Thus not only the zeal of those who seek Him proves God, but also the blindness of those who seek Him not. All the objections of this one and that one only go against themselves, and not against religion. All that infidels say… [From those who are in despair at being without faith, we see that God does not enlighten them; but as to the rest, we see there is a God who makes them blind.] Fascinatio nugacitatis.—That passion may not harm us, let us act as if we had only eight hours to live. If we ought to devote eight hours of life, we ought to devote a hundred years. When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant, and which know me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time been allotted to me? Memoria hospitis unius diei prætereuntis. The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me. How many kingdoms know us not? Why is my knowledge limited? Why my stature? Why my life to one hundred years rather than to a thousand? What reason has nature had for giving me such, and for choosing this number rather than another in the infinity of those from which there is no more reason to choose one than another, trying nothing else?