topics which can agitate the minds of men. Two great themes compose his
argument: the miserable insignificance of all that is human--human
reason, human knowledge, human ambition; and the transcendent glory of
God. Never was the wretchedness of mankind painted with a more
passionate power. The whole infinitude of the physical universe is
invoked in his sweeping sentences to crush the presumption of man. Man's
intellectual greatness itself he seizes upon to point the moral of an
innate contradiction, an essential imbecility. 'Quelle chimère,' he
exclaims, 'est-ce donc que l'homme! quelle nouveauté, quel monstre, quel
chaos, quel sujet de contradiction, quel prodige! Juge de toutes choses,
imbécile ver de terre, dépositaire du vrai, cloaque d'incertitude et
d'erreur, gloire et rebut de l'univers!' In words of imperishable
intensity, he dwells upon the omnipotence of Death: 'Nous sommes
plaisants de nous reposer dans la société de nos semblables. Misérables
comme nous, impuissants comme nous, ils ne nous aideront pas; on mourra
seul.' Or he summons up in one ghastly sentence the vision of the
inevitable end: 'Le dernier acte est sanglant, quelque belle que soit la
comédie en tout le reste. On jette enfin de la terre sur la tête, et en
voilà pour jamais.' And so follows the conclusion of the whole:
'Connaissez donc, superbe, quel paradoxe vous êtes à vous-même.
Humiliez-vous, raison impuissante; taisez-vous, nature imbécile ... et
entendez de votre maître votre condition véritable que vous ignorez.
Écoutez Dieu.'

Modern as the style of Pascal's writing is, his thought is deeply
impregnated with the spirit of the Middle Ages. He belonged, almost
equally, to the future and to the past. He was a distinguished man of
science, a brilliant mathematician; yet he shrank from a consideration
of the theory of Copernicus: it was more important, he declared, to
think of the immortal soul. In the last years of his short life he sank