Re: (IVÁN): JUSTICIA y RECTITUD

universes, each of which has its firmament, its planets, its earth, in
the same proportion as in the visible world; in each earth animals, and in
the last mites, in which he will find again all that the first had, finding
still in these others the same thing without end and without cessation. Let
him lose himself in wonders as amazing in their littleness as the others in
their vastness. For who will not be astounded at the fact that our body,
which a little while ago was imperceptible in the universe, itself
imperceptible in the bosom of the whole, is now a colossus, a world, or
rather a whole, in respect of the nothingness which we cannot reach? He who
regards himself in this light will be afraid of himself, and observing
himself sustained in the body given him by nature between those two abysses
of the Infinite and Nothing, will tremble at the sight of these marvels; and
I think that, as his curiosity changes into admiration, he will be more
disposed to contemplate them in silence than to examine them with
presumption.

For, in fact, what is man in nature? A Nothing in comparison with the
Infinite, an All in comparison with the Nothing, a mean between nothing and
everything. Since he is infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes,
the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from him in an
impenetrable secret; he is equally incapable of seeing the Nothing from
which he was made, and the Infinite in which he is swallowed up.

What will he do then, but perceive the appearance of the middle of things,
in an eternal despair of knowing either their beginning or their end. All
things proceed from the Nothing, and are borne towards the