The problem of infinity remained topical. In the modern world, however, it turned into an earthly infinity: it troubled doubters as a practical, not a metaphysical, concept — people had so much work to do that they were never able to get to the end. Omnis cognitio fit per aliquam similitudinem (“All knowledge is caused by means of a likeness”), said St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa theologica, I, q. 75, a. 2). The modern age employed his doctrine in its own way: since man is a transient, mortal being and can have no idea of infinity, there can be no autonomous existing thing independent of him. Nonetheless, since he does have some knowledge (presentiment) of infinity, it is obvious to suppose that the infinite per se is rooted in the his way of looking at things itself: that finite existing thing that he calls infinite is that which he cannot comprehend, that which is beyond his grasp. “Whatsoever we imagine, is Finite,” argues Thomas Hobbes. “Therefore there is no idea or conception of anything we call infinite. No man can have in his mind an image of infinite magnitude; nor conceive infinite swiftness, infinite time, or infinite force, or infinite power. When we say anything is infinite, we signify only that we are not able to conceive the ends and bounds of the thing named, having no conception of the thing, but of our own inability. . A man can have no thought representing anything not subject to sense” (Leviathan, bk. 1, ch. 3). Everything infinite is traceable to finite existing things, which of course is no obstacle to their being regarded as infinite. Infinity no longer relates to man’s position, as in the Renaissance; it does not mean that he is the center of the world, and therefore he does not possess a point of reference outside himself; it relates to the position he occupies in the world. It is not that his abilities and possibilities are infinite, but rather that there is no end to finite things. In the civil world since the Renaissance, he has not been the center of the universe, but a bit actor in an institutionalized world that has settled on everything; he lost himself without ever having possessed himself. It was not himself but the hovering that was a consequence of his exclusion, which was felt to be infinite or, to be more accurate, never ending: he was tossed back and forth between the world’s innumerable orders, and whatever he might try to comply with, he always found himself faced with fresher expectations. An individual in the modern age is a perpetual lawbreaker — there is always something left unsatisfied, and losing his bearings in a maze of institutions and mediators, he also loses himself. One might suppose there is a solution for everything, but man cannot meet all demands. The world of things is always one step ahead of him, and even though he talks about infinity, he sees only a finite world of objects around him. Infinity makes its appearance in the relationship of man to the objective world. Whether in the form of his having infinite opportunities in the world (seventeenth to eighteenth centuries) or in his being endlessly at the mercy of the world of objects and institutions (nineteenth to twentieth centuries), it is always finitude that lies in the depth. Forgoing absolute autonomy and conforming to the given world, he could regard his own existence as sensible or senseless only on the basis of existing standards.
Infinity was objectified and became sensory — that paradox altered the position of Renaissance melancholia in the modern era, creating tensions that are discharged not between man and heaven (Middle Ages) or between man and nothingness (Renaissance), but between man and the sensory world. “’Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone; / All just supply, and all Relation,” writes John Donne, whose finest portrait, which can be viewed in Newbattle Abbey, depicts him, characteristically, in the pose of a melancholy lover. Everything is merely a matter of comparison — the heavens are not an ultimate standard for judging man, nor is man able to mold the world in his own image. Not only is he not born into a home, but he is also unable to create a home for himself in his homelessness. “Humans are not here for themselves,” Nicolas Malebranche writes, “nor is their law or their illumination. Their substance is sheer profundity; they cannot see anything as they are contemplating themselves, and since they depend on God, they are not the master of their actions either” (Méditations chrétiennes et métaphysiques, meditation 5, in Œuvres complètes, vol. 10). Their homelessness is not just metaphysical in origin but also a consequence of their earthly vulnerability: the spectacle of the tangible, sensory world is a cause of pain and sadness: