s across the world's stage, as if led
on by a kind of thirst for God! Its necessary counterpart, of course,
we may find, at least dramatically true of some; we can name them in
history, perhaps from our own experience; souls of whom it seems but an
obvious story to tell that they seemed to be in love with eternal
death, to have borne on them from the first signs of reprobation. Of
certain quite visibly elect souls, at all events, the theory of
irresistible grace might seem the almost necessary explanation. Most
reasonable, most natural, most truly is it descriptive of Pascal
himself.

[72] So far, indeed, up to the year 1656, Pascal's annus mirabilis, the
year of the "Letters," the world had been allowed to see only one side
of him. Early in life he had achieved brilliant overtures in the
abstract sciences, and, inheriting much of the quality of a fine
gentleman, he figures, with his trenchant manner, never at a loss, as a
quite secular person, stirred on occasion to take part in a religious
debate. But it is after the grand fashion of the mundane quarrels of
that day, the age of the sentiment of personal honour, in which it was
so natural for the good-natured Jesuits, stirring all Pascal's satiric
power, to excuse as well as they could the act de tuer pour un simple
medisance. The Church was still an estate of the realm with all the
obligations of the noblesse, and it was still something worse than bad
taste, it was dangerous to express religious doubts. About the
Catholic religion, as he conceived it, Pascal displays the assured
attitude of an ancient Crusader. He has the full courage of his
opinions, and by his elegant easy gallantry in speaking for it he gives
to religion then and now a kind of dignity it had lost with other
controversialists in the eyes of the world. There is abundant gaiety
also in the "Letters." He quotes from Tertullian to the effect that
c'est proprement a la verite qu'il appartient de rire parce qu'elle est
gaie, et de se jouer de ses ennemis parce qu'elle est assuree de sa
victoire. For he could find quotations to his purpose from recondite
writers, [73] though he was not a man of erudition; like a man of the
world again, he read little, but that absorbingly, was the master of
two authors, Epictetus and Montaigne, and, as appeared afterwards, of
the Scriptures in the Vulgate.

So far, his imposing carriage of himself intellectually might lead us
to suspect that the forced humiliti