Now, that alone is sufficient to change the quality of feeling in
God, and make it an attribute totally distinct from that of man.
In man sentiment flows, so to speak, from a thousand different
sources: it contradicts itself, it confuses itself, it rends
itself; otherwise, it would not feel itself. In God, on the
contrary, sentiment is infinite,--that is, one, complete, fixed,
clear, above all storms, and not needing irritation as a contrast
in order to arrive at happiness. We ourselves experience this
divine mode of feeling when a single sentiment, absorbing all our
faculties, as in the case of ecstasy, temporarily imposes silence
upon the other affections. But this rapture exists always only
by the aid of contrast and by a sort of provocation from without;
it is never perfect, or, if it reaches fulness, it is like the
star which attains its apogee, for an indivisible instant.
Thus we do not live, we do not feel, we do not think, except by a
series of oppositions and shocks, by an internal warfare; our
ideal, then, is not infinity, but equilibrium; infinity expresses
something other than ourselves.
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