consciousness; that unborn twins, for instance, could, in some obscure
fashion, exchange their impressions and communicate their hopes and
fears to each other. Having known naught but the warm maternal shades,
they would not feel straitened nor unhappy there. They would probably
have no other idea than to prolong as long as possible that life of
abundance free from cares and of sleep free from alarms. But, if, even
as we are aware that we must die, they too knew that they must be born,
that is to say, that they must suddenly leave the shelter of that gentle
darkness and abandon for ever that captive but peaceful existence, to be
precipitated into an absolutely different, unimaginable and boundless
world, how great would be their anxieties and their fears! And yet there
is no reason why our own anxieties and fears should be more justified
or less ridiculous. The character, the spirit, the intentions, the
benevolence or the indifference of the unknown to which we are subject do
not alter between our birth and our death. We remain always in the same
infinity, in the same universe. It is perfectly reasonable and legitimate
to persuade ourselves that the tomb is no more dreadful than the cradle.
It would even be legitimate and reasonable to accept the cradle only on
account of the tomb. If, before being born, we were permitted to choose
between the great peace of non-existence and a life that should not be
completed by the glorious hour of death, which of us, knowing what he
ought to know, would accept the disquieting problem of an existence
that would not lead to the reassuring mystery of its end? Which of us
would wish to come into a world where we can learn so little, if he did
not know that he must enter it if he would leave it and learn more?
The best thing about life is that it prepares this hour for us, that
it is the one and only road leading to the magic gateway and into that
incomparable mystery where misfortunes and sufferings will no longer be
possible, because we shall have lost the body that produced them; where
the worst that can befall us is the dreamless sleep which we number among
the greatest boons on earth; where, lastly, it is almost unimaginable
that a thought should not survive to mingle with the substance of the
universe, that is to say, with infinity, which, if it be not a waste of
indifference can be nothing but a sea of joy.
5
Before fathoming that sea, let us remark to those who aspire to maintain
their ego that they are calling for the sufferings which they dread.
The ego implies limits. The ego cannot subsist except in so far as it
is separated from that which surrounds it. The stronger the ego, the
narrower its limits and the clearer the separation. The more painful too;
for the mind, if it remain as we know it—and we are not able to imagine
it different—will no sooner have seen its limits than it will wish to
overstep them; and, the more separated it feels, the greater will be its
longing to unite with that which lies outside. There will therefore be
an eternal struggle between its being and its aspirations. And really it
would have served no object to be born and die only to arrive at these
interminable contests. Have we not here yet one more proof that our ego,
as we conceive it, could never subsist in the infinity where it must
needs go, since it cannot go elsewhere? It behoves us therefore to clear
away conceptions that emanate only from our body, even as the mists that
veil the daylight from our sight emanate only from the lowlands. Pascal
has said, once and for all:
“The narrow limits of our being conceal infinity from our view.”
6
On the other hand—for we must keep nothing back, nor turn from the
adverse darkness should it seem nearest to the truth, nor show any
bias—on the other hand, we can grant to those who yearn to remain as they
are that the survival of an atom of themselves would suffice for a new
entrance into an infinity from which their body no longer separates them.
If it seems impossible that anything—a movement, a vibration, a
radiation—should stop or disappear, why then should thought be lost?
There will, no doubt, subsist more than one idea powerful enough to
allure the new ego, which will nourish itself and thrive on all that
it will find in that boundless environment, just as the other ego, on
this earth, nourished itself and throve on all that it met there. Since
we have been able to acquire our present consciousness, why should it
be impossible for us to acquire another? For that ego which is so dear
to us and which we believe ourselves to possess was not made in a day;
it is not at present what it was at the hour of our birth. Much more
chance than purpose has entered into it; and much more alien substance
than any inborn substance which it contained. It is but a long series
of acquisitions and transformations, of which we do not become aware
until the awakening of our memory; and its kernel, of which we do not
know the nature, is perhaps more immaterial and less concrete than a
thought. If the new environment which we enter on leaving our mother’s
womb transforms us to such a point that there is, so to speak, no
connection between the embryo that we were and the man that we have
become, is it not right to think that the far newer, stranger, wider and
richer environment which we enter on quitting life will transform us even
more? We can see in what happens to us here a figure of what awaits us
elsewhere and can readily admit that our spiritual being, liberated from
its body, if it does not mingle at the first onset with the infinite,
will develop itself there gradually, will choose itself a substance and,
no longer trammelled by space and time, will go on for ever growing.
It is very possible that our loftiest wishes of to-day will become
the law of our future development. It is very possible that our best
thoughts will welcome us on the farther shore and that the quality of our
intellect will determine that of the infinite which crystallizes around
it. Every hypothesis is permissible and every question, provided it be
addressed to happiness; for unhappiness is no longer able to answer us.
It finds no place in the human imagination that methodically explores
the future. And, whatever be the force that survives us and presides
over our existence in the other world, this existence, to presume the
worst, could be no less great, no less happy than that of to-day. It
will have no other career than infinity; and infinity is nothing if it
be not felicity. In any case, it seems fairly certain that we spend in
this world the only narrow, grudging, obscure and sorrowful moment of our
destiny.
7
We have said that the peculiar sorrow of the mind is the sorrow of
not knowing or not understanding, which includes the sorrow of being
powerless; for he who knows the supreme causes, being no longer paralysed
by matter, becomes one with them and acts with them; and he who
understands ends by approving, or else the universe would be a mistake,
which is not possible, an infinite mistake being inconceivable. I do not
believe that another sorrow of the sheer mind can be imagined. The only
one sorrow which, at first thought, might seem admissible—and which, in
any case, could be but ephemeral—would arise from the sight of the pain
and misery remaining on the earth which we have left. But this sorrow,
after all, would be but one aspect and an insignificant phase of the
sorrow of being powerless and of not understanding. As for the latter,
though it is not only beyond the domain of our intelligence, but even at
an insuperable distance from our imagination, we may say that it would
be intolerable only if it were without hope. But, for that, the universe
would have to abandon any attempt to understand itself, or else admit
within itself an object that remained for ever foreign to it. Either the
mind will not perceive its limits and, consequently, will not suffer from
them, or else it will overstep them as it perceives them; for how could
the universe have parts eternally condemned to form no part of itself
and of its knowledge? Hence we cannot understand that the torture of not
understanding, supposing it to exist for a moment, should not end by
absorption in the state of infinity, which, if it be not happiness as we
comprehend it, could be naught but an indifference higher and purer than
joy.
V
THE TWO ASPECTS OF INFINITY
1
Let us turn our thoughts towards it. The problem goes beyond humanity and
embraces all things. It is possible, I think, to view infinity under two
distinct aspects. Let us contemplate the first of them. We are plunged in
a universe that has no limits in space or time. It can neither go forward
nor go back. It has no origin. It never began, nor will it ever end. The
myriads of years behind it are even as the myriads which it has yet to
unroll. From all time it has been at the boundless centre of the days.
It could have no aim, for, if it had one, it would have attained it in
the infinity of the years that lie behind us; besides, that aim would
lie outside itself and, if anything lay outside it, infinity would be
bounded by that thing and would cease to be infinity. It is not making
for anywhere, for it would have arrived there; consequently, all that the
worlds within its pale, all that we ourselves do can have no influence
upon it. All that it will do it has done. All that it has not done
remains undone because it can never do it. If it have no mind, it will
never have one. If it have one, that mind has been at its climax from all
time and will remain there, changeless and immovable. It is as young as
it has ever been and as old as it will ever be. It has made in the past
all the efforts and all the trials which it will make in the future; and,
as all the possible combinations have been exhausted since what we cannot
even call the beginning, it does not seem as if that which has not taken
place in the eternity that stretches before our birth can happen in the
eternity that will follow our death. If it have not become conscious,
it will never become conscious; if it know not what it wishes, it will
continue in ignorance, hopelessly, knowing all or knowing nothing and
remaining as near its end as its beginning.
This is the gloomiest thought to which man can attain. So far, I do not
think that its depths have been sufficiently sounded. If it were really
irrefutable—and some may contend that it is—if it actually contained the
last word of the great riddle, it would be almost impossible to live in
its shadow. Naught save the certainty that our conceptions of time and
space are illusive and absurd can lighten the abyss wherein our last hope
would perish.
2
The universe thus conceived would be, if not intelligible, at least
admissible by our reason; but in that universe float billions of
worlds limited by space and time. They are born, they die and they are
born again. They form part of the whole; and we see, therefore, that
parts of that which has neither beginning nor end themselves begin and
end. We, in fact, know only those parts; and they are of a number so
infinite that in our eyes they fill all infinity. That which is going
nowhere teems with that which appears to be going somewhere. That
which has always known what it wants, or will never learn, seems to be
eternally experimenting with more or less ill-success. At what goal is
it aiming, since it is already there? Everything that we discover in
that which could not possibly have an object looks as though it were
pursuing one with inconceivable ardour; and the mind that animates what
we see, in that which should know everything and possess itself, seems
to know nothing and to seek itself without intermission. Thus all that
is apparent to our senses in infinity gainsays that which our reason
is compelled to ascribe to it. According as we fathom it, we come to
understand how deep is our want of understanding; and, the more we strive
to penetrate the two incomprehensible problems that stand face to face,
the more they contradict each other.
3
What will become of us amid all this confusion? Shall we leave the finite
wherein we dwell to be swallowed up in this or the other infinite? In
other words, shall we end by absorption in the infinite which our reason
conceives, or shall we remain eternally in that which our eyes behold,
that is to say, in numberless changing and ephemeral worlds? Shall we
never leave those worlds which seem doomed to die and to be reborn
eternally, to enter at last into that which, from all eternity, can
neither have been born nor have died and which exists without either
future or past? Shall we one day escape, with all that surrounds us, from
this unhappy speculation, to find our way at last into peace, wisdom,
changeless and boundless consciousness, or into hopeless unconsciousness?
Shall we have the fate which our senses foretell, or that which our
intelligence demands? Or are both senses and intelligence only illusions,
puny implements, vain weapons of an hour, which were never intended to
examine or defy the universe? If there really be a contradiction, is it
wise to accept it and to deem impossible that which we do not understand,
seeing that we understand almost nothing? Is truth not at an immeasurable
distance from these inconsistencies which appear to us enormous and
irreducible and which, doubtless, are of no more importance than the rain
that falls upon the sea?
4
But, even to our poor understanding of to-day, the discrepancy between
the infinity conceived by our reason and that perceived by our senses
is perhaps more apparent than real. When we say that, in a universe
that has existed since all eternity, every experiment, every possible
combination has been made; when we declare that there is no chance
that what has not taken place in the immeasurable past can take place
in the immeasurable future, our imagination perhaps attributes to the
infinity of time a preponderance which it cannot possess. In truth,
all that infinity contains must be as infinite as the time at its
disposal; and the chances, encounters and combinations that lie therein
have not been exhausted in the eternity that has gone before us any
more than they could be in the eternity that will come after us. The
infinity of time is no vaster than the infinity of the substance of the
universe. Events, forces, chances, causes, effects, phenomena, fusions,
combinations, coincidences, harmonies, unions, possibilities, lives are
represented in it by countless numbers that entirely fill a bottomless
and vergeless abyss where they have been shaken together from what we
call the beginning of the world that had no beginning and where they
will be stirred up until the end of a world that will have no end.
There is, therefore, no climax, no changelessness, no immovability. It
is probable that the universe is seeking and finding itself every day,
that it has not become entirely conscious and does not yet know what it
wants. It is possible that its ideal is still veiled by the shadow of its
immensity; it is also possible that experiments and chances are following
one upon the other in unimaginable worlds, compared wherewith all those
which we see on starry nights are no more than a pinch of gold-dust in
the ocean depths. Lastly, if either be true, it is also true that we
ourselves, or what remains of us—it matters not—will profit one day by
those experiments and those chances. That which has not yet happened may
suddenly supervene; and the next state, with the supreme wisdom which
will recognize and be able to establish that state, is perhaps ready to
arise from the clash of circumstances. It would not be at all astonishing
if the consciousness of the universe, in the endeavour to form itself,
had not yet encountered the combination of necessary chances and if human
thought were actually supporting one of those decisive chances. Here
there is a hope. Small as man and his brain may appear, they have exactly
the value of the most enormous forces that they are able to conceive,
since there is neither great nor small in the immensurable; and, if our
body equalled the dimensions of all the worlds which our eyes can see, it
would have exactly the same weight and the same importance, as compared
with the universe, that it has to-day. The mind alone perhaps occupies in
infinity a space which comparisons do not reduce to nothing.
5
For the rest, if everything must be said, at the cost of constantly
and shamelessly contradicting one’s self in the dark, and to return to
the first supposition, the idea of possible progress, it is extremely
probable that this again is one of those childish disorders of our brain
which prevent us from seeing the thing that is. It is quite as probable,
as we have seen above, that there never was, that there never will be any
progress, because there could not be a goal. At most there may occur a
few ephemeral combinations which, to our poor eyes, will seem happier or
more beautiful than the others. Even so we think gold more beautiful than
the mud in the street, or the flower in a splendid garden happier than
the stone at the bottom of a drain; but all this, obviously, is of no
importance, has no corresponding reality and proves nothing in particular.
The more we reflect upon it, the more pronounced is the infirmity of our
intelligence which cannot succeed in reconciling the idea of progress and
even the idea of experiment with the supreme idea of infinity. Although
nature has been incessantly and indefatigably repeating herself before
our eyes for thousands of years, reproducing the same trees and the same
animals, we cannot contrive to understand why the universe indefinitely
recommences experiments that have been made billions of times. It is
inevitable that, in the innumerable combinations that have been and are
being made in termless time and boundless space, there have been and
still are millions of planets and consequently millions of human races
exactly similar to our own, side by side with myriads of others more
or less different from it. Let us not say to ourselves that it would
require an unimaginable concourse of circumstances to reproduce a globe
like unto our earth in every respect. We must remember that we are in
the infinite and that this unimaginable concourse must necessarily take
place in the innumerousness which we are unable to imagine. Though
it need billions and billions of cases for two features to coincide,
those billions and billions will encumber infinity no more than would a
single case. Place an infinite number of worlds in an infinite number
of infinitely diverse circumstances: there will always be an infinite
number for which those circumstances will be alike; if not, we should be
setting bounds to our idea of the universe, which would forthwith become
more incomprehensible still. From the moment that we insist sufficiently
upon that thought, we necessarily arrive at these conclusions. If they
have not struck us hitherto, it is because we never go to the farthest
point of our imagination. Now the farthest point of our imagination is
but the beginning of reality and gives us only a small, purely human
universe, which, vast as it may seem, dances in the real universe like an
apple on the sea. I repeat, if we do not admit that thousands of worlds,
similar in all points to our own, in spite of the billions of adverse
chances, have always existed and still exist to-day, we are sapping
the foundations of the only possible conception of the universe or of
infinity.
6
Now how is it that those millions of exactly similar human races, which
from all time suffer what we have suffered and are still suffering,
profit us nothing, that all their experiences and all their schools have
had no influence upon our first efforts and that everything has to be
done again and begun again incessantly?
As we see, the two theories balance each other. It is well to acquire
by degrees the habit of understanding nothing. There remains to us the
faculty of choosing the less gloomy of the two or persuading ourselves
that the mists of the other exist only in our brain. As that strange
visionary, William Blake, said:
“Nor is it possible to thought
A greater than itself to know.”
Let us add that it is not possible for it to know anything other than
itself. What we do not know would be enough to create the world afresh;
and what we do know cannot add one moment to the life of a fly. Who can
tell but that our chief mistake lies in believing that an intelligence,
were it an intelligence thousands of times as great as ours, directs the
universe? It may be a force of quite another nature, a force that differs
as widely from that on which our brain prides itself as electricity, for
instance, differs from the wind that blows. That is why it is fairly
probable that our mind, however powerful it become, will always grope in
mystery. If it be certain that everything in us must also be in nature,
because everything comes to us from her, if the mind and all the logic
which it has placed at the culminating point of our being direct or
seem to direct all the actions of our life, it by no means follows that
there is not in the universe a force greatly superior to thought, a
force having no imaginable relation to the mind, a force which animates
and governs all things according to other laws and of which nothing is
found in us but almost imperceptible traces, even as almost imperceptible
traces of thought are all that can be found in plants and minerals.
In any case, there is nothing here to make us lose courage. It is
necessarily the human illusion of evil, ugliness, uselessness and
impossibility that is to blame. We must wait not for the universe to be
transformed, but for our intelligence to expand or to take part in the
other force; and we must maintain our confidence in a world which knows
nothing of our conceptions of purpose and progress, because it doubtless
has ideas whereof we have no idea, a world, moreover, which could
scarcely wish itself harm.
7
“These are but vain speculations,” it will be said. “What matters,
after all, the idea which we form of those things which belong to the
unknowable, seeing that the unknowable, were we a thousand times as
intelligent as we are, is closed to us for ever and that the idea which
we form of it will never have any value?”
That is true; but there are degrees in our ignorance of the unknowable;
and each of these degrees marks a triumph of the intelligence. To
estimate more and more completely the extent of what it does not know is
all that man’s knowledge can hope for. Our idea of the unknowable was and
always will be valueless, I admit; but it nevertheless is and will remain
the most important idea of mankind. All our morality, all that is in the
highest degree noble and profound in our existence has always been based
on this idea devoid of real value. To-day, as yesterday, even though
it be possible to recognize more clearly that it is too incomplete and
relative ever to have any actual value, it is necessary to carry it as
high and as far as we can. It alone creates the only atmosphere wherein
the best part of ourselves can live. Yes, it is the unknowable into which
we shall not enter; but that is no reason for saying to ourselves:
“I am closing all the doors and all the windows; henceforth, I shall
interest myself only in things which my everyday intelligence can
compass. Those things alone have the right to influence my actions and my
thoughts.”