Let us distinguish. God has a perception of order, the sentiment
of good. But this order, this good, he sees as eternal and
absolute; he does not see it in its successive and imperfect
aspects; he does not grasp its defects. We alone are capable of
seeing, feeling, and appreciating evil, as well as of measuring
duration, because we alone are capable of producing evil, and
because our life is temporary. God sees and feels only order;
God does not grasp what happens, because what happens is BENEATH
him, beneath his horizon. We, on the contrary, see at once the
good and the evil, the temporal and the eternal, order and
disorder, the finite and the infinite; we see within us and
outside of us; and our reason, because it is finite, surpasses
our horizon.
Thus, by the creation of man and the development of society, a
finite and providential reason, our own, has been posited in
contradiction of the intuitive and infinite reason, God; so that
God, without losing anything of his infinity in any direction,
seems diminished by the very fact of the existence of humanity.
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