ness for those who have no insight
into it.

Surely then it is a great evil thus to be in doubt, but it is at least
an indispensable duty to seek when we are in such doubt; and thus the
doubter who does not seek is altogether completely unhappy and
completely wrong. And if besides this he is easy and content, professes
to be so, and indeed boasts of it; if it is this state itself which is
the subject of his joy and vanity, I have no words to describe so silly
a creature.

How can people hold these opinions? What joy can we find in the
expectation of nothing but hopeless misery? What reason for boasting
that we are in impenetrable darkness? And how can it happen that the
following argument occurs to a reasonable man?

"I know not who put me into the world, nor what the world is, nor what I
myself am. I am in terrible ignorance of everything. I know not what my
body is, nor my senses, nor my soul, not even that part of me which
thinks what I say, which reflects on all and on itself, and knows itself
no more than the rest. I see those frightful spaces of the universe
which surround me, and I find myself tied to one corner of this vast
expanse, without knowing why I am put in this place rather than in
another, nor why the short time which is given me to live is assigned to
me at this point rather than at another of the whole eternity which was
before me or which shall come after me. I see nothing but infinites on
all sides, which surround me as an atom, and as a shadow which endures
only for an instant and returns no more. All I know is that I must soon
die, but what I know least is this very death which I cannot escape.

"As I know not whence I come, so I know not whither I go. I know only
that, in leaving this world, I fall for ever either into annihilation or
into the hands of an angry God, without knowing to which of these two
states I shall be for ever assigned. Such is my state, full of weakness
and uncertainty. And from all this I conclude that I ought to spend all
the days of my life without caring to inquire into what must happen to
me. Perhaps I might find some solution to my doubts, but I will not take
the trouble, nor take a step to seek it; and after treating with scorn
those who are concerned with this care, I will go without foresight and
without fear to try the great event, and let myself be led carelessly to
death, uncertain of the eternity of my future state."

Who would desire to have for a friend a