Absolute and the Infinite are complementary, the first being exclusive and the second inclusive: the Absolute excludes all that is contingent, and the Infinite includes all that is. Within contingency, the Absolute gives rise to perfection, and the Infinite to indefiniteness: the sphere is perfect, space is indefinite. Descartes reserved the term infinite for God alone, whereas Pascal spoke of many infinites. One has to agree with Descartes, yet without blaming Pascal, for the absolute meaning of the word does not result from its literal meaning; the images are physical before being metaphysical, even though the causal relationship is inverse. Theology teaches that God is infinitely good and infinitely just since He is infinite, which is contradictory if one wished to be too particular, for an infinite quality in the absolute sense would exclude any other quality.

Man is situated, spatially speaking, between the "infinitely big" and the "infinitely small" — in Pascal's terminology — so that it is his subjectivity and not a quality of the objective world that creates the line of demarcation. If we feel minute in stellar space, it is solely because what is big is more accessible to us than what is small and thus rapidly escapes our senses; and such is the case because it is the big and not the small that reflects the Infinitude and Transcendence of God in relation to man.

The "Great Vehicle"• possesses a mysterious dimension known as the "Adamantine Vehicle" (Vajrayana); in order to grasp its meaning, one has to first understand what we repeatedly have termed the "metaphysical transparency of the world," that is to say one has to base oneself on a perspective according to which — to quote an expression of Pascal's we favor — Reality is "an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and its circumference nowhere": it is this circumference and this center which are represented, in the adamantine doctrine, by the Buddha Mahavairochana (in Japanese Dainichi Nyorai)5 who is at one and the same time — in Vedantic terms — Atma, Ishvara and Buddhi; that is to say Supra-ontological Essence, Ontological Essence and Universal Intellect. This metaphysical transparency everywhere refers the effect back to the Cause without, however, doing away with the irreversibility of the causal relationship; the Absolute is nowise causal in itself, since in reality nothing can be outside It, but it is causal from the point of view of the cosmos which is real only as effect and in virtue of the metaphysical reduction of the effect to the Cause. Thus "all is Atma," or all is Shunya ("Void") or Vairochana — or "solarity" if we bear in mind the etymology as well as the symbolism of this Sanskrit name — but no thing is in itself, in its accidentality the "Self" or the "Void" or the "solar Buddha."

Pascal mistakenly attributed to the Jesuits the idea that "the end justifies the means" — we quote the now proverbial version — for in fact they were careful to specify: "on condition that the means not be intrinsically vicious"; if this reservation were not sufficient, legitimate defense would not be possible.

In every case of a contact between the Divine and the terrestrial we see this fluctuation between the metaphysical perspective of essential — not "material" — identity and the cosmological perspective of analogy or of symbolical parallelism, hence of difference. This contact between the Divine and the human is, by reason of its very elusiveness, a mystery, and even the mystery par excellence, for we touch God "everywhere and nowhere," as Pascal would say. God is quite close to us, infinitely close, but we are far from Him; He is incarnate in a given symbol, but we risk grasping only the husk, retaining only the shadow. Idolatry, which divinizes the shadow as such, and atheism, which denies God by reason of His intangibility — but it is we who are "absent," not God — reduce to absurdity the two aspects of symbolism: identity, which is unitive, and analogy, which is separative, but parallel.

In connection with this question of intellectual intuition, it would be useful to reply here to a difficulty raised by Pascal: "One cannot undertake to define being without falling into absurdity: for a word cannot be defined without beginning with the words it is, whether they are expressed or implied. Therefore in order to define being it would be necessary to say it is, and so to use the word to be defined in formulating its own definition" (Pensées et Opuscules).9 It is in fact impossible, in European languages, to give a definition without using the word "is"; if in other languages, in Arabic for example, a definition can be made without the help of this word or of some other copulative, that is exactly for the same reason, namely that all is immersed in Being and that Being therefore has an a priori evidentness; if Being cannot be defined outside itself, any more than can Knowledge, it is because this "outside" does not exist; the separation necessary for every definition thus actually lies within the thing to be defined, and in fact although we are "within Being" we are not Being. The copulative "it is" indicates a determination or an attribute according to the circumstances, and this shows the meaning of the word: we will define Being in itself as the universal determination, that is to say as the supreme Principle "insofar as It determines itself," to use Guénon's expression; if we start from the ternary Beyond-Being, Being and Manifestation, we see that Being is "Principle" in relation to the world but "determination" in relation to Beyond-Being. Now, given that Being is determination in relation to Beyond-Being and the source of every attribute in relation to the world, every determination and every attribute can be expressed by means of the verb "to be," hence by "it is," so that Pascal's difficulty can be resolved thus: "being" manifests (or "is" the manifestation of) an aspect of its own inner limitlessness, thus a possibility, an attribute. When we say: "The tree is green," this is, by analogy, like saying: "Being comprises such and such an aspect," or again in the deepest sense: "Beyond-Being determines itself as Being"; the thing to be defined — or determined — serves analogically as "Being," and the definition — the determination — serves as "divine attribute." Instead of speaking of "Being" and of "attribute of Being," we could refer to the first distinction: Beyond-Being and Being. When the verb "to be" designates an existence, it has no complement; on the other hand, when it has a complement it does not designate an existence as such, but an attribute; to say that a certain thing "is," signifies that it is not non-existent; to say that the tree "is green" signifies that it has this attribute and not some other. In consequence, the verb "to be" always expresses either an "existence" or a "character of existence," in the same way as God on the one hand "is" and on the other "is thus," that is to say Light, Love, Power and so forth. Saint Thomas expresses this well by saying that if Being and the first principles which flow from it are incapable of proof, it is because they have no need of proof; to prove them is at once useless and impossible, "not through a lack, but through a superabundance of light."

After all, Pascal's wager is not to be disdained; what gives it all its force are not merely the arguments in favor of God and our immortality, but also the importance — quantitative as well as qualitative — of the voices in favor of these two capital notions, that of God and that of our soul; we have in mind here the power and majesty of the Sacred Scriptures and the innumerable army of sages and saints. If these great men are not qualified to speak in the name of man, then there is no such thing as man.

Pascal thought that the worst baseness is to claim glory for on oneself, which is inaccurate and unjust; the worst baseness is to discredit the glory of others and to glorify one's own disgrace.

... according to Pascal, “ there are two classes of men, the saints who consider themselves guilty of every fault and the sinners who think they are guilty of nothing.” One would like to know if the author of these words considered himsel f capable of every fault, and if not, why he attributed this sentiment to the saints; or inversely, since he attributed this sentiment to the saints, why he did not share it.

Pascal said, in substance, that we are minute, but that we know it, whereas the universe in incommensurable, but it does not know it.