The Process of Individuation in Blaise Pascal1

Blaise Pascal, a motherless child, was brought up by his father in the most extraordinary fashion; he had no contact with children of his own age. It is notable that some of the greatest spirits have been spared scholastic routine, and Pascal belongs to this élite, though Brunschwicg (1907, p. 3, n. I) remarks, on good grounds, that this father's upbringing was “ex-clusively intellectual”. It developed the intellect alone to an enormous extent. This function (the thinking function in the sense of C. G. Jung) appears to have been at first, and for a long time, grossly overdeveloped in relation to the others, and especially feeling. Brunschwicg compares this education with that given by James Mill to his son John Stuart Mill, which “also ended with a crisis of feeling”.

Pascal's crisis coincided with his conversion which, in spasmodic waves, marked the stages of his brief existence. It has elsewhere been noted how incomplete was what has been called his first conversion; it occurred at the age of twenty-three. According to Bremond, this was a conversion of the mind and not of the heart. Certainly one cannot discover much access of charitableness in its wake.

But let us skip a few years, to find Pascal between twenty-six and twenty-eight. His sister Gilberte, having described the changes that occurred in her brother's health as well as some of the attempted remedies, takes up the story: “The doctors believed that for his full recovery it was necessary that he renounce all mental endeavour of consequence, and instead, take every opportunity to distract his mind with something which kept it busy and gave him pleasure” (cf. Brunschwicg, 1907, p. 14). In other words, to put it in a nutshell, the ordinary conversations of his world.

Thus did the “worldly period” of Pascal begin. “Distraction”, said the doctors; “Entertainment (divertissement”), said Pascal, and this word, which echoed in his thoughts whose nature was to try to get to the bottom of