were tormented by this antagonism between divine and human love. In the end, with the immense majority of men, human love carried the day. It could not be otherwise; the very Church could not preach complete detachment for everybody under pain of having nobody to preach to. But among scrupulous and strenuous souls the opposition between divine and human love manifested itself in all the circumstances of life. One remembers Mme. Périer’s account of Pascal. She was surprised at times that her brother repulsed her, became suddenly cold to her, turned away from her when she approached to soothe him in his pain; she began to think he did not love her, she complained of it to her sister, but it was in vain to try to undeceive her. Finally the enigma was explained on the very day of Pascal’s death by Domat, one of his friends. Mme. Périer learned that in Pascal’s opinion the most innocent and fraternal friendship is a fault for which one habitually fails to take one’s self sufficiently to task, because one underestimates its magnitude. “By fomenting and suffering these attachments to grow up, one is giving to someone else some portion of what belongs to God alone; one is in a manner robbing Him of what is to Him the most precious thing in all the world.” It would be impossible better to express the mystical antagonism between divine and human love. This principle occupied so prominent a place in the foreground of Pascal’s mind that, the more readily to keep it always before him, he wrote with his own hand upon a piece of paper: “It is unjust in me to permit anyone to form an attachment for me, however voluntarily, and with whatever pleasure they may do it. In the long run I should deceive them, for I belong to nobody but to God, and have not the wherewithal to satisfy a human affection.... I should therefore be culpable, if I should allow anyone to love me, if I should attract people toward me.... They should pass their lives and employ their effort in pleasing and searching for God.” The instant God is conceived as a person and not as a simple ideal, there inevitably arises in souls tinged with mysticism, a rivalry between His claims and those of other persons. How can the Absolute admit any human being to a share of what essentially is His? He must dwell in as absolute a solitude at the bottom of man’s heart as on the height of heaven. [Sidenote: Exists at the present day.]