Page:Studies of a Biographer 2.djvu/283

 the intellect, has he not put out the only light, faint and flickering as it may be, that can guide us through the labyrinth? No, he says, the heart has its reasons that reason does not know. Many men have said so before and since; and it is mainly the vigour with which Pascal puts his view—the unflinching audacity with which he accepts conclusions from which others shrink—that makes his version stand out as the fullest utterance of his view. Man is, he tells us, a chimera, a monster, a contradiction. He judges all things and is a mere worm; a depository of the truth and a sink of error; at once the glory and the shame of the universe. Nature confounds the Pyrrhonists, and reason confounds the dogmatists. You must belong to one sect or the other, and yet you can remain in neither. Powerless reason, be humiliated! Imbecile nature, be silent! Hear God. To hear God is to feel the divine power. All that is good in us comes from grace. Our knowledge of God is therefore, if I may so say, a product of the reaction of the heart moved by divine grace. It is the response of the passive spirit to the one all-powerful stimulus. That, in fact, is the true theory of every mystic, though it leads of necessity to very divergent conclusions. Pascal's