hostile opinions with the same kind of curiosity which they bestow on a
collection of mutually hostile beasts in a menagerie. They have very
faint predilections for one rather than another. If they were truly
alive to the duty of conclusiveness, or to the inexpressible magnitude
of the subjects which nominally occupy their minds, but really only
exercise their tongues, this elegant Pyrrhonism would be impossible, and
this light-hearted neutrality most unendurable.

Well has the illustrious Pascal said with reference to one of the two
great issues of the modern controversy:--'The immortality of the soul is
a thing that concerns us so closely and touches us so profoundly, that
one must have lost all feeling to be indifferent as to knowing how the
matter is. All our actions and all our thoughts must follow such
different paths, according as there are eternal goods to hope for or are
not, that it is impossible to take a step with sense and judgment,
without regulating it in view of this point, which ought to be our first
object.... I can have nothing but compassion for those who groan and
travail in this doubt with all sincerity, who look on it as the worst of
misfortunes, and who, sparing no pains to escape from it, make of this
search their chief and most serious employment.... But he who doubts and
searches not is at the same time a grievous wrongdoer, and a grievously
unfortunate man. If along with this he is tranquil and self-satisfied,
if he publishes his contentment to the world and plumes himself upon it,
and if it is this very state of doubt which he makes the subject of his
joy and vanity--I have no terms in which to describe so extravagant a
creature.'[15] Who, except a member of the school of extravagant
creatures themselves, would deny that Pascal's irritation is most
wholesome and righteous?

Perhaps in reply to this, we may be confronted by our own doctrine of