ruption of man. If all that is good be supernatural, the natural must be other than good. And this is, in fact, the doctrine around which all Pascal's Pensées revolve. The doctrine of the corruption of human nature is, he says, mysterious, and yet it is this mystery alone which makes man intelligible to himself. Christianity, he says, reveals two great truths: the corruption of man's nature and the redemption through Christ. It is in passing these two opposite poles of truth alternately that he sometimes appears as a sceptic and sometimes as a humble believer. He joins hands at moments with the sceptics and the pessimists: he even outdoes their strongest assertions; and at the next moment he is prostrating himself before the Church, accepting mysteries, adoring the sacraments, and arguing for the most groundless traditions, and believing (I say it with a certain sense of shame) in the most trumpery of modern 'miracles.' The modern agnostic or the modern worshipper at Lourdes may equally find support in his dicta. Is this an inconsistency or a deeper insight than that of either side? At any rate, in this lies, I think, the great interest of Pascal. The extraordinary force with which he sums up both sets of convictions casts into the
