hed from our consideration; for the consideration and
contemplation of nature is a sort of natural food, if I may say so, for
our minds and talents. We are elevated by it, we seem to be raised above
the earth, we look down on human affairs; and by fixing our thoughts on
high and heavenly things we despise the affairs of this life, as small and
inconsiderable. The mere investigation of things of the greatest
importance, which are at the same time very secret, has a certain pleasure
in it. And when anything meets us which appears likely, our minds are
filled with pleasure thoroughly worthy of a man. Both your wise man and
ours, then, will inquire into these things; but yours will do so in order
to assent, to feel belief, to express affirmation; ours, with such
feelings that he will fear to yield rashly to opinion, and will think that
he has succeeded admirably if in matters of this kind he has found out
anything which is likely.

Let us now come to the question of the knowledge of good and evil. But we
must say a few words by way of preface. It appears to me that they who
speak so positively about those questions of natural philosophy, do not
reflect that they are depriving themselves of the authority of those ideas
which appear more clear. For they cannot give a clearer assent to, or a
more positive approval of the fact that it is now daylight, than they do,
when the crow croaks, to the idea that it is commanding or prohibiting
something. Nor will they affirm that that statue is six feet high more
positively after they have measured it, than that the sun, which they
cannot measure, is more than eighteen times as large as the earth. From
which this conclusion arises: if it cannot be perceived how large the sun
is, he who assents to other things in the same manner as he does to the
magnitude of the sun, does not perceive them. But the magnitude of the sun
cannot be perceived. He, then, who assents to a statement about it, as if
he perceived it, perceives nothing. Suppose they were to reply that it is
possible to perceive how large the sun is; I will not object as long as
they admit that other things too can be perceived and comprehended in the
same manner. For they cannot affirm that one thing can be comprehended
more or less than another, since there is only one definition of the
comprehension of everything.

XLII. However, to go back to what I had begun to say--What have we in good
and bad certainly ascertained? (we must