the mark of an addition-' J'aime tous les hommes comme mes 'frères parce qu'ils sont tous rachetés.' * Tous rachetés'? Was not the doctrine of Jansenius that Christ did not die for all mankind, but only for the Elect? The love of the poor was widening, melting the dying heart of Pascal, and loosening the bands that bound it in the iron doctrines of Port Royal.

Pascal's genius had ever been of the fitful, unconscious, involuntary sort that does not depend upon attention or application, and in these last days of his life there were hours when the lightning would rend the clouds as fierce and swift as ever. But the darkness gathered thick. He could not read for long together-after a very little time the collection of his thoughts caused him a terrible headache, and the writing of the shortest page was painful. Comme il ne pouvoit dans 'cet estat ny lire ny escrire, il estoit contraint de demeurer à ' rien faire et de s'aller promener, sans pouvoir penser à rien 'qui eust de la suite.' The time came when he could not walk, when he could no longer go from church to church, or visit his poor pensioners; when a nervous constriction of the throat made the swallowing of a cup of broth a long and wearisome process; when the irritability of his nerves was such that it seemed impossible to please or satisfy him—until he discovered this impatience of his spirit, and then he would melt into such a sudden sweetness et reparoit incontinent sa 'faute par des traitemens si honnestes, qu'il n'a jamais perdu 'l'amitié de personne par là.'

Pascal had given house-room beneath his roof to a poor family whom he supplied with lodging and fuel without exacting any service in return. In the month of June 1662 one of the children of this poor household fell sick of the small-pox. Pascal himself was ill with that languor and nervous weakness which kept him often in a state of death-in-life; and Madame Périer, who tended him, could not come and go between his house and hers lest she should carry the contagion to her children. Rather than expose his poor guests to the danger and discomfort of removal, Pascal consented to take up his abode with his sister, a resolution which appears to have cost him his life, for, three days after his arrival, he fell ill of that grievous colic which, after his death, was proved to have been caused by an inflammation of the intestines.

Yet the doctors who visited him were not alarmed; they assured the anxious sister that there was not the slightest peril-pas la moindre ombre de danger'-for they were

* Brunschvicg, Pensée 550.

accustomed to see in Pascal a confirmed nervous invalid whose constant headache, frequent dysphagia, occasional paresia, were distressing symptoms, but not incompatible with a long existence. Pascal himself saw that his sufferings neared their close and bore them with an heroic patience which has left its noble print on the mask taken after death: 'il avait une 'patience consommée,' wrote the Père Beurrier twenty years later, in a letter to Madame Périer's son. The irritable student, the choleric feverish Pascal, was now a patient saint. He submitted even to his sister's kindness, though that perhaps was the ascetic's sorest burden. Only, when she refused to let him be carried (as he entreated) to the Hospital for Incurables he craved, as a last boon, that some sick poor man might share his room with him and benefit by all his advantages; Father Beurrier promised to discover such a room-mate for him so soon as he should return to his own house. But that was never to be: the end was at hand.

It is at this point that the most recent biographers of Pascal -especially M. Ernest Jovy in his Pascal Inédit’—place a Third Conversion, which separated him finally from the austere and stubborn nonconformists of Port Royal. The old debate between Jansenists and Jesuits, which began some three years after Pascal's death, has lately been revived and reinforced by M. Ernest Jovy's discovery of the Memoirs of Father Beurrier. Beurrier was the Curé of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, the parish in which Madame Périer's house was situated, and thus he attended Pascal in his last illness and received his confession. He seems to have been a dull, honest, excellent man, neither Jansenist nor Molinist, but Gallican and in sympathy with Port Royal. He knew Pascal as one of the authors of the Factums to the Curés of Paris, but not as Louis de Montalte. Je ne l'ai bien connu comme auteur des Lettres au 'Provincial qu'à sa mort.' In several conversations with Pascal, he heard him say that for the last two years he had prudently retired from the arguments of Port Royal in order to think on his latter end and to meditate an Apology for true religion. The sincerity of Father Beurrier is obvious. When the Jesuits--and indeed the clergy-construed the Déclaration touchant M. Paschal' (forced from him by the Archbishop) as a retractation of the errors of Port Royal; when the Jansenists, with harsh and eager eloquence, riposted-the worthy Curé said nothing, buried himself in his cure-and wrote on a scrap of paper which he hid in his table drawer: Quod scripsi, 'scripsi.' He had said retirement'; he had never said re'tractation.'

For our part we believe that on that 19th of August 1662, when Pascal entered his rest through the thorny gates of a terrible agony, he thought of neither Jesuits nor Jansenists, but only of Jesus Christ, whom he had so fervently, so ardently adored. He had always been more orthodox than he imagined

cet homme si grand en toutes choses estoit simple comme un enfant pour ce qui regarde la piété,' wrote Gilberte. Il 'est mort en très bon catholique' affirmed Father Beurrier.

In a page of the 'Provinciales,' often quoted against Pascal, he had exclaimed: Je ne suis pas de Port-Royal. . . . Je 'suis seul.' It was no prevarication, thrown like a handful of dust in an enemy's eyes. Pascal had loved and served Port Royal; but his nature was essentially solitary. That great, passionate, avid soul-which he tried so often, so vainly to satisfy with various interests-was too large to be contained in the narrow bounds of any chapel, of any sect or company— parce que ce gouffre infini ne peut être rempli que par un objet infini et immuable-c'est à dire par Dieu même.' *

*Pensée 425.

ART. IV. THE ANIMAL STORY.

1. a. Kindred of the Wild. By CHARLES C. D. ROBERTS. London: Duckworth and Co.

1908.

b. Red Fox. By CHARLES C. D. ROBERTS. London: Duckworth and Co. 1905.

c. Kings in Exile. By CHARLES C. D. ROBERTS. London: Ward, Lock and Co. 1909.

d. Neighbours Unknown. By CHARLES C. D. ROBERTS. London: Ward, Lock and Co. 1910.

2. a. Lives of the Hunted. By E. SETON-THOMPSON. London: David Nutt.

1901.

b. Animal Heroes. By E. SETON-THOMPSON. London: David Nutt.

3. a. The Call of the Wild. By JACK LONDON. London:

Heinemann.

b. White Fang.

mann. 1907.

1903.

By JACK LONDON.

London: Heine

4. a. The School of the Woods. By W. J. LONG. Boston: Ginn and Co. 1902.

b. A Little Brother of the Bear. By W. J. LONG. Boston: Ginn and Co. 1903.

Or the making of books there is no end, also the intentions of the makers are manifold. Apart from the author who writes as the crossing-sweeper sweeps, as the shopman sells, for a mere professional livelihood, the impulses that prompt to authorship are widely divergent. One man is a moralist, he knows the more excellent way which lies, for ever, before; he aspires to teach what will illuminate the path. A second has knowledge, physical, intellectual; he desires to impart it. A third is a humanitarian; he is fain to impress upon mankind what will lead to rectitude in social relations. A fourth is an artist; his aim to create works of aesthetic merit. Others derive literary inspiration from other sources. To edify, to benefit the social state, to communicate knowledge, is not their purpose, nor are they swayed by aesthetic proclivities. There are men born with a craving-its mainspring an intuitive egoism-to impress somewhat of their own personality upon the anonymous crowd, to evoke from it the response of interest, curiosity or admiration. Novelists and poets under the mask of fictitious personalities, essayists and critics under no mask at all, make a confidant of the public; they spread the journal 'intime' of their thoughts and feelings before the eyes of the

public, and are precipitated into the ranks of book-makers as the expositors of individualism. A rarer company is formed by those endowed with the contrary temperament, who focus their affections, interest and sympathy, upon some special section of the animate or inanimate universe, and who, absorbed, subjugated, as true lovers and devotees are impelled to give utterance, and to register that utterance, to their impassioned enthusiasm.

To this race belong the great interpreters of nature and of her earth-children. The moralist applies the facts of nature to elucidate his doctrines of spiritual health. The beasts of the Aesopian moral fable 'were compelled to do duty as concrete ' types of those obvious virtues and vices of which alone the 'unsophisticated ethical sense was ready to take cognisance.'* The results-both then and in later growths of the fableso far as animal portraiture was concerned, were totally inadequate pictures of the beast-world. The humanitarian, also after his kind a moralist, defined what in his estimation should constitute the relationship of duty, kindness and justice between man and the beasts who serve his needs and pleasures. It is no detraction to say, again to quote Mr. Roberts, of stories illustrating this endeavour,

'that while they have done great service in awakening a sympathetic understanding of the animals and sharpening our sense of kinship with all that breathe, their psychology is human. Their animals think and feel as human beings would think and feel under like conditions.'

The scientific naturalist offered his facts, their issues, and his deductions. Yet, as Hoffmann in his famous cat story asserts: Wenn uns Etwas oder Alles in der Natur unerforsch• lich bleibt, so sind wir gleich mit Namen bei der Hand und 'brüsten uns mit unserer albernen Schulweisheit, die eben ' nicht viel weiter reicht als unsere Nase.'† The artist utilised nature; it provided his raw material; its subjective values were the emotions it evoked, the sensations it occasioned, its formative action on the sensitive lens of his creative organism; its objective values were the models it afforded, the themes it suggested. He sought its influences with an end and viewed its aspects with a purpose; the end and purpose were the reproduction of both in the mould of art. Searching for what may best conduce to this end, the artist perforce passes by what is superfluous to it, and with the elimination of all that stands

*Charles Roberts.

Kater Murr,' E. T. A. Hoffmann.