The only
comparison which we make of ourselves to the finite is painful to us.

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he
is of going further. How can a part know the whole? But he may perhaps
aspire to know at least the parts to which he bears some proportion. But the
parts of the world are all so related and linked to one another that I
believe it impossible to know one without the other and without the whole.

Man, for instance, is related to all he knows. He needs a place wherein to
abide, time through which to live, motion in order to live, elements to
compose him, warmth and food to nourish him, air to breathe. He sees light;
he feels bodies; in short, he is in a dependent alliance with everything. To
know man, then, it is necessary to know how it happens that he needs air to
live, and, to know the air, we must know how it is thus related to the life
of man, etc. Flame cannot exist without air; therefore, to understand the
one, we must understand the other.

Since everything, then, is cause and effect, dependent and supporting,
mediate and immediate, and all is held together by a natural though
imperceptible chain which binds together things most distant and most
different, I hold it equally impossible to know the parts without knowing
the whole and to know the whole without knowing the parts in detail.

The eternity of things in itself or in God must also astonish our brief
duration. The fixed and constant immobility of natur