SECT.  LIII.  Weakness of Man’s Mind.

That same mind that incessantly sees the infinite, and, through the rule of the infinite, all finite things, is likewise infinitely ignorant of all the objects that surround it.  It is altogether ignorant of itself, and gropes about in an abyss of darkness.  It neither knows what it is, nor how it is united with a body; nor which way it has so much command over all the springs of that body, which it knows not.  It is ignorant of its own thoughts and wills.  It knows not, with certainty, either what it believes or wills.  It often fancies to believe and will, what it neither believes nor wills.  It is liable to mistake, and its greatest excellence is to acknowledge it.  To the error of its thoughts, it adds the disorder and irregularity of its will and desires; so that it is forced to groan in the consciousness and experience of its corruption.  Such is the mind of man, weak, uncertain, stinted, full of errors.  Now, who is it that put the idea of the infinite, that is to say of perfection, in a subject so stinted and so full of imperfection?  Did it give itself so sublime, and so pure an idea, which is itself a kind of infinite in imagery?  What finite being distinct from it was able to give it what bears no proportion with what is limited within any bounds?  Let us suppose the mind of man to be like a looking-glass, wherein the images of all the neighbouring bodies imprint themselves.  Now what being was able to stamp within us the image of the infinite, if the infinite never existed?  Who can put in a looking-glass the image of a chimerical object which is not in being, and which was never placed against the glass?  This image of the infinite is not a confused collection of finite objects, which the mind may mistake for a true infinite.  It is the true infinite of which we have the thought and idea.  We know it so well, that we exactly distinguish it from whatever it is not; and that no subtilty can palm upon us any other object in its room.  We are so well acquainted with it, that we reject from it any propriety that denotes the least bound or limit.  In short, we know it so well, that it is in it alone we know all the rest, just as we know the night by the day, sickness by health.  Now, once more, whence comes so great an image?  Does it proceed from nothing?  Can a stinted limited being imagine and invent the infinite, if there be no infinite at all?  Our weak and short-sighted mind cannot of itself form that image, which, at this rate, should have no author.  None of the outward objects can give us that image: for they can only give us the image of what they are, and they are limited and imperfect.  Therefore, from whence shall we derive that distinct image which is unlike anything within us, and all we know here below, without us?  Whence does it proceed?  Where is that infinite we cannot comprehend, because it is really infinite: and which nevertheless we cannot mistake, because we distinguish it from anything that is inferior to it?  Sure it must be somewhere, otherwise how could it imprint itself in our minds?