for instance my semantic proceed

man without light, left to himself and, as it
were, lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who has put him
there, what he has come to do, what will become of him at death, and
incapable of all knowledge, I become terrified, like a man who should be
carried in his sleep to a dreadful desert island and should awake without
knowing where he is and without means of escape. And thereupon I wonder how
people in a condition so wretched do not fall into despair. I see other
persons around me of a like nature. I ask them if they are better informed
than I am. They tell me that they are not. And thereupon these wretched and
lost beings, having looked around them and seen some pleasing objects, have
given and attached themselves to them. For my own part, I have not been able
to attach myself to them, and, considering how strongly it appears that
there is something else than what I see, I have examined whether this God
has not left some sign of Himself.

I see many contradictory religions, and consequently all false save one.
Each wants to be believed on its own authority, and threatens unbelievers. I
do not therefore believe them. Every one can say this; every one can call
himself a prophet. But I see that Christian religion wherein prophecies are
fulfilled; and that is what every one cannot do.

694. And what crowns all this is prediction, so that it should not be said
that it is chance which has done it?

Whosoever, having only a week to live, will not find out that it is
expedient to believe that all this is not a stroke of chance...

Now, if the passions had no hold on us, a week and a hundred years would
amount to the same thing.

695. Prophecies.--Great Pan is dead.

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