Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on Ethics

...the Milky Way. How much more does this amazement grow when we learn that all these immeasurable star systems are, in their turn, only a single unit in a sequence whose limit is unknown? This number is perhaps as inconceivably vast as the previous one, while also being itself merely the building block of a new combination.¹ There is a true abyss of immensity here in which all human ability to conceive of it is lost. The wisdom, the goodness, and the power revealed here are infinite and, to the same degree, productive and active; therefore, the plan of this revelation must be equally infinite.

Kant proposes the theory (providing his reasoning) that nature may, in the course of time, be reduced to chaos once more, and then emerge again like a phoenix original: "phœnix"; a mythical bird that symbolizes rebirth, used here to describe Kant’s theory of a "cycling" universe that collapses and reforms. from its ashes. When we contemplate nature through these successive changes—carrying out the plan by which God reveals Himself in wonders that fill space and eternity—the mind is overwhelmed with astonishment. Yet, the soul is not satisfied with this vast but perishable object; it desires to know more closely that Being whose intelligence and greatness are the source of the light that spreads, as if from a center, over all nature. With what awe must the soul regard even its own nature when it reflects that it shall outlive all these changes! "O happy," he exclaims, "when amid the tumult of the elements and the ruin of nature, the soul is placed on a height from which it can, as it were, see beneath its feet the desolation of all perishable things..."