xtremes are for us as though they were not,
and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them.

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