|
The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. We feel it in a
thousand things. I say that the heart naturally loves the Universal Being,
and also itself naturally, according as it gives itself to them; and it
hardens itself against one or the other at its will. You have rejected the
one and kept the other. Is it by reason that you love yourself?
278. It is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason. This, then,
is faith: God felt by the heart, not by the reason.
Faith is a gift of God; do not believe that we said it was a gift of
reasoning. Other religions do not say this of their faith. They only give
reasoning in order to arrive at it, and yet it does not bring them to it.
279. Faith is a gift of God; do not believe that we said it was a gift of
reasoning. Other religions do not say this of their faith. They only gave
reasoning in order to arrive at it, and yet it does not bring them to it.
280. The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.
281. Heart, instinct, principles.
282. We know truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart, and it is
in this last way that we know first principles; and reason, which has no
part in it, tries in vain to impugn them. The sceptics, who have only this
for their object, labour to no purpose. We know that we do not dream, and,
however impossible it is for us to prove it by reason, this inability
demonstrates only the weakness of our reason, but not, as they affirm, the
uncertainty of all our knowledge. For the knowledge of first principles, as
space, time, motion, number, is as sure as any of those which we get from
reasoning. And reason must trust these intuitions of the hea
Izak van Langevelde
|
Linear Mode
