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INSTITUTES OF METAPHYSIC.
PROP. VII.————
that the operations of God, and the order of the universe, are not admirable, precisely in proportion as they are ordinary; that they are not glorious, precisely in proportion as they are manifest; that they are not astounding, precisely in proportion as they are common? But man, blind to the marvels which he really see; sees others to which he is really blind. He keeps stretching forwards into the distant; he ought to be straining backwards, and more back, into the near; for there, and only there, is the object of his longing to be found. Perhaps he may come round at last. Meanwhile, it is inevitable that he should miss the truth.
Hence neglect of this proposition.7. The general fact which these remarks are intended to express is, that our knowledge of a thing is always naturally in an inverse ratio to our familiarity with it; that insight is always naturally at its minimum, wherever intimacy is at its maximum: in a word, that, under the influence of custom, the patent becomes the latent. This truth being unquestionable, it is not difficult to understand how philosophers should have failed to apprehend, or at least, to give a marked prominence in their systems to the necessary and permanent element of all cognition. This element is the ego, or oneself. But the ego comes before us along with whatever comes before us. Hence we are familiar with it to an excess. We are absolutely surfeited with its presence.
