You are worthy or unworthy of
the grace you implore: if worthy, He knows it better than you; if
unworthy, you commit a crime the more in asking for what you do not
deserve.
In a word, we pray to God only because we have made Him in our own
image. We treat Him like a pasha, like a sultan whom one may provoke and
appease.
In short, all nations pray to God: wise men resign themselves and obey
Him.
Let us pray with the people, and resign ourselves with the wise men.
_PRECIS OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY_
I have spent nearly forty years of my pilgrimage in two or three corners
of this world seeking the philosopher's stone that is called Truth. I
have consulted all the adepts of antiquity, Epicurus and Augustine,
Plato and Malebranche, and I have remained in my poverty. Maybe in all
these philosophers' crucibles there are one or two ounces of gold; but
all the rest is residue, dull mud, from which nothing can be born.
It seems to me that the Greeks our masters wrote much more to show their
intelligence than that they used their intelligence in order to learn. I
do not see a single author of antiquity who had a coherent system, a
clear, methodical system progressing from consequence to consequence.
When I wanted to compare and combine the systems of Plato, of the
preceptor of Alexander, of Pythagoras and of the Orientals, here, more
or less, is what I was able to gather:
Chance is a word empty of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.
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