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 is smiling in his sleeve at the passionate eagerness of theological as well as philosophical partakers in the turmoil. To Pascal, therefore, he exactly represents the natural man: the man fallen from his high estate, but—what is strange—not even conscious that he has fallen. One thing, says Pascal in his opening Thoughts, is unintelligible to me: that is, man's indifference. It irritates me, he declares, rather than excites my pity. What! shall a man say I know not whence I come or whither I go—whether at death I shall be annihilated or fall into the hands of an angry God; and therefore I will live without even trying to find out? The man who will risk his life and soul for some trifling point of honour will remain careless on this inconceivably important point! It must be an incomprehensible enchantment, a supernatural benumbing of the faculties, which can explain such a state of mind. And yet this indifference is the meaning of Montaigne's que sais-je? If he thought of the angry God as a possibility, he probably comforted himself, in the words of the poet: He's a good fellow and 'twill all be well. Pascal wasn't so sure of that.

Where, then, is Pascal's escape? In