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One of the most dangerous temptations that assail him who scrutinizes nature and who sees, as he advances in his enquiries, that her mysteries become more and more numerous, reaching forth unendingly in every direction, is the temptation to grow discouraged by the impossible task and to abandon it. He drops his weapons. On the last slope of life particularly, he is too much inclined to resign himself, to go no farther forward, to make no further effort, to fall into a humour of saying, “What is the good?” and to drop asleep and learn nothing more, since he has learnt that he will never know anything.
He is already sensible of this wish to surrender at discretion when he considers the humblest, the lowliest of the sciences. What will it be when he attempts to embrace them all? The mind goes astray, becomes dizzy, asks to close its eyes. It must not close them. That would be the basest treachery that man could commit. We have no other thing to do in this life of ours than to seek to know where we are. We find no other reason for our existence; we have no other duty. Not to know is merely vexatious; no longer to seek to know is the supreme, the irremediable misfortune, the unpardonable desertion.