If we are well informed, we understand that, as nature has graven her image and that of her Author on all things, they almost all partake of her double infinity.  Thus we see that all the sciences are infinite in the extent of their researches.  For who doubts that geometry, for instance, has an infinite infinity of problems to solve?  They are also infinite in the multitude and fineness of their premises; for it is clear that those which are put forward as ultimate are not self-supporting, but are based on others which, again having others for their support, do not permit of finality.  But we represent some as ultimate for reason, in the same way as in regard to material objects we call that an indivisible point beyond which our senses can no longer perceive anything, although by its nature it is infinitely divisible.

Of these two Infinites of science, that of greatness is the most palpable, and hence a few persons have pretended to know all things.  “I will speak of the whole,"[31] said Democritus.

But the infinitely little is the least obvious.  Philosophers have much oftener claimed to have reached it, and it is here they have all stumbled.  This has given rise to such common titles as First Principles, Principles of Philosophy,[32] and the like, as ostentatious in fact, though not in appearance, as that one which blinds us, De omni scibili.[33]

We naturally believe ourselves far more capable of reaching the centre of things than of embracing their circumference.  The visible extent of the world visibly exceeds us; but as we exceed little things, we think ourselves more capable of knowing them.  And yet we need no less capacity for attaining the Nothing than the All.  Infinite capacity is required for both, 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