ent as to knowing how the
matter is. All our actions and all our thoughts must follow such
different paths, according as there are eternal goods to hope for or are
not, that it is impossible to take a step with sense and judgment,
without regulating it in view of this point, which ought to be our first
object.... I can have nothing but compassion for those who groan and
travail in this doubt with all sincerity, who look on it as the worst of
misfortunes, and who, sparing no pains to escape from it, make of this
search their chief and most serious employment.... But he who doubts and
searches not is at the same time a grievous wrongdoer, and a grievously
unfortunate man. If along with this he is tranquil and self-satisfied,
if he publishes his contentment to the world and plumes himself upon it,
and if it is this very state of doubt which he makes the subject of his
joy and vanity--I have no terms in which to describe so extravagant a
creature.'[15] Who, except a member of the school of extravagant
creatures themselves, would deny that Pascal's irritation is most
wholesome and righteous?

Perhaps in reply to this, we may be confronted by our own doctrine of
intellectual responsibility interpreted in a directly opposite sense. We
may be reminded of the long array of difficulties that interfere between
us and knowledge in that tremendous matter, and of objections that rise
in such perplexing force to an answer either one way or the other. And
finally we may be despatched with a eulogy of caution and a censure of
too great heat after certainty. The answer is that there is a kind of
Doubt not without search, but after and at the end of search, which is
not open to Pascal's just reproaches against the more ignoble and
frivolous kind. And this too has been described for us by a subtle
doctor of Pascal's communion. 'Are there pleasures of Doubt, as well as
of Inference and Assent? In one sense there are. Not indeed if doubt
means ignorance, uncertainty, or hopeless suspense; but there is a
certain grave acquiescence in ignorance, a recognition of our impotence
to solve momentous and urgent questions, which has a satisfaction of its
own. After high aspirations, after renewed endeavours, after bootless
toil, after long wanderings, after hope, effort, weariness, failure,
painfully alternating and recurring, it is an immense relief to the
exhausted mind to be able to say, "At length I know that I can know
nothing about anything." .