sts? We cannot go so far as that; and I 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 cannot 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 knowledge of ourselves. For it is
beyond doubt that there is nothing which more shocks our reason than to
say that the sin of the first man has rendered guilty those, who, being
so removed from this source, seem incapable of participation in it. This
transmission does not only seem to us impossible, it seems also very
unjust. For what is more contrary to the rules of our miserable justice
than to damn eternally an infant incapable of will, for a sin wherein he
seems to have so little a share, that it was committed six thousand
years before he was in existence? Certainly nothing offends us more
rudely than this doc