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.[6] 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.

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