Now, it is plain that, just as infinity--that is, spontaneous and
universal intuition in knowledge--is incompatible with humanity,
so providence is incompatible with the hypothesis of the divine
being. God, to whom all ideas are equal and simultaneous; God,
whose reason does not separate synthesis from antinomy; God, to
whom eternity renders all things present and contemporary,--was
unable, when creating us, to reveal to us the mystery of our
contradictions; and that precisely because he is God, because he
does not see contradiction, because his intelligence does not
fall under the category of time and the law of progress, because
his reason is intuitive and his knowledge infinite. Providence
in God is a contradiction within a contradiction; it was through
providence that God was actually made in the image of man; take
away this providence, and God ceases to be man, and man in turn
must abandon all his pretensions to divinity.
Perhaps it will be asked of what use it is to God to have
infinite knowledge, if he is ignorant of what takes place in
humanity.
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