The literary history of the ‘Pensées’ is a very curious one. They first appeared in the end of 1669, in a small duodecimo volume, with the appropriate motto, “Pendent opera interrupta.” Their preparation for the press had been a subject of much anxiety to Pascal’s friends. What is known as the “Peace of the Church”—a period of temporary quiet and prosperity to Port Royal—had begun in 1663; and it was important that nothing should be done by the Port Royalists to disturb this peace. It had been agreed, therefore, that all passages bearing on the controversy with the Jesuits and the Formulary should be omitted; but beyond this Madame Périer desired that the volume should only contain what proceeded from her brother, and in the precise form and style in which it had left his hand. She evidently lacked full confidence in the Committee of Editors, of whom the Duc de Roannez was the chief, notwithstanding their professions of strict adherence to the manuscripts. The volume at last appeared, with a preface by her own son, and no fewer than nine “approbations,” signed amongst others by three bishops, one archdeacon, and three doctors of the Sorbonne. Unhappily Madame Périer had too much cause for alarm. Editors and Approvers alike had claimed the liberty, not only of arranging but of modifying both the matter and the style of the ‘Pensées,’ and this notwithstanding a statement in the preface that, in giving, as they professed to do, only “the clearest and most finished” of the fragments, they had given them as they found them, _without adding or changing anything_. “These fragments,” says M. Faugère, “which sickness and death had left unfinished, suffered, without ceasing to be immortal, all the mutilation which an exaggerated prudence or a misdirected zeal could suggest, with the view not only of guarding their orthodoxy, but of embellishing their style—the style of the author of the ‘Provincials’!” “There are not,” he adds, “twenty successive lines which do not present some alteration, great or small. As for total omissions and partial suppressions, they are without number.” M. Cousin is equally emphatic. “There are,” he says, “examples of every kind of alteration—alteration of words, alteration of phrases, suppressions, substitutions, additions, arbitrary compositions, and, what is worse, decompositions more arbitrary still.”