proved to your soul, but of which no material proof can be given. The
mathematician himself tells you that the infinite of numbers exists,
but cannot be proved.

"God, dear pastor, is a Number endowed with motion,--felt, but not
seen, the Believer will tell you. Like the Unit, He begins Number,
with which He has nothing in common. The existence of Number depends
on the Unit, which without being a number engenders Number. God, dear
pastor is a glorious Unit who has nothing in common with His creations
but who, nevertheless, engenders them. Will you not therefore agree
with me that you are just as ignorant of where Number begins and ends
as you are of where created Eternity begins and ends?

"Why, then, if you believe in Number, do you deny God? Is not Creation
interposed between the Infinite of unorganized substances and the
Infinite of the divine spheres, just as the Unit stands between the
Cipher of the fractions you have lately named Decimals, and the
Infinite of Numbers which you call Wholes? Man alone on earth
comprehends Number, that first step of the peristyle which leads to
God, and yet his reason stumbles on it! What! you can neither measure
nor grasp the first abstraction which God delivers to you, and yet you
try to subject His ends to your own tape-line! Suppose that I plunge
you into the abyss of Motion, the force that organizes Number. If I
tell you that the Universe is naught else than Number and Motion, you
would see at once that we speak two different languages. I understand
them both; you understand neither.

"Suppose I add that Motion and Number are engendered by the Word,
namely the supreme Reason of Seers and Prophets who in the olden time
heard the Breath of God beneath which Saul fell to the earth. That