the presumption of man. Man's
intellectual greatness itself he seizes upon to point the moral of an
innate contradiction, an essential imbecility. 'Quelle chimere,' he
exclaims, 'est-ce donc que l'homme! quelle nouveaute, quel monstre, quel
chaos, quel sujet de contradiction, quel prodige! Juge de toutes choses,
imbecile ver de terre, depositaire 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 societe de nos semblables. Miserables
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
comedie en tout le reste. On jette enfin de la terre sur la tete, et en
voila pour jamais.' And so follows the conclusion of the whole:
'Connaissez donc, superbe, quel paradoxe vous etes a vous-meme.
Humiliez-vous, raison impuissante; taisez-vous, nature imbecile ... et
entendez de votre maitre votre condition veritable que vous ignorez.
Ecoutez 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
into a torpor of superstition--ascetic, self-mortified, and rapt in a
strange exaltation, like a medieval monk. Thus there is a tragic
antithesis in his character--an unresolved discord which shows itself
again and again in his _Pensees_. 'Condition de l'homme,' he notes,
'inconstance, ennui, inquietude.' It is the description of his own
state. A profound inquietude did indeed devour him. He turned
desperately from the pride of his intellect to the consolations of his
religion. But even there--? Beneath him, as he sat or as he walked, a
great gulf seemed to open darkly, into an impenetrable abyss. He looked
upward into heaven, and the familiar horror faced him still: 'Le silence
eternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie!'

CHAPTER IV

THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV

When Louis XIV assumed the reins of government France suddenly and
wonderfully came to her maturity; it was as if th