Is there not perhaps at the root of every passion
something of curiosity? Did not our first parents, according to the
Biblical story, fall because of their eagerness to taste of the fruit of
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and to be as gods, knowers
of this knowledge? The vision of God--that is to say, the vision of the
Universe itself, in its soul, in its inmost essence--would not that
appease all our longing? And this vision can fail to satisfy only men of
a gross mind who do not perceive that the greatest joy of man is to be
more man--that is, more God--and that man is more God the more
consciousness he has.
And this intellectual love, which is nothing but the so-called platonic
love, is a means to dominion and possession. There is, in fact, no more
perfect dominion than knowledge; he who knows something, possesses it.
Knowledge unites the knower with the known. "I contemplate thee and in
contemplating thee I make thee mine"--such is the formula. And to know
God, what can that be but to possess Him? He who knows God is thereby
himself God.
In _La Degradation de l'energie_ (iv^e partie, chap. xviii., 2) B.
Brunhes relates a story concerning the great Catholic mathematician
Cauchy, communicated to him by M. Sarrau, who had it from Pere Gratry.
While Cauchy and Pere Gratry were walking in the gardens of the
Luxumbourg, their conversation turned upon the happiness which those in
heaven would have in knowing at last, without any obscurity or
limitation, the truths which they had so long and so laboriously sought
to investigate on earth.
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