fiord the faculties of counting and of seeing each other. How do you
know that the stones themselves do not deny the existence of man,
though man makes use of them to build his houses? There is one fact
that appals you,--the Infinite; if you feel it within, why will you
not admit its consequences? Can the finite have a perfect knowledge of
the infinite? If you cannot perceive those relations which, according
to your own admission, are infinite, how can you grasp a sense of the
far-off end to which they are converging? Order, the revelation of
which is one of your needs, being infinite, can your limited reason
apprehend it? Do not ask why man does not comprehend that which he is
able to perceive, for he is equally able to perceive that which he
does not comprehend. If I prove to you that your mind ignores that
which lies within its compass, will you grant that it is impossible
for it to conceive whatever is beyond it? This being so, am I not
justified in saying to you: 'One of the two propositions under which
God is annihilated before the tribunal of our reason must be true, the
other is false. Inasmuch as creation exists, you feel the necessity of
an end, and that end should be good, should it not? Now, if Matter
terminates in man by intelligence, why are you not satisfied to
believe that the end of human intelligence is the Light of the higher
spheres, where alone an intuition of that God who seems so insoluble a
problem is obtained? The species which are beneath you have no
conception of the universe, and you have; why should there not be
other species above you more intelligent than your own? Man ought to
be better informed than he is about himself before he spends his
strength in measuring God. Before attacking the stars that light us,
and the higher certainties, ought he not to understand the certainties
which are actually about him?'

"But no! to the negations of doubt I ought rather to reply by