Sunday, October 06, 2013

White Clouds, Night Sky

White Clouds, Night Sky

Today's cold front has passed through, moving eastward.  It has left behind cooler, drier air in this normally warm, humid climate, and a band of white clouds in the eastern sky.

What in nature calls to mind the mystery of existence quite as well as the night sky?  The following is from Blaise Pascal's Pensées:
For after all what is a human being in nature? A nothingness with regard to the infinite, an all with regard to nothingness, a middle-point between nothing and all, infinitely far from understanding the extremes... equally incapable of seeing the nothing from which he was made, and the infinite in which he is swallowed up.
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All things have come out of nothingness and are carried onwards to the infinite...The Author of these wonders understands them. None other can do so.
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Car enfin qu'est-ce que l'homme dans la nature? Un néant à l'égard de l'infini, un tout à l'égard du néant, un milieu entre rien et tout, infiniment éloigné de comprendre les extrêmes;... Également - incapable de voir le néant d'où il est tiré et l'infini où il est englouti.
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Toutes choses sont sorties du néant et portées jusqu'à l'infini. ...l'auteur de ces merveilles les comprend. Tout autre ne le peut faire.  (II, 72)