ty were more than an
outward appearance.

84. It may be, therefore, that having long contended thus against M. Bayle
on the matter of the use of reason I shall find after all that his opinions
were not fundamentally so remote from mine as his expressions, which have
provided matter for our considerations, have led one to believe. It is true
that frequently he appears to deny absolutely that one can ever answer the
objections of reason against faith, and that he asserts the necessity of
comprehending, in order to achieve such an end, how the Mystery comes [121]
to be or exists. Yet there are passages where he becomes milder, and
contents himself with saying that the answers to these objections are
unknown to him. Here is a very precise passage, taken from the excursus on
the Manichaeans, which is found at the end of the second edition of his
_Dictionary_: 'For the greater satisfaction of the most punctilious
readers, I desire to declare here' (he says, p. 3148) 'that wherever the
statement is to be met with in my _Dictionary_ that such and such arguments
are irrefutable I do not wish it to be taken that they are so in actuality.
I mean naught else than that they appear to me irrefutable. That is of no
consequence: each one will be able to imagine, if he pleases, that if I
deem thus of a matter it is owing to my lack of acumen.' I do not imagine
such a thing; his great acumen is too well known to me: but I think that,
after having applied his whole mind to magnifying the objections, he had
not enough attention left over for the purpose of answering them.

85. M. Bayle confesses, moreover, in his posthumous work against M. le
Clerc, that the objections against faith have not the force of proofs. It
is therefore _ad hominem_ only, or rather _ad homines_, that is, in
relation to the existing state of the human race, that he deems these
objections irrefutable and the subject unexplainable. There is even a
passage where he implies that he despairs not of the possibility that the
answer or the explanation may be found, and even in our time. For here is
what he says in his posthumous Reply to M. le Clerc (p. 35): 'M. Bayle
dared to hope that his toil would put on their mettle some of those great
men of genius who create new systems, and that they could discover a
solution hitherto unknown.' It seems that by this 'solution' he means such
an explanation of Mystery as would penetrate to the _how_: but that is not
necessary for repl