Returning to himself, let man consider what he is in comparison with all existence; let him regard himself as lost in this remote corner of nature; and from the little cell in which he finds himself lodged, I mean the universe, let him estimate at their true value the earth, kingdoms, cities, and himself.  What is a man in the Infinite?

But to show him another prodigy equally astonishing, let him examine the most delicate things he knows.  Let a mite be given him, with its minute body and parts incomparably more minute, limbs with their joints, veins in the limbs, blood in the veins, humours in the blood, drops in the humours, vapours in the drops.  Dividing these last things again, let him exhaust his powers of conception, and let the last object at which he can arrive be now that of our discourse.  Perhaps he will think that here is the smallest point in nature.  I will let him see therein a new abyss.  I will paint for him not only the visible universe, but all that he can conceive of nature’s immensity in the womb of this abridged atom.  Let him see therein an infinity of universes, each of which has its firmament, its planets, its earth, in the same proportion as in the visible world; in each earth animals, and in the last mites, in which he will find again all that the first had, finding still in these others the same thing without end and without cessation.  Let him lose himself in wonders as amazing in their littleness as the others in their vastness.  For who will not be astounded at the fact that our body, which a little while ago was imperceptible in the universe, itself imperceptible in the bosom of the whole, is now a colossus, a world, or rather a whole, in respect of the nothingness which we cannot reach?  He who regards himself in this light will be afraid of himself, and observing himself sustained in the body given him by nature between those two abysses of the Infinite and Nothing, will tremble at the sight of these marvels; and I think that, as his curiosity changes into admiration, he will be more disposed to contemplate them in silence than to examine them with presumption.

For in fact what is man in nature?  A Nothing in comparison with the Infinite, an All in comparison with the Nothing, a mean between nothing and everything.  Since he is infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret, he is equally incapable of seeing the Nothing from which he was made, and the Infinite in which he is swallowed up.

What will he do then, but perceive the appearance of the middle of things, in an eternal despair of knowing either their beginning or their end.  All things proceed from the Nothing, and are borne towards the Infinite.  Who will follow these marvellous processes?  The Author of these wonders understands them.  None other can do so.

Through failure to contemplate these Infinites, men have rashly rushed into the examination of nature, as though they bore some proportion to her.  It is strange that they have wished to understand the beginnings of things, and thence to arrive at the knowledge of the whole, with a presumption as infinite as their object.  For surely this design cannot be formed without presumption or without a capacity infinite like nature.