Let man therefore contemplate whole nature in her full and lofty majesty, and turn his gaze away from the lowly objects that surround him. Let him look upon that dazzling light, set like an eternal lamp to illuminate the universe; let the earth appear to him as a point in comparison with the vast circuit described by that star, and let him be amazed that this vast circuit itself is but a very delicate point compared to that embraced by the stars rolling through the firmament. But if our gaze stops there, let the imagination pass beyond; it will weary of conceiving before nature of supplying. All this visible world is but an imperceptible trait in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it. In vain do we inflate our conceptions beyond imaginable spaces; we give birth only to atoms, compared to the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere, whose circumference nowhere. Finally, it is the greatest sensible character of God's almighty power, that our imagination loses itself in this thought.

Let man, having returned to himself, consider what he is in comparison with what exists; let him view himself as lost in this remote corner of nature; and from this little dungeon where he finds himself lodged—I mean the universe—let him learn to value the earth, kingdoms, cities, and himself at their true worth. What is a man in the infinite? But, to present him with another marvel as astonishing, let him search among the things he knows for what is most delicate. Let a mite offer him in the smallness of its body parts incomparably smaller, legs with joints, veins in those legs, blood in those veins, humors in that blood, drops in those humors, vapors in those drops; and dividing these last things further, let him exhaust his strength in these conceptions, and let the last object he can reach now be the subject of our discourse; he will perhaps think that this is the extreme smallness of nature. I wish to show him therein a new abyss. I wish to paint for him not only the visible universe, but the immensity that can be conceived of nature, within the enclosure of this atom shortcut. Let him see therein an infinity of universes, each of which has its firmament, its planets, its earth, in the same proportion as the visible world; on that earth, animals, and finally mites, in which he will find again what the first have yielded; and finding still in the others the same thing endlessly and restlessly, let him lose himself in these wonders, as astonishing in their smallness as the others by their extent; for who will not marvel that our body, which just now was not perceptible in the universe, itself imperceptible in the bosom of the whole, is now a colossus, a world, or rather a whole, with respect to the nothingness which cannot be reached?

He who considers himself thus will be terrified at himself, and considering himself sustained in the mass that nature has given him, between these two abysses of the infinite and of nothingness, he will tremble at the sight of these wonders; and I believe that in time his curiosity changing into admiration, he will be more disposed to contemplate them in silence than to search them out with presumption. For after all, what is man in nature? A nothingness with respect to the infinite, a whole with respect to nothingness, a middle between nothing and everything. Infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, the end of things and their beginning are for him invincibly hidden in an impenetrable secret, equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from whence he is drawn, and the infinite where he is swallowed up. What will he do then, save to perceive some appearance of the middle of things, in an eternal despair of knowing either their beginning or their end? All things have come out of nothingness and been carried onward to the infinite. Who will follow these astonishing steps? The author of these wonders comprehends them. No one else can do so. For lack of contemplating these infinities, men have rashly set themselves to the search for nature, as if they had some proportion with her. It is a strange thing that they have wished to comprehend the principles of things, and from there to arrive at knowing all, by a presumption as infinite as their object.