to think anything out to a conclusion. Pascal's disillusioned analysis
of human bondage is sometimes interpreted to mean that Pascal was really
and finally an unbeliever, who, in his despair, was incapable of
enduring reality and enjoying the heroic satisfaction of the free man's
worship of nothing. His despair, his disillusion, are, however, no
illustration of personal weakness; they are perfectly objective, because
they are essential moments in the progress of the intellectual soul; and
for the type of Pascal they are the analogue of the drought, the dark
night, which is an essential stage in the progress of the Christian
mystic. A similar despair, when it is arrived at by a diseased character
or an impure soul, may issue in the most disastrous consequences though
with the most superb manifestations; and thus we get _Gulliver's
Travels_; but in Pascal we find no such distortion; his despair is in
itself more terrible than Swift's, because our heart tells us that it
corresponds exactly to the facts and cannot be dismissed as mental
disease; but it was also a despair which was a necessary prelude to, and
element in, the joy of faith.

I do not wish to enter any further than necessary upon the question of
the heterodoxy of Jansenism; and it is no concern of this essay, whether
the Five Propositions condemned at Rome were really maintained by
Jansenius in his book _Augustinus_; or whether we should deplore or
approve the consequent decay (indeed with some persecution) of
Port-Royal. It is impossible to discuss the matter without becoming
involved as a controversialist either for or against Rome. But in a man
of the type of Pascal--and the type always exists--there is, I think, an
ingredient of what may be called Jansenism of temperament, without
identifying it with the Jansenism of Jansenius and of other devout and
sincere, but not immensely gifted doctors.[B] It is accordingly needful
to state in brief what the dangerous doctrine of Jansenius was, without