present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can
only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by
God Himself. He only is our true good, and since we have forsaken him, it is
a strange thing that there is nothing in nature which has not been
serviceable in taking His place; the stars, the heavens, earth, the
elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents,
fever, pestilence, war, famine, vices, adultery, incest. And since man has
lost the true good, everything can appear equally good to him, even his own
destruction, though so opposed to God, to reason, and to the whole course of
nature.

Some seek good in authority, others in scientific research, others in
pleasure. Others, who are in fact nearer the truth, have considered it
necessary that the universal good, which all men desire, should not consist
in any of the particular things which can only be possessed by one man, and
which, when shared, afflict their possessors more by the want of the part he
has not than they please him by the possession of what he has. They have
learned that the true good should be such as all can possess at once,
without diminution and without envy, and which no one can lose against his
will. And their reason is that this desire, being natural to man, since it
is necessarily in all, and that it is impossible not to have it, they infer
from it...

426. True nature being lost, everything becomes its own nature; as the true
good being lost, everything becomes its own true good.

427. Man does not know in what rank to place himself. He has plainly gone
astray and fallen from his true place without being able to find it again.
He seeks it anxiously and unsuccessfully everywhere in impenetrable
darkness.