The paradox of the highest science.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/levi/phs/phs08.htmPARADOX V.--REASON IS GOD
THIS should be placed first. It is before everything: it is self-existent, it exists even for those who do not know it, as the Sun for the Blind, but to see it, feel it, understand it, this is the triumph of the understanding in man; it is the definite result of all the travail of thought and all the aspirations of Faith.
In the principle is Reason, and Reason is in God, and God is Reason. 2 All is made by it, and without
it is nothing made. It is the true light that enlightens us from our birth: it shines even in the darkness, but the darkness does not close it in.
These words are the oracle of Reason itself, and they occur, as all know, at the commencement of the Gospel of St. John.
Without this Reason nothing exists; everything has its reason for existing, even unreason, 1 which serves as a background to reason as the shadow does to the light.
The reasonable believer is he who believes in a reason greater than knowledge; for the reason, or to speak more correctly the reasoning of each one, is not absolute wisdom.
When I reason ill, I become unreasonable 1; it is not then reason that I should distrust, but my own judgment.
I should turn then willingly to those who know more than I do, but even then I must have reason to believe in their superiority.
To conjecture, at random, what one does not know, and then believe blindly in one's own conjectures, or in those of others, who know no more than ourselves, is to behave like madmen. When we are told that God demands the sacrifice of our reason,
this is to make God, the ideal or despotic idol, of folly.
Reason gives conviction, but rash belief produces only infatuation.
It is quite reasonable to believe in things that one neither sees, touches, nor measures, because manifestly the infinite exists, and one can say not only I believe, but I know that an infinity of things exist which are beyond my reach.
Knowledge being indefinitely progressive, I can believe that I shall one day know that of which I am now ignorant. I have no doubts in regard to what I know thoroughly; I may doubt my knowledge if I know imperfectly, but I cannot have doubts as to a thing of which I know nothing, since it is impossible for me to formulate them.
He who says there is no God, without having defined God in a complete and absolute manner, simply talks nonsense. I wait for his definition, and when he has set this forth after his own fashion, I am certain, beforehand, of being able to say to him, "I agree with you, there is no such God"; but that God is certainly not my God. If he says to me: "Define your God," I should reply, "I will take good care to do nothing of the kind, for a God defined is a God dethroned." 1 Every positive definition is deniable, the Infinite is the undefined. "I believe only in matter,"
