ter morality, but for the lax their casuistry
supplies a pliable code of morals, which, by the aid of ingenious
distinctions, can find excuses for the worst of crimes. With force
of logic, with fineness of irony, with energy of moral indignation,
with a literary style combining strength and lightness, Pascal
presses his irresistible assault. The effect of the "Provincial
Letters" was to carry the discussion of morals and theology before
a new court of appeal--not the Sorbonne, but the public intelligence
and the unsophisticated conscience of men. To French prose they added
a masterpiece and a model.

The subject of the _Provinciales_ is in part a thing of the past;
the _Pensees_ deal with problems which can never lose their interest.
Among Pascal's papers were found, after his early death, many
fragments which his sister, Madame Perier, and his friends recognised
as of rare value; but the editors of the little volume which appeared
in 1670, imagining that they could safeguard its orthodoxy, and even
amend its style, freely omitted and altered what Pascal had written.
It was not until 1844 that a complete and genuine text was established
in the edition of M. Faugere. We can hardly hope to arrange the
fragments so as to exhibit the design of that apology for Christianity,
with which many of them were doubtless connected, but the main
outlines of Pascal's body of thought can be clearly discerned.

The intellect of Pascal, so powerful in its grasp of scientific truth,
could find by its own researches no certitude in the sphere of
philosophy and religion. He had been deeply influenced by the
sceptical mind of Montaigne. He found within him a passionate craving
for certitude; man is so constituted that he can never be at rest
until he rests in knowledge of the truth; but man, as he now exists,
is incapable of ascertaining truth; he is weak and miserable, and
yet the very consciousness of his misery is evidence of his greatness;
"Nature confounds the Pyrrhonist, and reason the dogmatist;" "Man
is but a reed, the feeblest of created things, but a reed which
thinks." How is this riddle of human nature to be explained? Only
in one way--by a recognition of the truth taught by religion, that
human nature is fallen from its true estate, that man is a dethroned
king. And how is the dissonance in man's nature to be overcome? Only
in one way--through union with God made man; with Jesus Christ, the
centre in which alone we find our we