The Limitations of the Mind — Its Consequences

The mind, being limited, cannot comprehend what pertains to the infinite

What is found first, therefore, in the thought of man is that it is very limited; from which one can draw two very important consequences: the first, that the soul cannot perfectly know the infinite; the second, that it cannot even distinctly know several things at once. For just as a piece of wax is not capable of having at the same time an infinity of different figures, so the soul is not capable of having at the same time the knowledge of an infinity of objects: and just as a piece of wax cannot be square and round in the same sense, but only half square and half round, and that the more different figures it has the less perfect and less distinct they will be; so the soul cannot perceive several things at once, and its thoughts are all the more confused as they are more numerous.

Finally, just as a piece of wax that had a thousand sides, and on each side a different figure, would be neither square, nor round, nor oval, and one could not say what figure it would be; so it sometimes happens that one has so great a number of different thoughts that one imagines one is thinking of nothing.

This appears in those who faint. The animal spirits, turning irregularly in their brain, awaken so great a number of traces that they do not open any one strongly enough to excite in the mind a particular sensation or a distinct idea; so that these persons feel so great a number of things at once that they feel nothing distinctly, which makes them imagine they have felt nothing.

It is not that one does not sometimes faint for lack of animal spirits; but then the soul, having only thoughts of pure intellection that leave no traces in the brain, one does not remember them after having returned to oneself, and it is this that makes one believe that one thought of nothing. I have said this in passing to show that one is wrong to believe that the soul does not always think because one sometimes imagines one thinks of nothing.

Its limitation is the origin of many errors

All persons who reflect a little on their own thoughts have enough experience that the mind cannot apply itself to several things at once, and a fortiori that it cannot penetrate the infinite. However I do not know by what caprice persons who are not ignorant of this occupy themselves more in meditating on infinite objects and on questions that demand an infinite capacity than on others that are within the reach of their mind; and why still there are found so great a number of others who, wishing to know everything, apply themselves to so many sciences at once that they only confuse their mind and render it incapable of any true science.

How many people are there who wish to understand the infinite divisibility of matter, and how it can happen that a small grain of sand contains as many parts as the whole earth, although smaller in proportion! How many questions are formed that will never be resolved on this subject and on many others that contain something infinite, of which one wishes to find the solution in one’s mind! One applies oneself, one heats oneself up; but finally all one gains is that one becomes obstinate about some extravagance and some error.

Is it not a pleasant thing to see people who deny the infinite divisibility of matter for this sole reason that they cannot comprehend it, although they very well understand the demonstrations that prove it, and this at the same time that they confess with their mouths that the human mind cannot know the infinite?

For the proofs that show that matter is infinitely divisible are demonstrative if there ever were any, they agree when they consider them with attention; nevertheless, if one makes objections to them that they cannot resolve, their mind turning away from the evidence they have just perceived, they begin to doubt it.

They occupy themselves strongly with the objection they cannot resolve, they invent some frivolous distinction against the demonstrations of infinite divisibility, and they conclude finally that they were mistaken and that everyone is mistaken. They then embrace the contrary opinion; they defend it by swollen points and other extravagances that imagination never fails to supply.

They fall into these wanderings only because they are not inwardly convinced that the human mind is finite, and that to be persuaded of the infinite divisibility of matter it is not necessary that they understand it, because all the objections that can only be resolved by understanding it are objections that it is impossible to resolve.

If men stopped at such questions, one would not have reason to be much concerned; because if there are some who are prejudiced by some errors, these are errors of little consequence.

For others, they have not entirely lost their time in thinking of things they have not been able to comprehend; for they have at least convinced themselves of the weakness of their mind.

“It is good,” says a very judicious author [4], “to fatigue the mind with these sorts of subtleties, in order to tame its presumption and remove from it the boldness of ever opposing its weak lights to the truths that the Church proposes to it under pretext that it cannot understand them. For since all the vigor of the human mind is forced to succumb to the smallest atom of matter and to avow that it sees clearly that it is infinitely divisible without being able to understand how this can be done; is it not visibly to sin against reason to refuse to believe the marvelous effects of the omnipotence of God, which is in itself incomprehensible, for this reason that our mind cannot comprehend them?”

Principally of heresies

The most dangerous effect, therefore, produced by ignorance or rather by the inadvertence of the limitation and weakness of the human mind, and consequently of its incapacity to understand everything that has something of the infinite, is heresy. There are found, it seems to me, in this time more than in any other, a very great number of people who make for themselves a particular theology founded only on their own mind and on the natural weakness of reason, because in subjects that are not even subject to reason they wish to believe only what they understand.

The Socinians cannot understand the mysteries of the Trinity nor of the Incarnation: that suffices for them not to believe them and even to say, with a proud and libertine air, of those who believe them that they are people born for slavery. A Calvinist cannot conceive how it can happen that the body of Jesus Christ is really present in the sacrament of the altar at the same time that it is in heaven, and from there he believes he has reason to conclude that this cannot be done, as if he perfectly understood how far the power of God can extend.

A man who is even convinced that he is free, if he greatly heats his head to try to reconcile the knowledge of God and His decrees with freedom, he will perhaps be capable of falling into the error of those who do not believe that men are free. For on one side not being able to conceive that the providence of God can subsist with the freedom of man, and on the other the respect he will have for religion preventing him from denying Providence, he will believe himself constrained to remove freedom from men; not reflecting enough on the weakness of his mind, he will imagine he can penetrate the means that God has to reconcile His decrees with our freedom.

But heretics are not the only ones who lack attention to consider the weakness of their mind and who give it too much liberty to judge of things that are not subject to it; almost all men have this defect, and principally some theologians of recent centuries. For one could perhaps say that some of them employ so often human reasonings to prove or explain mysteries that are above reason, although they do it with good intention and to defend religion against heretics, that they often give occasion to these same heretics to remain obstinately attached to their errors and to treat the mysteries of the law as human opinions.

The mind must be submitted to faith

The agitation of the mind and the subtleties of the schools are not proper to make known to men their weakness, and do not always give them that spirit of submission so necessary to humble themselves before the decisions of the Church; all these subtle and human reasonings can on the contrary excite in them their secret pride; they can lead them to make use of their mind inappropriately and thus to form for themselves a religion conformable to their capacity. Nor does one see that heretics yield to philosophical arguments, and that the reading of purely scholastic books makes them recognize and condemn their errors. But one sees on the contrary every day that they take occasion from the weakness of the reasonings of some scholastics to turn into ridicule the most sacred mysteries of our religion, which in truth are not established on all these human reasons and explanations, but only on the authority of the word of God written or unwritten, that is to say transmitted to us by the way of tradition.

In effect, human reason does not make us understand that there is a God in three persons, that the body of Jesus Christ is really in the Eucharist, and how it can happen that man is free, although God knows from all eternity everything that man will do. The reasons given to prove and explain these things are reasons that ordinarily prove only to those who wish to admit them without examining them, but which often seem extravagant to those who wish to combat them and who do not agree with the foundation of these mysteries. One can say on the contrary that the objections formed against the principal articles of our faith and principally against the mystery of the Trinity are so strong that it is not possible to give clear, evident solutions of them that do not shock our weak reason in any way, because in effect these mysteries are incomprehensible.

The best means of converting heretics is therefore not to accustom them to make use of their mind by bringing them only uncertain arguments drawn from philosophy, because the truths one wishes to teach them are not subject to reason. It is not even always appropriate to make use of these reasonings in truths that can be proved by reason as well as by tradition, such as the immortality of the soul, original sin, the necessity of grace, the disorder of nature, and some others, lest their mind, having once tasted the evidence of reasons in these questions, should not wish to submit to those that can be proved only by tradition. One must, on the contrary, oblige them to distrust their own mind by making them feel its weakness, its limitation and its disproportion with our mysteries; and when the pride of their mind is abased, then it will be easy to make them enter into the sentiments of the Church by representing to them that infallibility is contained in the idea of every divine society, and by explaining to them the tradition of all centuries if they are capable of it [5].

But if men continually turn their view away from the weakness and limitation of their mind, an indiscreet presumption will inflate their courage, a deceptive light will dazzle them, the love of glory will blind them. Thus heretics will be eternally heretics; philosophers, obstinate and stubborn, and one will never cease to dispute about all the things that will be disputed, as long as one wishes to dispute about them.