"Depart in peace, then; I haven't made | are not, and I belong to the majority.
the admission."
You would have been dreadfully disap.

But this was scarcely satisfactory. pointed in me if-if
"Won't you just say that it is untrue?
pleaded Brian.

"No; why should I? I don't recognize
your right to drive me into a corner and
hold a pistol to my head."

"What pistol? I have nothing to threaten you with; for I suppose it can't matter much to you whether I am able to go on thinking of you as I have always thought or not; but it matters everything to me. I can't go away without any answer at all and calmly hold my judgment in suspense until I see what will happen."

Why not? It seems to me that that would be a very correct and sensible attitude to take up. Why can't you adopt it?"

"Because I love you!" he burst out suddenly. "I have loved you ever since the first day that we met, I think; though I have never had any hope, except for a short time long ago, when I didn't quite understand what a great gulf was fixed between us. I understand that perfectly well now, and besides, my chance would have been no better if I had been an important personage, instead of an insignificant one. Through all your kindness to me you have never given me the slightest excuse for supposing that you could care for me in that way. I didn't want to tell you this; but I thought

He paused and glanced appealingly at her, but she only made a slight movement of her head, as if inviting him to go on.

Well, I thought that if you knew the truth you would not wish me to have the misery of doubting you when you could remove all my doubts with a word."

"But are you sure that I can?" she asked in a low voice.

The room was quite dark now, except for the firelight, and she had drawn her chair back, so that he could not see her face. There was a short interval of silence, after which she resumed: "I won't pretend to be surprised at what you have told me; I have sometimes thought that it might be so, although I was not certain. I am glad you don't accuse me of having led you on, as Stapleford and others have accused me, and I am sorry if you have ever been made unhappy through me. But this is what I think about it: you are dreamy and imaginative; you would be sure to take any woman that you fell in love with for a paragon, and women are not paragons. At all events, most of them

"No, I should not!" interrupted Brian eagerly. "I know you have faults, like everybody eise; I could even mention some of them." "Could you?

She laughed a little. But you don't seem to be very tolerant of them; and, you see, you are ready to suspect me of all kinds of iniquity. That comes of setting up too high an ideal."

"You call it iniquity, then," he cried; "you allow that it would be iniquity. That is all I wanted you to say. No, Miss Huntley, I haven't set up too high an ideal. I don't know that I can explain myself; but in my own mind it is quite clear that it wasn't really you whom I suspected. If this thing had been true and there was a great deal to make me think it so -the evidence of my own senses, besides what Sir Joseph told me, and Stapleford — if it had been true you wouldn't have been yourself; you would have been a deceitful, heartless woman, who, for the sake of vanity or ambition, or perhaps of something that she might dignify by the name of love, did not hesitate to betray her friend and disgrace herself. You see," he concluded with a sort of laugh, "it couldn't have been you whom I suspected."

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Ah," she said, "you couldn't love a woman of that description."

Cer

'No, I think not, I hope not. tainly I should be ashamed of myself if I did."

"Come!" said Beatrice, rising and standing over him, with one hand resting upon the mantelpiece, "you have paid me a compliment for I suppose it is a compliment to a woman to fall in love with her, even though that sentiment may be grounded upon an illusion - and the least that I can do in return is to restore you to a healthy state of mind. Joseph and Stapleford and the evidence of your own senses have not misled you; I have done and am doing my best to break off the engagement between your brother and Kitty Greenwood. More than that, I believe that I have as good as succeeded. More than that, I am utterly unrepentant, and I would do it all over again. I hope that is explicit enough to satisfy you."

There was a long pause. Brian also had risen to his feet, and was standing close to her, but made no reply. At last she asked abruptly, you nothing to say to me?" "Nothing," he answered quietly.

66

Well, have

Nothing either now or at any future | But I know, and I don't want you to tell time." me. Matilda, you won't throw me over, will you, come what may?"

he issued in 1850? Is he a disguised | le vrai; car, après tout, les hommes, avant Protestant, as M. Vinet and perhaps also Jésus-Christ, ne savoient où ils en étoient, Mr. Charles Beard seem inclined to think, ni s'ils étoient grands ou petits." "Toute or was M. Victor Cousin right when he la dignité de l'homme est en la pensée. summarily declared him to be a sceptic? Mais qu'est-ce que cette pensée ? Qu'elle The controversy is by no means yet ex- est sotte!" "Connaisse donc, superbe, tinguished, for Pascal's name is equally quel paradoxe vous êtes à vous-même. cherished by literature and theology, and Humiliez-vous, raison impuissante; taisezit is not often that a man has left behind vous, nature imbecile !" "La belle chose him two works so diametrically opposed de crier à un homme, qui ne se connoit in spirit and in form as the "Provincial pas, qu'il aille de lui-même à Dieu! et la Letters and the "6. Thoughts." If the belle chose de le dire à un homme qui first was one of the earliest and most se connoit!" "Mon Dieu, que ce sont perfect achievements of French prose writ- des sots discours! Dieu auroit-il fait le ing, the second was only a somewhat het-monde pour le damner? demanderoit-il erogeneous mass of disjointed aphorisms; tant de gens si foibles?' etc. Pyrrhowhile the "Letters" derive half their glory from their noble vindication of the rights of reason against ecclesiastical dogmatism, the "Thoughts are the gloomy record of a mind which was prepared to throw overboard every kind of knowledge at the bidding of authority, and to retain as elements of chief value the three qualities of "pyrrhonien," "géomètre," and "Chrétien soumis." "Il faut avoir," says Pascal, " ces trois qualités, pyrrhonien, géomètre, Chrétien soumis; et elles s'accordent, et se tempèrent, en doutant où il faut, en assurant où il faut, en se soumettant où il faut."

"Le

nisme est le remède à ce mal, et rabattra cette vanité." The one philosopher whom Pascal thoroughly knew was Montaigne the sceptic, and though he ventures to criticise him here and there, his influence is visible at every page. And it is not only thoughts which Pascal borrows from Montaigne, he uses his expressions. Here is a short list of words and phrases, taken from Montaigne's vocabulary, which are found in the "Pensées." Montaigne had written, "Le seul moyen que je prends pour rabattre cette frénésie.' Pascal uses the word in the sentence quoted above: "Pyrrhonisme rabattra cette vanité." PasWith the true text of the "Pensées "be- cal says, "Les enfants qui s'effrayent du fore us, and with Cousin's report to the visage qu'ils ont barbouillé;" and MonAcademy in our hands, it is difficult to taigne, "Les enfants qui s'effrayent de ce overlook the obvious scepticism of Pascal même visage qu'ils ont barbouillé." - scepticism, be it understood, in philos- nœud de notre condition prend des replis," ophy, not in religion. Sceptic he appears in Pascal, is taken bodily from Monat almost every page, and all the more taigne's "Ce devroit être un nœud presavagely sceptic because he thought that nant ses replis." The expression "avoir this was the only portal to a belief in Rev- des prises" is common to the two writers. elation. He probably had not studied Montaigne had written, "Si les prises humuch philosophy, certainly not so much as maines étaient assez capables pour saisir either Arnauld or Nicole, for his talents la vérité ;" and Pascal repeats, "Voyons lay rather in the direction of geometry and si elle a quelques forces et quelques prises science, but he does not hesitate to express capables de saisir la vérité.' Other charhis opinion of all philosophy. "Se moquer acteristic phrases are used by both for de la philosophie, c'est vraiment philoso- instance, the verb "couvrir" in the sense pher; "such is his decisive phrase. Des- of "conceal; ""Gagner sur moi, sur lui," cartes, whom Arnauld especially had in- in the sense of "induce; rapporter à," troduced into Port Royal, he cannot away in the sense of "avoir rapport à; tenwith. "Je ne puis pardonner à Des- du," in the sense of "prolonged;" and cartes.' "Descartes. Il faut dire en gros, "transi," in the sense of "transported." 'Cela se fait pas figure et mouvement, car Here, too, is a curious instance. Pascal cela est vrai.' Mais de dire quels, et com- wrote, "Un corps qui nous aggrave et poser la machine, cela est ridicule; car nous abaisse vers la terre;" apparently cela est inutile, et incertain, et pénible. quoting Horace: "Corpus animum Et quand cela seroit vrai, nous n'estimons prægravat atque affligit," but only dopas que toute la philosophie vaille une ing so in the form in which Montaigne heure de peine." The only true philoso- quotes him: "Corruptibile corpus aggraphy is the negation of all philosophy, and vat animam." But perhaps the most sig therefore the only true philosophical sys-nificant case is the employment of the tem is Pyrrhonism. "Le pyrrhonisme est word "abêtir," in Pascal's celebrated ar

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as to the existence; "the odds," as he says, gument of "taking the odds "6 were existence or non-existence of God: "Cela even." But if the question be one not of vous fera croire et vous abêtira." Mon- reason, but of interest, there was a clear taigne had already said, "Il faut nous preponderance of advantage on the side abestir pour nous assagir." of belief. Even if God did not exist, there could be no harm in believing him to exist; but if he did exist, how perilous in the future might be disbelief! It might make all the difference between happiness and damnation. On the ground of selfinterest, therefore, as reason was neutral, it was clearly better to believe. "Et ainsi notre proposition est dans une force infinie, quand il y a le fini à hasarder à un jeu où il y a pareils hasards de gain que de perte, et l'infini à gagner. Cela est démonstratif; si les hommes sont capables de quelques vérités, celle-là l'est." Je le confesse,” answers Pascal's imaginary interlecutor, "je l'avoue; mais encore n'y a-t-il point moyen de voir le dessous du jeu? Oui, l'Ecriture. Mais j'ai les mains liées et la bouche muette; on me force à parier, et je ne suis pas en liberté; je suis fais d'une telle sorte que je ne puis croire. Que voulez-vous donc que je fasse?" Pascal can only reply that he must do as others in the like diffi culty have done, take sacred water and have masses said. "Naturellement même cela vous fera croire et vous abêtira mais c'est ce que je crains et pourquoi ? qu'avez-vous à perdre?" Such is this appalling argument in all its naked appeal to expediency. It has often been doubted whether all the hermit's excessive anxiety about his own soul was not a rather coarse form of selfishness. Here, at all events, a selfish system is reinforced by the appropriate arguments of a more than cool selflove. Meanwhile, however consistent Pascal's treatment of these questions may be with his Jansenism and his devotion to Montaigne, there occur obvious difficulties in comprehending his scheme. there is no natural light of reason in men, if all purely human understanding and virtue are alike vitiated according to the doctrine of original sin, why write a book on Christian evidences at all? Yet that such was the intention of the "Pensées "is open to no doubt. The miracle performed on Marguerite Périer, Pascal's niece, the so called miracle of the holy thorn, inspired Pascal with the idea of writing a work which should convince the world of the truth of Christianity. If the world could not apart from the grace of God, which was ex hypothesi absent, have any natural understanding, the value of Pascal's "Pensées would be infinitesimal. Or again, how could, on Pascal's own

The argument itself, from which these last words are taken, is so astounding, both in conception and expression, that to most religious minds it has appeared little short of profane. Yet it is, after all, perfectly consistent with the attitude of a man who starts with the belief that all human reason and natural understanding are, owing to the fall, incurably diseased and unprofitable. It is certainly rather more daring in expression, but also more logical than the language which a Jesuit or a Calvinist would allow himself, and the humeur bouillante which his sister Jacqueline found in Pascal, explains much of the passionate intensity of the phrases. If human reason be corrupt at its core, there can be of course no natural theology, and no rational proof of God's existence. Pascal is very explicit on this point. "I shall not attempt," he says, " to prove by natural reasons either the existence of God or the immortality of the soul, or anything else of the like character; not only because I should not feel myself capable of finding anything in nature whereby to convince hardened atheists, but also because such knowledge, without Jesus Christ, is useless and ster ile. It is remarkable," he proceeds, "that no canonical author has ever made use of nature to prove God. They must have been cleverer than the cleverest men who have succeeded them, for the latter have all made this attempt." "Eh quoi ne dites-vous pas vous-même que le ciel et les oiseaux prouvent Dieu ? Non. Et votre religion ne le dit-elle pas? Non. Car encore que cela est vrai en un sens pour quelques âmes à qui Dieu donne cette lumière, néanmoins cela est faux à l'égard de la plupart." It is perhaps a little astonishing that Pascal should have read his Bible to such little effect. The Psalmist, at all events, thought that the heavens were telling the glory of God, and St. Paul declared in his Epistle to the Romans, that God had made himself known by his works since the creation of the world. But Pascal was more versed in St. Augustine and Jansen than in the Scriptures. To him there was no natural proof of God, for without God's special grace man's understanding and will were alike incapable. Hence, so far as reason was concerned, there was no greater likelihood of God's existence than of his non

If

not too much blinded by the well-merited glory of the "Provincial Letters," finds more passages than one which are “insoutenables."

If Pascal be compared with the other heroes of Port Royal, who were either his contemporaries or immediate predecessors St. Cyran, Singlin, Arnauld, Nicole, De Saçi-it will be seen how different from theirs are both his character and his position. Singlin and De Saçi were the great confessors of Port Royal, men whose sweetness and sincerity made them noble, but who had towards culture and enlightenment either a neutral or a repellant attitude. De Saçi and Pascal were indeed

showing, a revelation of God to men be signe pour ceux qui ne goûteront pas ce possible? "Parlons suivant les lumières livre." Huet and La Rochefoucauld, the naturelles. S'il y a un Dieu, il est infi- Jesuits and the egoists, such are Pascal's niment incompréhensible, puisque n'ayant new-found allies. It is not surprising that ni parties ni bornes, il n'a nul rapport à Nicole, the moralist of Port Royal, though nous." But if God has no relation to men he warmly co-operated in the "Provincial how can he reveal himself to men? Either Letters," could not conceal his dislike for the revelation is a fact, and then God the "Thoughts," and that Arnauld, the must have some relation to men's faculties, Port-Royalist philosopher, "Arnauld, le or else it is not a fact and then the whole grand Arnauld," as even Boileau describes of Pascal's reconstruction of Christianity him, should have done his best to erase on the foundation of philosophical scepti- from Pascal's posthumous work its scepcism falls to the ground. But it is use- tical tendencies. Speaking of Pascal's less to argue with Pascal in the mood in remarks on justice, which were conceived which he wrote the "Pensées." It is more in the spirit of Montaigne, he says in a instructive to see how wide is the inter-letter to M. Périer, "Pour vous parler val which separates the writer of these franchement, je crois que cet endroit est thoughts from the immortal author of the insoutenable." A modern reader, who is "Provincial Letters." Could the aim of the earlier work be better described than as the defence of reason against ecclesiastical pretensions? What meant the scathing ridicule of “le pouvoir prochain" and "la grâce suffisante " except to discredit that system of authoritative belief which was supported by the Jesuits? What doctrine could the advocate of Port Royal find more damaging to morality than "probabilism" and casuistry? Yet here is Pascal himself urging arguments of probabilism, and fighting the battle of those very Jesuits on whom he had before poured the righteous vials of his wrath. May a man use his private judgment, and decide by the light of the common under-united in one point, a common dislike to standing, whether truth be on this side or that? No; he must lower the colors of reason before authority: "pour nous assagir, il faut nous abestir," with a sure confidence that we have, as Pascal says, "nothing to lose." There was a Bishop of Avranches, one Huet, who adopts the precise attitude of Pascal, both in his attack on Cartesianism and in his recommendation of scepticism; but he was the friend of the Jesuits, served them all his life, and died in their communion. He was the author of a “Censure de la Philosophie Cartésienne," and still more of a "Traité Philosophique de la Foiblesse de l'Esprit Humain," in which he declares, after the manner of Pascal's "Le pyrrhonisme c'est le vrai," that "les sceptiques sont les seuls qui méritent le nom de philosophes." And Cousin has remarked that while none of the great writers of the seventeenth century ever mention Pascal's "Pensées," a warm recommendation comes from the school of La Rochefoucauld. Madame de Lafayette, who speaks as the secretary of the author of the "Maximes," declared, "C'est méchant

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Descartes, but were alike in little else, According to De Saçi, Descartes was in relation to Aristotle as a robber who killed another robber and took off his spoils, and perhaps it was in some measure due to De Saçi, whose task it was to teach Pascal " 'mépriser les sciences," that his pupil wrote, Je ne puis pardonner à Descartes." But Pascal, whose early training in science distinguished him from these clerics, outran them also in dogmatic zeal and polemical ability. Arnauld and Nicole, on the other hand, were men of much broader judgment and tolerant good sense than the author of the "Pensées." Both were opposed to him on the capital question of signing the formulary, desiring for the sake of peace to acquiesce in the wishes of their ecclesiastical superiors, while Pascal and his sister Jacqueline were for obstinate refusal. Both Nicole and Arnauld, again, were imbued with Cartesianism; the Port Royal logic which they wrote in common being a practical exposition of some of the principles of Descartes. And in the matter of scepti cism and the Pyrrhonists they were equally