There may be something to object to in Pascal’s mode of expression in the above passage. Cousin has made the most of his confusion of “reason” and “reasoning”—“la raison” and “le raisonnement.” The expression “le cœur,” by which he designates the higher faculty of intuition, may be inadequate and misleading—complex and disturbing in its association. But withal, his attitude in favour of a ground of certainty in human knowledge is unmistakable. So far he is not only not with Montaigne, but he is clearly against him. The rights of nature, as he says, rise up against the Pyrrhonist. They make themselves good. And however strongly Pascal may draw the picture of human weakness, and all the contrarieties which our nature encloses, he does not mean by this to strike at the roots of all knowledge, and leave man a prey to helpless doubt. He means merely to shake the throne of rational security, and to show that no conclusions of mere philosophy can reach all the exigencies of man’s condition. His analysis of human nature is the analysis of a moralist, and not of a psychologist or rational philosopher. He looks at man always as a spiritual being. It is his spiritual capacity which alone makes him great, and yet intensifies all the lower contradictions of his nature. It is “thought alone which makes man’s greatness.” A man can be conceived “without hands or feet or head, but not without thought.” “The possession of the earth would not add to my greatness. As to space, the universe encloses and absorbs me as a mere point, but by thought I embrace it. . . . Man is but a reed, the feeblest of created things—but one possessing thought (_un roseau pensant_). It needs not that the universe should arm itself to crush him. A breath, a drop of water, suffices for his destruction. But were the whole universe to rise against him, man is yet greater than the universe, since man _knows_ that he dies. He knows the universe prevails against him. The universe knows nothing of its power.” {190}