SECT.  LI.  The Mind knows the Finite only by the Idea of the Infinite.

It is even in the infinite that my mind knows the finite.  When we say a man is sick, we mean a man that has no health; and when we call a man weak, we mean one that has no strength.  We know sickness, which is a privation of health, no other way but by representing to us health itself as a real good, of which such a man is deprived; and, in like manner, we only know weakness, by representing to us strength as a real advantage, which such a man is not master of.  We know darkness, which is nothing real, only by denying, and consequently by conceiving daylight, which is most real, and most positive.  In like manner we know the finite only by assigning it a bound, which is a mere negation of a greater extent; and consequently only the privation of the infinite.  Now a man could never represent to himself the privation of the infinite, unless he conceived the infinite itself: just as he could not have a notion of sickness, unless he had an idea of health, of which it is only a privation.  Now, whence comes that idea of the infinite in us?