But again if you affirm that the world was infinite, there immediately springs up before you another new infinity in the successive generation of mankind. But then philosophy will not admit a plurality of infinities; and yet it is compelled to admit them upon its own conclusions, because it knows neither the beginning of the world nor the beginning of mankind. This hostile contrariety and utter obscurity brought the Epicureans into a state which compelled them to assert, that both the world and mankind existed without any reason at all; and that without any reason at all they would both perish; just as beasts, which after they are dead, are just as if they never had been. From premises like these other terrible conclusions naturally follow; either that there is positively no God at all, or that he cares not at all for human things. These are the labyrinths into which reason is brought, when without the word of God it follows its own judgment. Therefore it is very profitable thus to behold how impossible it is that reason or our own wisdom should go beyond the above stated limits, in its judgments concerning the creature. For what, I pray you, does the philosopher with all his reasoning know of the heavens or the earth or the world; seeing that he understands not whence either of them came or in what end they all or either of them, are appointed to terminate. Nay, what do we ourselves know concerning ourselves? We all see that we are men. But ought we not to believe also and know that we have this man for our father and that woman for our mother? But how or why this is so can never be learned from human reason. Hence all our knowledge and our wisdom lie only in the comprehension of the material or formal cause; and even in these we often make the most wretched mistakes. But as to the efficient and final cause, we know nothing, nor can explain anything whatsoever. And the saddest part of our ignorance is, that our deficiency is at its worst when we come to dispute or to speculate concerning the world into which we are born and in which we live. Is not this, I pray you, a poor and miserable pretension to wisdom?