generality, but also in their minutest differences. The Being, cause of all, does not know objects by vague conceptions, by means of representations which only show what all beings have in common, but as he has made their slightest differences, they must be presented to him with perfect clearness. His cognition is founded upon a reality which is himself; his understanding does not fluctuate through an ideal and hypothetical world; but, fixed with clearest intuition upon infinite reality, he sees all that the infinite being is, and all that it can produce with its infinite activity. For God there is no experience proceeding from without, for nothing can exert any influence upon him; all his experience consists in the knowledge and love of himself.
108. Created beings, occupying a determinate place in the scale of the universe, relate to it only under certain aspects. Their relations with their fellow beings are brought to a point of view, to which their perceptive faculties are subordinated. The representativeness, which they contain in themselves, must be proportionate to the cognition that has to produce it. Hence it follows that every intelligent being will have its representativeness adapted to the functions it has to exercise in the universe. If the being do not pertain to the order of intelligences, its perceptive faculties will be limited to sensible intuitions, in a measure corresponding to the place it is destined to occupy.
109. We have seen that general ideas and the intuition of determinate objects fecundate the intellectual faculties. From this we infer that every intelligence stands in need of intuitions, if its cognitions are not to be limited to a purely hypothetical order.
The human mind, destined to a union with the body, and to a continual communication with the corporeal universe, has received the gift of sensible intuition as the basis of its relations with bodies. The same is the case with brutes. Sensible intuition has been given to them because they must have continual relations with the external world: but, being confined to the functions of animal life, they have no intuitions superior to the sphere of sensibility, nor do they possess the force necessary to convert sensible representations into objects of intellectual combinations.
110. There is an immense difference between brutes and man, in the scale of beings. Since every intelligence is conscious of itself, and can fix its attention upon its acts, the human mind knows its own intuitively, and therefore discovers in itself an intuition superior to the sensible. Besides these intuitions, we have the power of discursion by which we form representations, and by them attain to the cognition of objects not offered immediately to our perception.
Thus, starting with the data furnished by external and internal experience, and aided by those general principles which involve the primary conditions of every intelligence and of every being, we are enabled to penetrate to the world of reality, and to know, although imperfectly, the assemblage of beings which constitute the universe, and the infinite cause which made them all.
CHAPTER XVIII.
ASPIRATIONS OF THE HUMAN SOUL
111. A close observation of internal phenomena shows that the human soul aspires to something far beyond all that it actually possesses. Not satisfied with the objects given to it in immediate intuition, it darts forward in pursuit of others of a superior order; and even in those that are offered to it immediately, it is not contented with the aspect under which they appear, but seeks to know what they are. The purely individual does not satisfy the soul. Nailed to one point in the immense scale of beings, it is unwilling to limit itself to the perception of those that are in its environs, and form, as it were, the atmosphere wherein it must live; it aspires to the cognition of those that precede and follow it, and seeks to know the connection, to discover the law from which results the ineffable harmony that presides over the creation. It finds its purest pleasures in rising from the sphere where the limitation of its faculties holds it confined. Its activity is greater than its strength; its desires superior to its being.
112. We discover the same phenomenon in the sentiment and the will as in the understanding. Man has, to satisfy his necessities, and provide for the preservation of the individual and of the race, sensations and sentiments which direct him to determinate objects; but at the side of these affections, limited to the sphere in which he is circumscribed, he experiences sentiments of a more elevated character, which make him spring beyond his orbit, and absorb, so to speak, his individuality in the ocean of infinity.
When man comes in contact with nature in herself, despoiled of all conditions relating to individuals, he experiences an indefinable sentiment, a kind of foretaste of the infinite. Go into an uninhabited region and sit down by the sea side; hark to the deafening roar of the waves breaking at your feet, and the whistling of the winds which have raised them; with eyes fixed on this immensity, see the azure line where the vault of heaven unites with the waters of the ocean: stand on a vast and desert plain, or in the heart of ancient forests; contemplate in the silence of night the firmament studded with stars, following their course in tranquillity, as they have followed it for ages past, and will follow it for ages to come: without effort, or labor of any kind, abandon yourself to the spontaneous movements of your soul, and you will see how sentiments spring up in it and move it to its very centre; how they elevate it above itself, and absorb it, as it were, in immensity. Its individuality vanishes from its own eyes, as it feels the harmony presiding over that immense creation of which it forms but a most insignificant part. In such solemn moments is it that inspired genius chants the glories of creation, and lifts one corner of the veil that hides the resplendent throne of the supreme Creator from the eye of mortals.
113. That calm, grave, and profound sentiment which masters us on such occasions, has no relation to individual objects; it is an expansion of the soul at a touch of nature, as the flower expands to the rays of the sun in the morning, it is a divine attraction by which the author of all created things raises us above the dust in which we drag out our brief days. Thus the heart and the understanding harmonize; thus the one foretastes what the other knows; thus we are warned in different ways, that the exercise of our faculties is not limited to the narrow orbit conceded to us upon this earth. Let us be on our guard, lest the heart be frozen with the coldness of insensibility, and the torch of the understanding quenched by the devastating blasts of skepticism.
CHAPTER XIX.
ELEMENTS AND VARIETY OF THE CHARACTERS OF SENSIBLE REPRESENTATION
114. I now come to examine the primitive elements of our mental combinations. I shall begin with their sensible elements. Extension enters into every act of representative sensibility; without it nothing is represented to us, and sensations are reduced to mere affections of the soul, having no relation to any object.
115. Extension, of itself, abstracted from its limitability, is susceptible of no combination; it only offers a vague, indefinite, immense representation, from which nothing distinct of itself results. But if limitability be joined to extension, figurability, that is, the infinite field over which geometrical science extends, will result.
116. Extension and limitability are then the two elements of sensible intuition. These elements may be offered to us in two ways, either joined to sensations which present to us determinate objects, or as productions of our own internal activity. If we see the disc of the moon, we have an intuition of the former class; and if we study the properties of a circle by producing within ourselves its representation, this will be an intuition of the latter class.
117. This internal activity, by which, at our will or caprice, we produce an indefinite number of representations, with an indefinite variety of forms, is an important phenomenon and one worthy of attention. It shows us that the productive activity is not limited to the purely intellectual order, since we detect it in the sensible order, not in any way whatever, but as unrolled on an infinite scale. Suppose a right line to be produced to infinity, besides it and in the same plane, we may infinite other lines; the variety of angles in which we may consider the position of the different lines will extend to the infinite; so that with right lines alone, the productive
