[277] [Lecture 5], Mysticism.
[278] This pretended proof of sentiment is in fact, the Cartesian proof itself. See lectures [4] and [16].
[279] M. Jacobi. See the Manual of the History of Philosophy, by Tennemann, vol. ii., p. 318.
[280] On spontaneous reason and reflective reason, see 1st part, lect. [2] and [3].
[282] See particularly [lecture 5].
[283] We place here this analogous passage on the true measure in which it may be said that God is at once comprehensible and incomprehensible, 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 12, p. 12: "We say in the first place that God is not absolutely incomprehensible, for this manifest reason, that, being the cause of this universe, he passes into it, and is reflected in it, as the cause in the effect; therefore we recognize him. 'The heavens declare his glory.' and 'the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made;' his power, in the thousands of worlds sown in the boundless regions of space; his intelligence in their harmonious laws; finally, that which there is in him most august, in the sentiments of virtue, of holiness, and of love, which the heart of man contains. It must be that God is not incomprehensible to us, for all nations have petitioned him, since the first day of the intellectual life of humanity. God, then, as the cause of the universe, reveals himself to us; but God is not only the cause of the universe, he is also the perfect and infinite cause, possessing in himself, not a relative perfection, which is only a degree of imperfection, but an absolute perfection, an infinity which is not only the finite multiplied by itself in those proportions which the human mind is able always to enumerate, but a true infinity, that is, the absolute negation of all limits, in all the powers of his being. Moreover, it is not true that an indefinite effect adequately expresses an infinite cause; hence it is not true that we are able absolutely to comprehend God by the world and by man, for all of God is not in them. In order absolutely to comprehend the infinite, it is necessary to have an infinite power of comprehension, and that is not granted to us. God, in manifesting himself, retains something in himself which nothing finite can absolutely manifest; consequently, it is not permitted us to comprehend absolutely. There remains, then, in God, beyond the universe and man, something unknown, impenetrable, incomprehensible. Hence in the immeasurable spaces of the universe, and beneath all the profundities of the human soul, God escapes us in that inexhaustible infinitude, whence he is able to draw without limit new worlds, new beings, new manifestations. God is to us, therefore, incomprehensible; but even of this incomprehensibility we have a clear and precise idea; for we have the most precise idea of infinity. And this idea is not in us a metaphysical refinement, it is a simple and primitive conception which enlightens us from our entrance into this world, both luminous and obscure, explaining everything, and being explained by nothing, because it carries us at first, to the summit and the limit of all explanation. There is something inexplicable for thought,—behold then whither thought tends; there is infinite being,—behold then the necessary principle of all relative and finite beings. Reason explains not the inexplicable, it conceives it. It is not able to comprehend infinity in an absolute manner, but it comprehends it in some degree in its indefinite manifestations, which reveal it, and which veil it; and, further, as it has been said, it comprehend it so far as incomprehensible. It is, therefore, an equal error to call God absolutely comprehensible, and absolutely incomprehensible. He is both invisible and present, revealed and withdrawn in himself, in the world and out of the world, so familiar and intimate with his creatures, that we see him by opening our eyes, that we feel him in feeling our hearts beat, and at the same time inaccessible in his impenetrable majesty, mingled with every thing, and separated from every thing, manifesting himself in universal life, and causing scarcely an ephemeral shadow of his eternal essence to appear there, communicating himself without cessation, and remaining incommunicable, at once the living God, and the God concealed, 'Deus vivus et Deus absconditus.'"
[284] This is the sketch which Félibien so justly praises, part v., p. 37, of the 1st edition, in 4to.
[285] This great work has been long in England, as remarked by Mariette, see the Abecedario, just published, article S. Bourdon, vol. i., p. 171. It appears to have been a favorite work of Bourdon, he having himself engraved it, see de Piles, Abrégé de la Vie des Peintres, 2d edition, p. 494, and the Peintre graveur français, of M. Robert Dumesnil, vol. i., p. 131, etc. The copperplates of the Seven Works of Mercy are at the Louvre.
[286] The Libro di Verità is now the property of the Duke of Devonshire. M. Léon de Laborde has given a detailed account of it in the Archives de l'Art français, tom. i., p. 435, et seq.