Re: Spammed by Fax?? !! Read inside

[Nick]

subject of his joy and
vanity, I have no words to describe so silly a creature.

How can people hold these opinions? What joy can we find in the expectation
of nothing but hopeless misery? What reason for boasting that we are in
impenetrable darkness? And how can it happen that the following argument
occurs to a reasonable man?

"I know not who put me into the world, nor what the world is, nor what I
myself am. I am in terrible ignorance of everything. I know not what my body
is, nor my senses, nor my soul, not even that part of me which thinks what I
say, which reflects on all and on itself, and knows itself no more than the
rest. I see those frightful spaces of the universe which surround me, and I
find myself tied to one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I
am put in this place rather than in another, nor why the short time which is
given me to live is assigned to me at this point rather than at another of
the whole eternity which was before me or which shall come after me. I see
nothing but infinites on all sides, which surround me as an atom an

[Nick]

truth,
that the same words are applied on the same occasions, and that every time
two men see a body change its place, they both express their view of this
same fact by the same word, both saying that it has moved; and from this
conformity of application we derive a strong conviction of a conformity of
ideas. But this is not absolutely or finally convincing though there is
enough to support a bet on the affirmative, since we know that we often draw
the same conclusions from different premises.

This is enough, at least, to obscure the matter; not that it completely
extinguishes the natural light which assures us of these things. The
academicians would have won. But this dulls it and troubles the dogmatists
to the glory of the sceptical crowd, which consists in this doubtful
ambiguity and in a certain doubtful dimness from which our doubts cannot
take away all the clearness, nor our own natural lights chase away all the
darkness.

393. It is a singular thing to consider that there are people in the world
who, having renounced all the laws of God and nature, hav