Renunciation total and sweet,
etc. 6
page 92It is difficult to make much of this document. Are we to suppose that Pascal, on the 23d of November 1654, thought he saw a vision, revealing to him the truth of Christianity, and the vanity of philosophy and the world? Even if Pascal did this, our estimate of the matter could hardly be much affected. But there is no evidence that he himself attached a supernatural character to the incident. He felt, no doubt, that a real revelation had come to him, that his mind had been lifted in spiritual ecstasy page 93away from the love of all that for a time had hid from him the presence of God and of a higher world. The moment of this blessed experience had been sacred to him. He had tried to trace it in these broken characters, and in seasons of doubt or depression he may have sought to awaken a new fervour of faith and love by their contemplation. This seems all the natural meaning of the incident; but, as some have endeavoured to attach to it a supernatural importance, so others, in whom the idea not only of the supernatural but of the spiritual only excites contempt, have tried to give to it a purely superstitious character. It was Condorcet who first applied to the paper the epithet of Pascal’s “Amulette;” and Lélut has adopted the epithet, and written a volume more or less relating to it. He supposes the vision to have occurred to Pascal on the evening of the day when the event at Neuilly