Monsieur Pascal, with whom he quarrels before he burns, had a particular influence upon him. He could not rest after reading his Thoughts until he read the Bible.
And of the Prophets of the Old Testament he had an especial liking for Jeremiah and Isaiah. And once he bought a cheap print of Jeremiah which he tacked on the wall of his cellar.
From the Khedivial Library MS. we give two excerpts relating to Pascal and this Prophet.
“O Monsieur Pascal,
“I tried hard to hate and detest myself, as you advise, and I found that I could not by so doing love God. ’Tis in loving the divine in Man, in me, in you, that we rise to the love of our Maker. And in giving your proofs of the true religion, you speak of the surprising measures of the Christian Faith, enjoining man to acknowledge himself vile, base, abominable, and obliging him at the same time to aspire towards a resemblance of his Maker. Now, I see in this a foreshadowing of the theory of evolution, nay a divine warrant for it. Nor is it the Christian religion alone which unfolds to man the twofold mystery of his nature; others are as dark and as bright on either side of the pole. And Philosophy conspiring with Biology will not consent to the apotheosis of Man, unless he wear on his breast a symbol of his tail. … Au-revoir, Monsieur Pascal, Remember me to St. Augustine.”
“O