great qualities of French prose could do better than turn straight to
the _Lettres Provinciales_. Here he will find the lightness and the
strength, the exquisite polish and the delicious wit, the lambent irony
and the ordered movement, which no other language spoken by man has ever
quite been able to produce. The _Lettres_ are a work of controversy;
their actual subject-matter--the ethical system of the Jesuits of the
time--is remote from modern interests; yet such is the brilliance of
Pascal's art that every page of them is fascinating to-day. The vivacity
of the opening letters is astonishing; the tone is the gay, easy tone of
a man of the world; the attack is delivered in a rushing onslaught of
raillery. Gradually, as the book proceeds, there are signs of a growing
seriousness; we have a sense of graver issues, and round the small
question of the Jesuits' morality we discern ranged all the vast forces
of good and evil. At last the veil of wit and laughter is entirely
removed, and Pascal bursts forth into the full fury of invective. The
vials of wrath are opened; a terrific denunciation rolls out in a
thundering cataract; and at the close of the book there is hardly a note
in the whole gamut of language, from the airiest badinage to the darkest
objurgation, which has not been touched.

In sheer genius Pascal ranks among the very greatest writers who have
lived upon this earth. And his genius was not simply artistic; it
displayed itself no less in his character and in the quality of his
thought. These are the sides of him which are revealed with
extraordinary splendour in his _Pensées_--a collection of notes intended
to form the basis for an elaborate treatise in defence of Christianity
which Pascal did not live to complete. The style of many of these
passages surpasses in brilliance and force even that of the _Lettres
Provinciales_. In addition, one hears the intimate voice of Pascal,
speaking upon the profoundest problems of existence--the most momentous