extent of the world visibly exceeds us; but as we exceed little
things, we think ourselves more capable of knowing them. And yet we
need no less capacity for attaining the Nothing than the All. Infinite
capacity is required for both, and it seems to me that whoever shall
have understood the ultimate principles of being might also attain
to the knowledge of the Infinite. The one depends on the other, and
one leads to the other. These extremes meet and reunite by force of
distance and find each other in God, and in God alone.

    Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not
everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of
first beginnings which are born of the Nothing; and the littleness
of our being conceals from us the sight of the Infinite.

    Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as
our body occupies in the expanse of nature.

    Limited as we are in every way, this state which holds the mean
between two extremes is present in all our impotence. Our senses
perceive no extreme. Too much sound deafens us; too much light dazzles
us; too great distance or proximity hinders our view. Too great length
and too great brevity of discourse tend to obscurity; too much truth
is paralysing (I know some who cannot understand that to take four
from nothing leaves nothing). First principles are too self-evident
for us; too much pleasure disagrees with us. Too many concords are
annoying in music; too many benefits irritate us; we wish to have
the wherewithal to overpay our debts. Beneficia eo usque laeta sunt
dum videntur exsolvi posse; ubi multum antevenere, pro gratia odium
redditur.* We feel neither extreme heat nor extreme cold. Excessive
qualities are prejudicial to us and not perceptible by the senses;
we do not feel but suffer them. Extreme youth and extreme age hinder
the mind, as also too much and too little education. In short,
extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within
their notice. They escape us, or we them.

    * Tacitus, Annals, iv. "Kindnesses are agreeable so long as one
thinks them possible to render; further, recognition makes way for
hatred."

    This is our true state; this is what makes us incapable of certain
knowledge and of absolute ignorance. We sail within a vast sphere,
ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end. When we think to
attach ourselves to any point and to fasten to it, it wavers and
leaves us; and if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us,
and vanishes for ever. Nothing stays for us. This is our natural
condition and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with
desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to
build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork
cracks, and the earth opens to abysses.

    Let us, therefore, not look for certainty and stability. Our
reason is always deceived by fickle shadows; nothing can fix the
finite between the two Infinites, which both enclose and fly from it.

    If this be well understood, I think that we shall remain at
rest, each in the state wherein nature has placed him. As this
sphere which has fallen to us as our lot is always distant from either
extreme, what matters it that man should have a little more
knowledge of the universe? If he has it, he but gets a little
higher. Is he not always infinitely removed from the end, and is not
the duration of our life equally removed from eternity, even if it
lasts ten years longer?

    In comparison with these Infinites, all finites are equal, and I
see no reason for fixing our imagination on one more than on
another. The only comparison which we make of ourselves to the
finite is painful to us.

    If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how
incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole? But
he may perhaps aspire to know at least the parts to which he bears
some proportion. But the parts of the world are all so related and
linked to one another that I believe it impossible to know one without
the other and without the whole.

    Man, for instance, is related to all he knows. He needs a place
wherein to abide, time through which to live, motion in order to live,
elements to compose him, warmth and food to nourish him, air to
breathe. He sees light; he feels bodies; in short, he is in a
dependent alliance with everything. To know man, then, it is necessary
to know how it happens that he needs air to live, and, to know the
air, we must know how it is thus related to the life of man, etc.
Flame cannot exist without air; therefore, to understand the one, we
must understand the other.

    Since everything, then, is cause and effect, dependent and
supporting, mediate and immediate, and all is held together by a
natural though imperceptible chain which binds together things most
distant and most different, I hold it equally impossible to know the
parts without knowing the whole and to know the whole without
knowing the parts in detail.

    The eternity of things in itself or in God must also astonish
our brief duration. The fixed and constant immobility of nature, in
comparison with the continual change which goes on within us, must
have the same effect.

    And what completes our incapability of knowing things is the
fact that they are simple and that we are composed of two opposite
natures, different in kind, soul and body. For it is impossible that