PASCAL[1]
Pascal is one of the great men whose minds have been fascinated by the eternal riddle of existence, and have carried to a logical conclusion one typical mode of meeting if not of answering it; and who have also had the gift of coining thought into language so terse and vivid as to be part of the intellectual currency of all future generations. Yet the thought even of such men had to be expressed in the dialect and applied to the particular circumstances of their time. It may be worth while, therefore, to consider in what way Pascal's view was coloured by the conditions of the day, and what are its true relations to the development of thought. I make no claim to the special knowledge which would be necessary for a full treatment of the subject treatise, and am content to refer, once for all, to Sainte-Beuve's admirable Port-Royal, in which the great critic has shown Pascal as a
- ↑ Lecture before the West London Ethical Society, May 2, 1897.
