than in any one else; but there are moments of terrible doubt, when the soul is so borne away on the surge of the sceptical page 194wave that rises from the depth of all human speculation, that it can only cling to the Divine by an effort of will, and with something of the gamester’s thought that this is the winning side! The thought may be shallow and poor in itself, but in such cases it comes not out of the shallows but out of the depths of a mind torn by distracting doubts in the face of the dreadful problems of life.
Out of the same depth of spiritual experience and trenchant moral analysis comes all that is true and valuable in his so-called ‘Apology.’ That the ‘Pensées’ were more or less designed to form such an Apology—to be woven into the plan of a treatise in defence of the Christian religion—seems beyond doubt. He had himself, according to the statement of his nephew, unfolded such a plan to his friends, in a lengthened conversation about the year 1657 or 1659. They were charmed with the loftiness of his design, and listened to his exposition of it for two or three hours with unabated interest. He was to commence with an analysis of human nature, and to advance from the contemplation of its mysteries, obscurities, and perplexities, to the consideration of the various methods, philosophical and religious, by which reason had endeavoured to meet the difficulties of thought and life. After explaining the inconclusiveness and absurdities of these methods—represented by the diverse philosophies and religions of the world—he was to call attention to the Jewish religion, and the superiority which it presents to all others, both in the extraordinary circumstances of its history, and in the revelation which it gives of one God, Creator and Governor of the world, and of the origin of man—his primitive innocence and fall. The idea of the fall, which was a central one in all page 195Pascal’s thoughts, was to be fully expounded, in its own character and as “the source not only of whatever is most inexplicable in man’s nature, but also of a multitude of things, external to him, of which he knows not the causes.” From the fall he was to pass to the hopes of deliverance revealed in the Old Testament, and