; why should there not be
other species above you more intelligent than your own? Man ought to be
better informed than he is about himself before he spends his strength
in measuring God. Before attacking the stars that light us, and the
higher certainties, ought he not to understand the certainties which are
actually about him?'

"But no! to the negations of doubt I ought rather to reply by negations.
Therefore I ask you whether there is anything here below so evident
that I can put faith in it? I will show you in a moment that you believe
firmly in things which act, and yet are not beings; in things which
engender thought, and yet are not spirits; in living abstractions which
the understanding cannot grasp in any shape, which are in fact nowhere,
but which you perceive everywhere; which have, and can have, on name,
but which, nevertheless, you have named; and which, like the God
of flesh upon whom you figure to yourself, remain inexplicable,
incomprehensible, and absurd. I shall also ask you why, after admitting
the existence of these incomprehensible things, you reserve your doubts
for God?

"You believe, for instance, in Number,--a base on which you have built
the edifice of sciences which you call 'exact.' Without Number, what
would become of mathematics? Well, what mysterious being endowed with
the faculty of living forever could utter, and what language would be
compact to word the Number which contains the infinite numbers whose
existence is revealed to you by thought? Ask it of the loftiest human
genius; he might ponder it for a thousand years and what would be his
answer? You know neither where Number begins, nor where it pauses, nor
where it ends. Here you call it Time, there you call it Space. Nothing
exists except by Number. Without it, all would be one and the same
substance; for Number alone differentiates and qualifies substance.
Number is to your Spirit what it is to Matter, an incomprehensible
agent. Will you make a Deity of it? Is it a being? Is it a breath
emanating from God to organize the material universe where nothing
obtains form except by the Divinity which is an effect of Number? The
least as well as the greatest of creations are distinguishable from
each other by quantities, qualities, dimensions, forces,--all attributes
created by Number. The infinitude of Numbers is a fact proved to your
soul, but of which no material proof can be given. The mathematician
himself tells you that the infinit