🚀 go-pugleaf

lay it down as a fact that there
never has been a real complete sceptic. Nature sustains our feeble reason
and prevents it raving to this extent.

Shall he, then, say, on the contrary, that he certainly possesses truth--he
who, when pressed ever so little, can show no title to it and is forced to
let go his hold?

What a chimera, then, is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos,
what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, imbecile worm of
the earth; depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error; the pride
and refuse of the universe!

Who will unravel this tangle? Nature confutes the sceptics, and reason
confutes the dogmatists. What, then, will you become, O men! who try to find
out by your natural reason what is your true condition? You cannot avoid one
of these sects, nor adhere to one of them.

Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Humble yourself,
weak reason; be silent, foolish nature; learn that man infinitely transcends
man, and learn from your Master your true condition, of which you are
ignorant. Hear God.

For in fact, if man had never been corrupt, he would enjoy in his innocence
both truth and happiness with assurance; and if man had always been corrupt,
he would have no idea of truth or bliss. But, wretched as we are, and more
so than if there were no greatness in our condition, we have an idea of
happiness and can not reach it. We perceive an image of truth and possess
only a lie. Incapable of absolute ignorance and of certain knowledge, we
have thus been manifestly in a degree of perfection from which we have
unhappily fallen.

It is, however, an astonishing thing that the mystery furthest removed from
our knowledge, namely, that of the transmission of sin, should be a fact
without which we can have no knowl