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Quote by Leo Tolstoy
English (Source)
The problem is that man first of all knows himself, his "I", and finds this "I" chained by spatial and temporal limits, and by observing and studying spatial and temporal phenomena, he comes to recognize at first separate beings like himself, organisms , and then to recognize beings that are not separate, but merged into one: crystals, molecules, atoms. And, naturally, he sees in them that spatial and temporal limit that separates him. One stumbles into the meaninglessness of infinity by recognizing the universe as an object whose center is everywhere and whose limits are nowhere. That is, starting from the most known thing, from himself and from his consciousness, the rational man unwittingly first comes to the knowledge of those that are close to him, then of those that are farthest away, and, finally, he acquires the consciousness of the inconceivable. Materialists, however, start from observation and, reaching atoms, the infinity of universes, they do not stop there, but from atoms and the infinity of universes, that is, from what is impossible to know, they reach the knowledge of the knowable, that is, the self.