. But it is what he might have done, still more than what
he did, that fixes his estimation in the world of mind. Blaise Pascal is
one of the chief intellectual glories of France.

Pascal, the boy, had a strong natural bent toward mathematics. The story
is that his father, in order to turn his son's whole force on the study
of languages, put out of the lad's reach all books treating his favorite
subject. Thus shut up to his own resources, the masterful little fellow,
about his eighth year, drawing charcoal diagrams on the floor, made
perceptible progress in working out geometry for himself. At sixteen he
produced a treatise on conic sections that excited the wonder and
incredulity of Descartes. Later, he experimented in barometry, and
pursued investigations in mechanics. Later still, he made what seemed to
be approaches toward Newton's binomial theorem.

Vivid religious convictions meantime deeply affected Pascal's mind. His
health, never robust, began to give way. His physicians prescribed
mental diversion, and forced him into society. That medicine, taken at
first with reluctance, proved dangerously delightful to Pascal's
vivacious and susceptible spirit. His pious sister Jacqueline warned her
brother that he was going too far. But he was still more effectively
warned by an accident, in which he almost miraculously escaped from
death. Withdrawing from the world, he adopted a course of ascetic
practices, in which he continued till he died--in his thirty-ninth year.
He wore about his waist an iron girdle armed with sharp points; and this
he would press smartly with his elbow when he detected himself at fault
in his spirit.

Notwithstanding what Pascal did or attempted, worthy of fame, in
science, it was his fortune to become chiefly renowned by literary
achievement. His, in fact, would now be a half-forgotten name if he had
not written the "Provincial Letters" and the "Thoughts."

The "Provincial Letters" is an abbreviated title. The title in full
originally was, "Letters written by Louis de Montalte to a Provincial,
one of his friends, and to the Reverend Fathers, the Jesuits, on the
subject of the morality and the policy of those Fathers."

Of the "Provincial Letters," several English translations have been
made. No one of these that we have been able to find, seems entirely
satisfactory. There is an elusive quality to Pascal's style, and in
losing this you seem to lose something of Pascal's thought. For with
Pas