the cosmic gaming-table; it wagers the safety of the soul
against the sanity of the intellect.

And it is pre-eminently the mark of a great religion that it should be
founded upon a great scepticism. Anything short of this lacks the
true tragic note; anything short of this is mere temperamental
cheerfulness, mere conventional assent to custom and tradition.

The great religion must carve its daring protest against the whole
natural order of the universe upon the flaming ramparts of the
world's uttermost boundary. The great religion must engrave its
challenge to eternity upon the forehead of the Great Sphinx.

And after all, even supposing that Pascal is wrong; even supposing
that making his grand wager he put his money upon the _wrong
horse_, does that diminish the tragedy of his position? Does that
lessen the sublimity of his imagination? Obviously it is the practical
certainty that he is wrong, and that he did put his money on the
wrong horse, which creates the grandeur of the whole desperate
business. If he were right, if the universe were really and truly
composed in the manner he conceived it--why then, so far from his
figure being a tragic one, he would present himself as a shrewd
magician, who has found the "wonderful lamp" of the world's
Aladdin's cave, and has entered upon inestimable treasures while
disappearing into the darkness.

The sublimity of Pascal's vision depends upon its being illusive. The
grandeur of his world-logic depends upon its being false. The beauty
of his heroic character depends upon his philosophy being a lie.

If all that is left of this desperate dicer with eternity is a little dust
and a strangely shaped skull, how magnificently dramatic, in the
high classic sense, was his offering up of his intellect upon the altar
of his faith!

In the wise psychology of the future--interesting itself in the historic
aberrations of the human mind--it is likely that many chapters will
be devoted to this strange "disease of desperation" full of such wild
and fatal beauty.

The Spectacle of the world will lack much contrasting shadow when
this thing passes away. A _certain deep crimson upon black_ will be
missing from the tapestry of human consciousness. There will be
more sun-light but less Rembrantian chiaroscuro in the pigments of
the great Picture. At any rate this is certain; by his tragic gambling
in the darkness of the abyss between the unfathomed spaces, Pascal
has drawn the perilous st