as a genteel occupation for women . . . the disguised simony and the profanation of church property as a legitimate accommo- dation which facilitates the interchange of benefices? ... I say nothing of more abominable crimes that our fathers were ignorant of, and which have broken out to such an extent in this unfortunate age, that one cannot think of them without being seized with horror." (3 e par tie, ch. xvi.) And the young and ardent doctor (he was then thirty-one) did not fear to trace back to the proper person the responsibility for all these disorders : " This is what we might with truth call the greatest misfortune that could happen to the Church, if we did not add that there is a still greater, namely, that persons are found who make profession of piety, who flatter the sinners in the desires of their soul . . . who seem to work for nothing else than to foster crimes by a false mildness, instead of arresting them by a just severity. . . They are persons who imagine that they have changed the face of a whole town, and have made it become quite Christian without any other change than that those who only communicated once a year now communicate once a month, and sometimes oftener. . . They admit that morals are not less corrupt than before . , , yet, nevertheless, they will maintain that 62 Port-Royal Education. men are in a better condition than they were, because they tell a priest every week what they told only every month, and add every week two sacrileges to their other crimes. . ." The mild and prudent Nicole declares that he fears some extraordinary effect of God's anger " at a time when the whole Church is filled with vicious and ignorant ecclesiastics and dissolute monasteries.* 1 (VisionnaireS) p. 179.) This was to bring on their hands many powerful enemies. It was easy to raise the hue and cry after the dangerous innovators, the new reformers, the disguised heretics, who wished, like Luther and Calvin, to ruin the Church under the pretext of reforming it. The State, that is to say Louis XIV., maintained, besides, ineradicable prejudices against them. " The gentlemen of Port- Eoyal always these gentlemen," repeated in chorus the king and Mme. de Maintenon. The sincerity of their convictions and of their apostolate is a sure guarantee to us, at least at the period with which we are occupied, that they remained strangers to political cabals, notwithstanding the accusations without proof and the perfidious insinuations of their adversaries. 1 It required, in truth, all the blindness of hatred to transform Saint-Cyran, Arnauld, Singlin, de Saci, Nicole, and Lancelot into conspirators and rioters. " Mine, de Longueville," Father Rapin relates, " said of Arnauld that he would never have been able to achieve his salvation if intrigue had been necessary to save him." (MemoireSy p. 240.) And this is well seen when, hidden and disguised in the duchess' house, he betrayed his incognito so artlessly. 2 The testimony of Cardinal de Retz is very favourable to them. "They are," Besogne makes him say, "the poorest people in the world in the matter of intrigue and affairs of State ; they will 1 The zealous annotator of the Mtmoires of Father Rapin is forced to admit it: "The Mdmoires are not very explicit on the part that the jansenists took in the armaments of the Fronde, and Port-Royal wished to deny it; the pamphlets are never silent about it." (t. i. p. 252.) A high authority truly ! 2 Speaking of a new work, the doctor, who was visiting him, happened to say, " De Saci does not write so well." " What do you mean ?" replied the patient, "my nephew writes better than I." In an analogous circumstance, the physician spoke of the arrest of Arnauld, "Oh ! it is rather hard to believe that," replied the incorrigible doctor, " I am M. Arnauld," Introduction. 63 not meddle with them. And far from receiving any assistance from them, they have disgusted several persons of my party and refused absolution to those who belonged to it." 1 (Hist. t. v. p. 546.) But it must be acknowledged that appearances were against them. "With a facility more Christian than judicious," according to the just comment of Racine, they welcomed a number of discon- tented or disgraced courtiers and a number of great ladies wearied of their intrigues. Their attachment to their archbishop, the Cardinal de Retz, whose consummate perversity 2 they did not know so well as we do, and who used them to further the ends of his ambition, compromised them completely in the opinion of Louis XIV. and his ministers. Their connection with the duchesse de Longueville, the due de Luynes, the marquis de Sevigne', Mme. de Guenegaut, the prince and princess de Conti, &c., caused the Fronde to be called the jansenists' war. Anne of Austria, indoctrinated by the marquis de Senecey, by Henri de Bourbon and the Jesuits, declared " that the king would remember them when he was of age," and he did remember them, in fact. His governor, Villeroi, represented them to him as people who "wanted neither pope nor king." (Memoires, du P. Eapin, t. i. p. 271.) Hence, we can understand the saying attri- buted to d'Harcourt, " A jansenist is very often only a man whom it is wished to ruin at court." M. Cousin and M. Kenan have said that in this struggle it was the Jesuits who defended the good cause, that of human 1 We see the abbe Singlin and the bishop of Alet exact from their penitents, the prince de Conti and the duchesse de Longueville, restitution of considerable sums to the poor, to repair the damages caused in the provinces by the civil wars. (BESOQNE, Hist. t. iii. pp. 39 and 83.) 2 His secretary, Guy Joly, reports this cynical conversation : * * My poor fellow, you lose your time in preaching to me. I know very well that I am only a knave. But, in spite of you and all the world, I wish to be so, because 1 find more pleasure in it. I am aware that there are three or four of you who know me and despise me in your hearts ; but I console myself with the satisfaction that I experience in imposing on all the rest by your means. People are so much deceived, and my reputation is so well established, that if you wished to undeceive them you would not be believed, which is sufficient for me to be contented and live after my own fashion." (Al&noires.) The admiration that Mme. de Sevigne did not cease to profess for Cardinal de Ketz is well known, 64 Port-Royal Education. liberty. Mme. de S^vigne, so attached to her friends and her brethren of Port-Koyal, separates from them, in fact, on this point of doctrine. She has just been reading the Bible of Eoyaumont, and, after having seen the reproaches of ingratitude and the horrible punishments with which God afflicted His people, she writes: "As to myself, I go much farther than the Jesuits. . . . I am persuaded that we have entire liberty. . , . The Jesuits do not say enough about it, and the others give occasion for murmuring against the justice of God when they take away our liberty, or abridge it so much that it is no longer liberty." (A Mme. de Grignan, August 28, 1676.) D'Alembert twits them equally, and with spirit, on the contradiction between their in- exorable dogma and their ethics : " What would be thought of a monarch who should say to one of his subjects, 'You have shackles on your feet, and you have no power to take them off; nevertheless, I warn you that if you do not immediately walk, for a long time and quite straight, along the edge of this precipice on which you are, you shall be condemned to everlasting torments'? Such is the God of the jansenists." (Destruction des Jesuit es, p. 64.) And, in spite of all, the men of Port-Eoyal, vanquished, proscribed, and annihilated, make in history quite another figure than their triumphant vanquishers. By a happy inconsistency with their discouraging system of predestination, they do not the less represent, in a certain measure, liberty of conscience, the spirit of inquiry, independence of thought, and the love of justice and truth. "Their adversaries pleaded the opposite cause, namely, undisputed sway over mind and heart." (Yillemain.) By a new and still more happy inconsistency they worked with a more ardent zeal than anyone for the reform of manners. Their moral grandeur burst forth before the eyes of their most prejudiced contemporaries, and, far from diminishing with time, it shines with a purer light, in the history of French civilization, in proportion as the miserable incidents of the struggle in which they succumbed are effaced. The true reason of their success, .in the opinion of their most prejudiced adversaries, was the I strictness of their spiritual discipline. "The jansenists," says I Father Kapin, "advanced their affairs by disguising their real In troduction. 6 5 sentiments; this was by a morality that had nothing but what was beautiful and edifying." (Hist, du jansenisme, p. 496.) One of the least equivocal marks of heresy was purity of morals. Port-Royal 1 drew from this valuable testimony her consolation and strength in the midst of the severest trials. I cannot speak better of the moral bearing of the work under- taken by the solitaries of Port-Royal than Henri Martin has done in that admirable and well-thought-out page of his Histoire de France: "Thorough sincerity in the action of man upon man, and a thorough disdain of all precautions and of all polity in things pertaining to God, characterize what may be called the method of Saint -Cyran. He desires to regenerate souls indi- vidually, not to obtain by surprise the superficial adhesion of a great number, still less to demand a verbal adhesion that the heart does not ratify. He was not the man to compel heretical populations to become Catholics in appearance. What matters appearance to him'? What matter outward forms to him 1 It is better to gain one soul to the internal Christ than an empire to the external Church. Here Saint -Cyran touches Descartes, although turning his back on him. . . . Descartes regenerated the mind ; Saint - Cyran endeavours to regenerate the heart. ... It is for this that Jansenism deserves, even at the present time, our serious study, too much inclined as we are now to place our hopes in social and collective reforms, which will remain unrealizable so long as they are not based on the reformation of the human soul. . . . We must be very self- 1 The Mother Agnes writes to Mme. de Foix, April 16, 1663: " There was a Jesuit who preached, this Lent, in Burgundy, that solitude, retire- ment, the desire for penance, love and zeal for the penitential canons, and to see the ancient penance and all the other maxims of Christian perfection re-established in the Church was the true mark of heresy. After that, must we not consider ourselves very happy, according to the Gospel ? " Arnauld said, on his side, "The whole court knows that, a bishop reproving an abbe of good family because his conduct was not sufficiently regular, ' What do you wish us to do ? ' replied the abbe. ' If we were more regular we should be taken for jansenists, and that would mean exclusion from all dignities." (Phantdme du jansdnisme, p. 28.) A few pages further on he quotes the words of Cardinal Bona : "What! to be poor, diligent in prayer, and to exhort the faithful to be diligent in it, to live in an exemplary manner, and to preach Christ in an apostolic manner, is that what is called Jansenism ? Please God we were all jansenists in this manner ! " (p. 33.) 66 Port-Royal Education. reliant in order to be as wrong as the jansenists. However far removed we may be from their doctrines, we must acknowledge that they have enhanced the moral grandeur of man; they are the Stoics of Christianity." (t. xii. pp. 84, 85.) If they were vanquished in their generous efforts, their adver- saries paid dear for their victory ; they received a mortal wound from the arrow of the Provincials, or rather, to speak more correctly, it was the ancient faith that succumbed in this re- lentless conflict. Contemplating the field of battle, Boileau, who had friends in both camps, said like a satirist, " Oh ! what madmen men are !" (Letter to M. Brossette.) Bayle decided in his usual manner, "It is properly a matter of Pyrrhonism." (Letter to Math. Marais.) "All that is nonsense !" exclaimed the courtiers and men of the world, according to Mme. de Choisy (letter to the comtesse de Maure, 1655); and Christians complained, with Mme. de Sevign, of all these over-refined dis- cussions on grace : " Thicken religion a little, it is all evaporating through being over-refined." Kidicule had invaded the sanctuary with that cloud of pamphlets that they were throwing at one another's heads, to set the laughers on its side. The titles are sufficiently significant : A Damper for the Jansenists, The Lantern of St. Augustine, Snuffers for the Lantern, A Curry-comb for the jansenist Pegasus, Ointment for the Burn, The Country of Jansenia, Illustrations of the Jesuits' Almanack, Essay of the New Tale of Mother Goose, or Illustrations of the Game of the Constitution, The Jesuit Harlequin, The Pasquinade of St. Medard, An Apology for Cartouche, or the Villain without Reproach, by the grace of Father Quesnel, The Precept and Pastoral Ordinance of Momus. And what songs, quatrains, satirical prints, comedies, and public masquerades ! 1 1 Gerberon describes the procession organized by the Jesuits of Macon : "They made all their scholars march in order, two by two, through the streets of the town, dressed in white. After them came a triumphal car, on which was a handsome young man dressed up as a girl, with everything that the vainest women use as ornaments ; and in order to denote what he represented, he carried a banner, on which were read these words, in hand some characters, GKACE STJFFISANTE. Behind this car was seen anothe young man tied and bound, who wore a paper mitre and other pontific ornaments to match, and who was covered from head to foot with a lar{ black veil to denote the defeat and disgrace of Jansenius." (Hist. gtn. < janstnisme, t. i. p. 483.) Introduction. 67 French humour indulged in it to its heart's content, and found the subject inexhaustible. What became of religious beliefs in the midst of this universal bantering 1 Father Kapin has said a word which is really the best and most sensible in all his writings : "It is not by these means that the Gospel is preached and defended." (Mem. t. ii. p. 195.) While the pastors were fight- ing with their crooks, as they are shown in a print, the wolves carried off the sheep. Is this, after all, to be so much regretted ? I think not ; for behind incredulity and indifference walked liberty of conscience, tolerance, justice, and humanity. Maurepas, who, under Cardinal Fleury, took an active part in this trifling, was not, perhaps, wrong in saying, " We have no other means of avoiding the civil war that the Jesuits wish to bring on us." (Mem. t. ii. p. 73.) In fact, really religious minds have no reason to complain that all this polemical theology has ceased to separate them from God ; and those who are more sensitive to the love of their neighbour rejoice to see so copious a source of terrible hatred exhausted and religious persecutions for ever ended. May Port-Koyal, to which we owe so many grand lessons, still secure to us, by the sight of its ruins, this glorious conquest of the modern spirit horror of intolerance, and respect for liberty. FELIX CADET. PORT-ROYAL EDUCATION. EXTRACTS FROM THE WRITERS OF PORT-ROYAL. ORIGIN OF THE PETITES ECOLES. I WISH you could read in my heart the affection that I have for children, and how there is nothing that is not modified by the reflections that the prudence of faith and grace obliges us to make. And when I formed the design of building a house which j should be, as it were, a seminary for the Church, to preserve in j it the innocence of the children, without which I perceive every : day that it is difficult for them to become good ecclesiastics, I only intended to build it for s_tx_childcfin, whom I would have chosen throughout the city of Paris, as it might please God that I should meet with them, and I would have given them a master especially to teach them Latin, and with him a good priest, whom I had already in view, to direct and govern their consciences. And I intended to give them for Latin (if he whom I had should happen to fail me) a man of twenty or twenty-five years of age, knowing that an older man is usually rather unfit to teach languages to children. This design having been destroyed by my imprisonment, 1 I have thought no more of it, and have given all the money that I had, except two thousand francs for this house, to the poor. It is true that finding here the son of a poor widow, who seemed to have good abilities, I have gradually taught him in my room; but a domestic disturbance 2 having driven him 1 On Friday, 14 May, 1638, Saint-Cyran was taken to the Castle of Vincennes, where he remained a prisoner until the death of Richelieu. 2 M. de Saint-Cyran, although very badly treated by the lieutenant of the governor of Vincennes, had given some attention to his two sons ; and " as his zeal for the education of children was very great," says Lancelot, " he added 69 7O Port-Royal Education. away, I have been obliged to continue my charity to him by send- ing him to Port-Koyal, because otherwise he would have been ruined among the soldiers, and those who had taken him from me by their authority would have succeeded in their design of injur- ing him. In fact, the circumstances were such that I could not abandon him without displeasing God and violating the character that He has given me, which is a personal law, and ought rather to be obeyed than public laws. 1 But I have since willingly con- sented that the good work that I began with the children of M. Bignon 2 should be continued at Port-Eoyal, as much because it is difficult for me to interrupt what I am doing for God's service as because M. Bignon gave me two thousand francs to employ as I should think fit, and which I had determined to employ on the above - mentioned building, in order that the children might share in the charity of their father. For I am much concerned lest those who have chosen me as the instrument of some good work should not be the first to reap the benefit of it. Nevertheless, I understood this in such a manner that if the children turned out intractable and unwilling to submit to the discipline under which I wished them to live in this house, it should be in my power to dismiss them without those from whom I had received them, not even excepting M. Bignon, bearing me any ill-will for it. ... a third to them, who was the son of a poor woman, a niece of the precentor of the Sainte-Chapelle. This last s