on high,” says he, in his “Pensées,” “but one rests upon the sand and the earth will slip from under one, and one shall fall with one’s eyes on heaven.” But might not one respond that the heaven of which Pascal is here speaking, the heaven we carry in our own bosoms, is something quite different from the heaven which we perceive spread out above our heads? Must it not here be said that to see is to touch and to possess; that a sight of the moral end renders possible a progress toward it; that the resting point one finds in the moral will, the most invincible of all the forms of volition, will not give way beneath one, and that one cannot fall, in one’s progress toward goodness and that in this sense to lift one’s eyes toward heaven is already to have set one’s feet on the way thither. [67] See on this point our _Esquisse d’une morale sans obligation_, p. 27. [Sidenote: Ultimate claim for prayer.] There remains one more aspect under which prayer may be considered. It may be regarded as a species of spiritual elevation, a communication with the universe or with God.[68] Prayer has in all times been glorified as a means of uplifting the whole being to a plane that it otherwise would have been unable to attain. The best of us, as Amiel said not long since, find complete development and self-knowledge in prayer alone. [68] “Oh, God” said Diderot, at the end of his _Interprétation de la nature_, “I do not know if Thou existest, but I shall bear myself as if Thou sawest into my soul; I shall act as if I felt myself in Thy presence.... I ask nothing of Thee in this world, for the course of things is necessary in and of its own nature, if Thou dost not exist, and necessary if Thou dost, by Thy decree.” [Sidenote: Distinction between religious ecstasy and philosophical meditation.]