g and instructive to see Pascal's own statement of
his reasons for adopting the bantering style which he did in the
"Provincial Letters," as well as of the sense of responsibility to be
faithful and fair, under which he wrote. Pascal says:--

I have been asked why I employed a pleasant, jocose, and diverting
style. I reply... I thought it a duty to write so as to be
comprehended by women and men of the world, that they might know
the danger of their maxims and propositions which were then
universally propagated.... I have been asked, lastly, if I myself
read all the books which I quoted. I answer, No. If I had done so,
I must have passed a great part of my life in reading very bad
books; but I read Escobar twice through, and I employed some of my
friends in reading the others. But I did not make use of a single
passage without having myself read it in the book from which it is
cited, without having examined the subject of which it treats, and
without having read what went before and followed, so that I might
run no risk of quoting an objection as an answer, which would have
been blameworthy and unfair.

Of the wit of the "Provincial Letters," their wit and their
controversial effectiveness, the specimens given will have afforded
readers some approximate idea. We must deny ourselves the gratification
of presenting a brief passage, which we had selected and translated for
the purpose, to exemplify from the same source Pascal's serious
eloquence. It was Voltaire who said of these productions: "Moliere's
best comedies do not excel them in wit, nor the compositions of Bossuet
in sublimity." Something of Bossuet's sublimity, or of a sublimity
perhaps finer than Bossuet's, our readers will discover in citations to
follow from the "Thoughts."

Pascal's "Thoughts," the printed book, has a remarkable history. It was
a posthumous publication. The author died, leaving behind him a
considerable number of detached fragments of composition, first jottings
of thought on a subject that had long occupied his mind. These precious
manuscripts were almost undecipherable. The writer had used for his
purpose any chance scrap of paper,--old wrapping, for example, or margin
of letter,--that, at the critical moment of happy conception, was
nearest his hand. Sentences, words even, were often left unfinished.
There was no coherence, no sequence, no arrangement. It was, however