It is a singular, but incontestable fact, that as soon as reason has conceived truth, the soul attaches itself to it, and loves it. Yes, the soul loves truth. It is a wonderful thing that a being strayed into one corner of the universe, alone charged with sustaining himself against so many obstacles, who, it would seem, has enough to do to think of himself, to preserve and somewhat embellish his life, is capable of loving what is not related to him, and exists only in an invisible world! This disinterested love of truth gives evidence of the greatness of him who feels it. Reason takes one step more:--it is not contented with truth, even absolute truth, when convinced that it possesses it ill, that it does not possess it as it really is; as long as it has not placed it upon its eternal basis; having arrived there, it stops as before its impassable barrier, having nothing more to seek, nothing more to find. Sentiment follows reason, to which it is attached; it stops, it rests, only in the love of the infinite being. In fact, it is the infinite that we love, while we believe that we are loving finite things, even while loving truth, beauty, virtue. And so surely is it the infinite itself that attracts and charms us, that its highest manifestations do not satisfy us until we have referred them to their immortal source. The heart is insatiable, because it aspires after the infinite. This sentiment, this need of the infinite, is at the foundation of the greatest passions, and the most trifling desires. A sigh of the soul in the presence of the starry heavens, the melancholy attached to the passion of glory, to ambition, to all the great emotions of the soul, express it better without doubt, but they do not express it more than the caprice and mobility of those vulgar loves, wandering from object to object in a perpetual circle of ardent desires, of poignant disquietudes, and mournful disenchantments. Let us designate another relation between reason and sentiment. The mind at first precipitates itself towards its object without rendering to itself an account of what it does, of what it perceives, of what it feels. But, with the faculty of thinking, of feeling, it has also that of willing; it possesses the liberty of returning to itself, of reflecting on its own thought and sentiment, of consenting to this, or of resisting it, of abstaining from it, or of reproducing its thought and sentiment, while stamping them with a new character. Spontaneity, reflection,--these are the two great forms of intelligence.[71] One is not the other; but, after all, the latter does little more than develop the former; they contain at bottom the same things:--the point of view alone is different. Every thing that is spontaneous is obscure and confused; reflection carries with it a clear and distinct view.