Man's knowledge, starting with acquired observation, then
progresses and advances in an unlimited sphere. The goal which
it has in view, the ideal which it tends to realize without ever
being able to attain it,-- placing it on the contrary farther and
farther ahead of it,--is the infinite, the absolute.
Now, what would be an infinite knowledge, an absolute knowledge,
determining an equally infinite liberty, such as speculation
supposes in God? It would be a knowledge not only universal, but
intuitive, spontaneous, as thoroughly free from hesitation as
from objectivity, although embracing at once the real and the
possible; a knowledge sure, but not demonstrative; complete, not
sequential; a knowledge, in short, which, being eternal in its
formation, would be destitute of any progressive character in the
relation of its parts.
Psychology has collected numerous examples of this mode of
knowing in the instinctive and divinatory faculties of animals;
in the spontaneous talent of certain men born mathematicians and
artists, independent of all education; finally, in most of the
primitive human institutions and monuments, products of
unconscious genius independent of theories.
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