"everything is in confusion, because you have made people believe that everything is in danger."

"tout se remuë [(is all stirred up)], parceque vous faites entendre que tout est menacé."

     Blaise Pascal, Provincial letters no. 18, trans. M’Crie (GBWW, 1st ed. (1952), vol. 33, p. 166).  =p. 57 of tom. 7 of the 1904-1914 edition of the Œuvres ed. Bruschvicg.

de foi, de fait

"the Church, with divine authority, decides the points of faith, and cuts off from her body all who refuse to receive them.  But she does not act in the same manner in regard to matters of fact.  And the reason is that our salvation is attached to the faith which has been revealed to us, and which is preserved in the Church by tradition, but that it has no dependence on facts which have not been revealed by God. . . .  In the determination of points of faith, God guides the Church by the aid of His unerring Spirit; whereas in matters of fact He leaves her to the direction of reason and the senses, which are the natural judges of such matters."

     Blaise Pascal, Provincial letters no. 17, trans. M’Crie (GBWW, 1st ed. (1952), vol. 33, p. 147).  =p. 358 of tom. 6 of the 1904-1914 edition of the Œuvres edited by Brunschvicg.  =p. 789 of the 1998 Pléiade edition of the Œuvres edited by Le Guern.

Duty to defend

"Evil speaking . . . is a poison that extinguishes charity in both of the parties; so that a single calumny may prove mortal to an infinite numbers [sic] of souls, killing not only those who publish it, but all those besides by whom it is not repudiated."

"la médisance . . . est un poison qui éteint la charité en l’un et en l’autre.  De sorte qu’une seule calomnie peut être mortelle à une infinité d’âmes, puisqu’elle tue non seulement ceux qui la publient, mais encore tous ceux qui ne la rejettent pas."

     Blaise Pascal, Provincial letters no. 16, trans. M’Crie (GBWW, 1st edition (1952), vol. 33, p. 140).  Pascal attributes this to St. Bernard of Clairvaux (Sermons on the Canticles 24[.4] de vitio detractionis), but is only paraphrasing (Pléiade edition ed. Le Guern, p. 1266).  What St. Bernard actually says (SC 431, 245) is (as trans. Kilian Walsh, vol. 3 (Cistercian Fathers series 7), p. 45),

The venomous tongue strikes a blow at charity in the hearts of all within hearing, and if possible kills and quenches it utterly; worse still, even the absent are contaminated by the flying word that passes from those present to all within reach.  See how easily and in how short a time this swift-moving word can infect a great multitude of men with its sickly malice.

I have yet to read the whole.

 

"the fitting of as many as possible to survive"

"The propounders of what are called the 'ethics of evolution,' when the "evolution of ethics" would usually better express the object of their speculations, adduce a number of more or less interesting facts and more or less sound arguments, in favour of the origin of the moral sentiments, in the same way as other natural phenomena, by a process of evolution. I have little doubt, for my own part, that they are on the right track; but as the immoral sentiments have no less been evolved, there is, so far, as much natural sanction for the one as the other. The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as the philanthropist. Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and the evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before. . . .
     "Men in society are undoubtedly subject to the cosmic process. . . .  But the influence of the cosmic process on the evolution of society is the greater the more rudimentary its civilization.  Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which exist, but of those who are ethically the best.
     "As I have already urged, the practice of that which is ethically best—what we call goodness or virtue—involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which lead to success in the cosmic struggle for existence.  In place of ruthless self-assertion it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall help his fellows; its influence is directed, not so much to the survival of the fittest, as to the fitting of as many as possible to survive.  It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence. . . .  The struggle for existence, which has done such admirable work in cosmic nature, must, it appears, be equally beneficient in the ethical sphere.  Yet, if that which I have insisted upon is true; if the cosmic process has no sort of relation to moral ends; if the imitation of it by man is inconsistent with the first principles of ethics; what becomes of this surprising theory?
     "Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it."

     Thomas H. Huxley, Evolution and ethics, The Romanes Lecture 1893, delivered in the Sheldonian Theatre, May 18, 1893 (London, Macmillan & Co., 1893), 31-34.  I was put onto this by John Gray's dismissive review of The evolution of moral progress:  a biocultural theory (Oxford University Press, 2018) in The New York review of books 66, no. 20 (December 19, 2019):  78 (76-78).

Transsubstantiation

The language of Antoine Arnauld and the Abbé de St. Cyran "is as Catholic as yours; but their conduct confirms their faith, and your conduct belies it.  For if you believe, as well as they do, that the bread is really changed into the body of Jesus Christ, why do you not require, as they do, from those whom you advise to approach the altar, that the heart of stone and ice should be sincerely changed into a heart of flesh and of love?  If you believe that Jesus Christ is in that sacrament in a state of death, teaching those that approach it to die to the world, to sin, and to themselves, why do you suffer those to profane it in whose breasts evil passions continue to reign in all their life and vigour?"

"Car si vous croyez aussi bien qu’eux que ce pain est réellement changé au corps de Jésus-Christ, pourquoi ne demandez-vous pas comme eux que le cœur de pierre et de glace de ceux à qui vous conseillez d’en approcher soit sincèrement changé en un cœur de chair et d’amour?  Si vous croyez que Jésus-Christ y est dans un état de mort, pour apprendre à ceux qui s’en approchent à mourir au monde, au péché et à eux-mêmes, pourquoi portez-vous à en approcher ceux en qui les vices et les passions criminelles sont encore toutes vivantes?"

     Blaise Pascal, Provincial letters no. 16, trans. M’Crie (GBBW, 1st ed. (1952), vol. 33, pp. 136-137), underscoring mine =pp. 281-282 of tom. 6 of the 1904-1914 critical edition of the Œuvres edited by Brunschvicg =p. 774 of the 1998 Pléiade edited by Le Guern.

Body, soul, and divinity

"'the dead ashes of the bodies of the saints derive their principal dignity from that seed of life which they retain from the touch of the immortal and vivifying flesh of Jesus Christ'".

"'les cendres mortes des corps des saints tirent leur principale dignité de cette semence de vie qui leur reste de l’attouchement de la chair immortelle et vivifiante de Jésus-Christ'".

     Antoine Arnauld, De la fréquente communion (Paris:  Antoine Vitré, 1643), 1.40.  I was put onto this by Blaise Pascal, Provincial letters no. 16, trans. M’Crie (GBWW, 1st ed. (1952), vol. 33, p. 150).

"'What I am really asking is whether you would like to be the widow of a literary man.'"

     George Orwell, proposing by letter (dated 18 April 1946) to Anne Popham, who "was not swept off her feet."  As quoted in Dorian Lynskey, Ministry of truth:  the biography of George Orwell's 1984 (New York:  Doubleday, 2019), 147, citing CW XVIII, p. 153.