Jaime Luciano Balmes

“ The foundation once laid, we see how the edifice can be raised; for this we need not go out of our own thought; there is the luminous point to conduct us in the path to truth; let us follow its splendor, and having established an immovable point, let us draw from it the mysterious thread to guide us in the labyrinth of science. Thus our principle is the first, the basis of all others; it has sufficient power to sustain itself, sufficient also to impart firmness to others. ”

“ I therefore consecrate myself entirely to the mission with which I am charged; for you I will live; for you I will labor without ceasing while there remains in me the breath of life, and while He permits me, without whose permission not a hair can fall from our head, and yet less a deeply felt word proceed from our mouth. He, without whose inspiration not one lucid idea can shine on our mind, nor one thought of truth and liberty illumine our soul. ”

“ God is in no place, as in no time; for his absolute and infinite being has no relation to place or time, which are but limits and restrictions of being. To ask if he is beyond the universe, if he exceeds its extremities in length, breadth, and depth, is as absurd a question as to ask if he was before the world, and if he will still be when the world is no more. As there is neither past nor future in God, so there is neither hither nor thither. As his absolute permanence excludes all measure of succession, so also his immensity excludes all measure of extension. ”

“ It is the part of philosophy to analyze, not to destroy its object; for by destroying its object it destroys itself. Every argument must have a resting-point, which must be a fact. Whether it be internal or external, idea or object, the fact must exist: we must begin by supposing something, and this something we call a fact. Whoever begins by denying or doubting all facts, is like the anatomist, who, before dissecting a corpse, burns it, and casts its ashes to the wind. ”

“ Sobriety is as necessary to the health of the mind, as to that of the body: there is no wisdom without prudence, no philosophy without judgment. In the soul of man there is a divine light which directs him with admirable certainty. If we do not persist in extinguishing it, its splendor guides us, and when we reach the term of science it shows it to us, and makes us read in distinct characters the words,—enough, you can go no farther. ”

“ It is certain that wherever I may imagine the limits of the universe, if I consider them as an immense arch surrounding it, I still imagine new immensities of space beyond this arch; but to conclude that the reality is as I imagine it, does not seem conformed to the rules of good logic. If it is as clear as Descartes supposes, if it is not only an imagination, but a conception founded on clear and distinct ideas, how happens it that so many philosophers see in all this only a play of the imagination? ”

“ Space is one of those profound mysteries which the natural order presents to man's weak understanding. The deeper he examines it the more obscure he finds it; the mind is buried in the darkness which we imagine to exist beyond the bounds of the finite, in the abyss of immensity. We know not if what we behold is an illusion or a reality. ”

“ Two of our senses perceive extension; sight and touch. Sound, taste, and smell accompany extension, but are something different from it. The sight perceives nothing not extended; extension is every way inseparable from this sensation. We may be so enchanted by the sweet harmony of many instruments as to forget the extension of the instruments, the air, and our organs; but we cannot, in contemplating a painting even in the midst of our most ardent enthusiasm, make its extension vanish. ”

“ In the meantime, we must rest satisfied with shadows of reality, and must see in the instinctive tendency of our understanding to simplify, to reduce every thing or make it approach as much as possible to unity, the announcement, the sign of this single science, this intuition of the one infinite idea; just as in the desire for happiness which agitates our heart, the thirst after enjoyment which torments us we discover a proof that all is not ended here below, and that our soul has been created for the possession of a good not to be attained in this mortal life. ”

“ The understanding knows that the conditioned must be included in the unconditioned, the relative in the absolute, the finite in the infinite, the various in the one. In this, all religions, all schools of philosophy agree. The proclamation of this truth belongs to no one of them exclusively; it is to be met with in all countries of the world, in primitive times, back even to the cradle of the human race. Beautiful, sublime tradition! Preserved through all generations, amid the ebb and flow of events, it offers us the idea of the Divinity presiding over the origin and destiny of the universe. ”

“ What would become of us, if before beginning to receive impressions, and before the germination of primary ideas in our understanding, we were obliged to perform the painful task of elaborating some system capable of saving us from uncertainty? Were it thus, our intellect would perish at its very birth, for no sooner would it open its eyes to the light than it would be involved in the chaos of its own cavils, and it could never, with its scattered forces, succeed in dissipating the clouds which would arise on all sides, and which would finally sink it in total darkness. ”

“ The phenomena of light are produced in the cavity of the skull amid the most profound darkness; and all the wonderful magic of sensations by which the magnificent spectacle of the universe is presented to our mind, which plunges the soul into raptures at the sound of music, and which produces such varied and delightful sensations of taste and odors, all arises in the brain, a whitish, rude, and unformed substance, from the appearance of which no one could imagine it destined to such noble functions. ”

“ The musician becomes the actor of a silent pantomime; the bell-rope is pulled, and only the mute metal is struck; conversation is reduced to oral gestures, and the howlings of brutes are only the opening and closing of their mouths. But the air vibrates as before; its columns strike as before the drum of the ear; nothing has been changed; nothing has failed in the universe but one sensation. ”

“ If you are not certain that you think, argues the partisan of Descartes, you cannot be certain even of the principle of contradiction, or know the criterion of evidence to be valid; for both, it is necessary to think; whoever affirms or denies anything, thinks; without thought, neither affirmation nor negation is possible. But let us admit thought: we have already a foundation, and one of such a nature that we find it in ourselves, attested by consciousness, irresistibly forcing upon us the certainty of its existence. ”

“ The investigator who rejects religion and even seeks means to oppose it, finds it at the entrance as at the outlet of the mysterious ways of life; at the cradle of the infant as in the shadow of the tomb; in time as in eternity; explaining every thing by a word; listening unmoved to the wanderings of ignorance and the sarcasms of unbelief, patiently awaiting till the course of ages shall acknowledge its truth, which existed before all ages. ”

“ These systems, as absurd as they are fatal, although under distinct forms, and by various means, they tend to prepare the way for pantheism, contain a profound truth which, disfigured by vain cavils, seems to be an abyss of darkness, whereas it is in itself a ray of most brilliant light.
The human mind seeks that by reason to which it is impelled by an intellectual instinct; how to reduce plurality to unity, to re-unite, as it were, all the variety of existences in a point from which they all proceed, and in which they are all absorbed. ”

“ Men of gifted minds have labored in vain to make some ray of light emanate from a point condemned to obscurity. The soul sees itself in its own acts; and that it presents immediately to itself facts conducing to its own cognition is the only title it has, more than other beings distinct from it, to be conceived by itself. What would it know were it not to perceive its own thought, its will, and the exercise of all its faculties? How is it to discuss its own nature, if not from data furnished by the testimony of its own acts? ”

“ This me, which may have believed itself an existence perishable and dependent on another superior existence, is astounded at finding itself so great; it discovers in itself the origin of all beings, or, more correctly speaking, the only being, of which all others are but phenomenal existences; it is the universe itself become by a gradual development conscious of itself: whatever is without itself, and at first appears distinct, is only itself, a reflection of itself, presented to its eyes, and unfolded under a thousand different forms like a magnificent panorama. ”

“ There is, perhaps, a kind of disenchantment of nature, since, despoiled of sensations, it is not nearly so beautiful; but the enchantment still continues with most men; and philosophy itself, except in brief moments of reflection, is subject to it; and even in these moments it experiences an enchantment of a different kind, as it considers how much of the beauty attributed to objects, belong to man in his own right, and that the simple exercise of a sensible being's harmonious faculties suffices to make the whole universe glow with splendor and glory. ”