XIV

But,” I shall be told, “there is more in us than the intellect discovers. We have many things within us which our senses have not placed there; we contain a being superior to the one we know.”

That is probable, nay, certain: the share occupied by unconsciousness, that is to say, by that which represents the universe, is enormous and preponderant. But how shall the ego which we know and whose destiny alone concerns us recognize all those things andthat superior being whom it has never known? What will it do in the presence of that stranger? If I be told that stranger is myself, I will readily agree; but was that which upon earth felt and measured my joys and sorrows and gave birth to the few memories and thoughts that remain to me, was that this unmoved, unseen stranger who existed in me without my cognizance, even as I am probably about to live in him without his concerning himself with a presence that will bring him but the pitiful recollection of a thing that is no more? Now that he has taken my place, while destroying, in order to acquire a greater consciousness, all that formed my small consciousness here below, is it not another lifecommencing, a life whose joys and sorrows will pass above my head, not even brushing with their new wings that which I feel myself to be to-day?

It seems, therefore, that a survival with our present consciousness is as impossible and as incomprehensible as total annihilation. Moreover, even if it were admissible, it would not be dreadful. It is certain that, when the body disappears, all physical sufferings will disappear at the same time; for we cannot imagine a soul suffering in a body which it no longer possesses. With them will vanish simultaneously all that we call mental or moral sufferings,seeing that all of them, if we examine them well, spring from the ties and habits of our senses. Our soul feels the reaction of the sufferings of our body, or of the bodies that surround it; it cannot suffer in itself or through itself. Slighted affection, shattered love, disappointments, failures, despair, treachery, personal humiliations, as well as the afflictions and the loss of those whom it loves, acquire the sting that hurts it only by passing through the body which it animates. Outside its own sorrow, which is the sorrow of not knowing, the soul, once delivered from its body, could suffer only at the recollection of that body. It is possible that it still grieves over the troubles of those whom it has left behindon earth. But, in the eyes of that which no longer counts the days, those troubles will seem so brief that it will not grasp their duration; and, knowing what they are and whither they lead, it will not behold their severity.

The soul is insensible to all that is not happiness. It is made only for infinite joy, which is the joy of knowing and understanding. It can grieve only at perceiving its own limits; but to perceive those limits, when one is no longer bound by space and time, is already to transcend them.

There remains but the survival without consciousness, or survival with a consciousness different from that of to-day.

A survival without consciousness seems at first sight the most probable. From the point of view of the good or ill awaiting us on the other side of the grave, it amounts to annihilation. It is lawful, therefore, for those who prefer the easiest solution and that most consistent with the present state of human thought, to setthat limit to their anxiety there. They have nothing to dread; for every fear, if any remain, would, if we look into it carefully, deck itself with hopes. The body disintegrates and can no longer suffer; the mind, separated from the source of pleasure and pain, is extinguished, scattered and lost in a boundless darkness; and what comes is the great peace so often prayed for, the sleep without measure, without dreams and without awakening.

But this is only a solution that flatters indolence. If we press those who speak of a survival without consciousness, we perceive that they mean only their present consciousness, for man conceives no other; and we have just seen that it is almost impossiblefor that manner of consciousness to persist in infinity.

Unless, indeed, they would deny every sort of consciousness, even that of the universe into which their own will fall. But that means solving very quickly and very blindly, with a stroke of the sword in the night, the greatest and most mysterious question that can arise in a man’s brain.

This question is closely allied to our modified consciousness. There is for the moment no hope of solving it; but we are free to grope in its darkness, which is not perhaps equally dense at all points.

Here begins the open sea. Here begins the glorious adventure, the only one abreast with human curiosity, the only one that soars as high as its highest longing. Let us accustom ourselves to regard death as a form of life which we do not yet understand; let uslearn to look upon it with the same eye that looks upon birth; and soon our mind will be accompanied to the steps of the tomb with the same glad expectation that greets a birth. 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 magnificent hour of death, which of us, knowing what we ought to know, would accept the disquieting problem of an existence that would not end in the reassuring mystery of its conclusion? Which of us would care to come into a world where there is so little to learn, if he did not know that he must enter it if he would leave it and learn more? The best part of life is that it prepares this hourfor 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 count among the number of the greatest boons on earth; where, lastly, it is almost unimaginable that a thought can 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.

Before fathoming that sea, let us remark to those who aspire to maintain their ego that they are calling down 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 there were no object in being born and dying only for the purpose of these endless 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 behooves us therefore to get rid of imaginations that emanate only from our body, even as the mists that veil the daylight from our sight emanate only from low places.Pascal has said, once and for all: “The narrow limits of our being conceal infinity from our view.”

On the other hand—for we must be honest, probe the conflicting darkness which we believe nearest to the truth and show no bias—on the other hand, we can grant to those who are wedded to the thought of remaining as they are that the survival of a mere particle of themselves would suffice to renew them again in the heart of an infinity wherefrom their body no longer separates them. If it seems impossible that anything—a movement, a vibration, a radiation—should stop ordisappear, 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 new and endless 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 foreign 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 nucleus, 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 connexion between the embryo that we were and the man that we have become, is it not right to think that the much newer, more unknown, wider and more fertile environment which we enter on quitting life will transform us even more? One can see in what happens to us here a figure of that which awaits us elsewhere and readilyadmit 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 grow without end. 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 other bank and that the quality of our intellect will determine that of the infinite that 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 exploresthe future methodically. 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.

We have said that the one sorrow of the mind is the sorrow of not knowing or not understanding, which contains the sorrow of powerlessness; for he who knows the supreme causes, being no longer paralyzed 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. I do not believe that another sorrow of the sheer mind can be imagined. The only one which, before reflection,might seem admissible and which, in any case, could be but ephemeral would arise from the sight of the pain and misery that remain on the earth which we have left. But this sorrow, after all, would be but one side and an insignificant phase of the sorrow of powerlessness 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, in order to be without hope, the universe would have to abandon any attempt to understand itself, or admit within itself an object that remained for ever foreign to it. Either the mind willnot 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 mingling with 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.

Let us turn our thoughts towards it. The problem extends beyond humanity and embraces all things. It is possible, I think, to view infinity under two distinct aspects and try to foresee our fate therein. Let us contemplate the first of these aspects. We are plunged into a universe that has no limits in space or time. It never began, nor will it ever end. It could not have an aim, for, if it had one, it would have attained it in the infinity of yearsthat preceded us. 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. If it have no thought, it will never have one. If it have one, that thought has been at its climax since 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 experiments which it will make in the future; and, as all the possible combinations have been exhausted since all time, it does not seem as if that which has not taken place in the eternity that extends before our birth can happen in that which will follow afterour death. If it have not become conscious, it will never become so; 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.

All this would be, if not intelligible, at least acceptable to our reason; but in that universe float thousands of millions 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 theyfill 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 eternally to be making more or less unfortunate experiments. What is that which has already attained perfection trying to achieve? Everything that we discover in that which could not possibly have an aim looks as though it were pursuing one with inconceivable ardour; and the spirit 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 toit. According as we fathom it, we understand better the depth of our want of understanding; and, the more we strive to penetrate the two incomprehensibilities that stand face to face, the more they contradict each other.

What will become of us amid all this obscurity? 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 mingling with 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,since 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 the unhappy experiments, to find our way at last into peace, wisdom, the changeless and boundless consciousness, or into the hopeless unconsciousness? Shall we have the fate which our senses foretell, or that which our intelligence demands? Or are both senses and intelligence illusions, puny implements, vain weapons of a brief hour that were never intended to probe or contend with 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 those inconsistencies which appear to us enormous and irreducible and which, doubtless, are of no more importance than the rain that falls upon the sea?

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 not a chance that that which has not taken place in the uncountable past can take place in the uncountablefuture, our imagination 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 goes before us any more than they could be in the eternity that comes after us. 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 almost certain that its ideal is still veiled by the shadow of its immensity and almost evident that the experimentsand 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, it is very nearly sure that we ourselves, or whatever 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 best state, as well as the supreme wisdom which will recognize and establish it, is perhaps ready to arise from the clash of circumstance. It were not at all astonishing if the consciousness of the universe, in the endeavour to form itself, had not yet met with the aid of the necessary chances and if humanthought were seconding one of those decisive chances. Here there is a hope. Small as man and his thought may appear, he has exactly the value of the most enormous forces that he is able to conceive, since there is neither great nor small in the immeasurable; 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 with regard to the universe that it has to-day. The mind alone perhaps occupies in infinity a space which comparisons do not reduce to nothing.

Whatever the ultimate truth may be, whether we admit the abstract, absolute and perfect infinity—the changeless, immovable infinity which has attained perfection and which knows everything, to which our reason tends—or whether we prefer that offered to us by the evidence, here below undeniable, of our senses—the infinity which seeks itself, which is still evolving and not yet established—it behoves us above all to foresee in it our fate, which, in any case,must end by absorption in that very infinity.

The first infinity, the ideal infinity, is so strangely contrary to all that we see that it is best not to attack it until we have tried to explore the second. Moreover, it is quite possible that it may succeed the other. As we have said, that which has not taken place in the eternity before may happen in the eternity after us; and nothing save innumerous accidents is opposed to the prospect that the universe may at last acquire the integral consciousness that will establish it at its climax. After giving a glance, useless, for that matter, and impotent, at all that may perhaps arise, we shall try to interrogate, without hope of answer, the mystery of theboundless peace into which it is possible that we may sink with the other worlds.

Behold us, then, in the infinity of those worlds, the stellar infinity, the infinity of the heavens, which assuredly veils other things from our eyes, but could never be a total illusion. It seems to us to be peopled only with objects—planets, suns, stars, nebulæ, atoms, imponderous fluids—which move, unite and separate, repel and attract one another, which shrink and expand, displace one another incessantly and never arrive, which measure space in that which hasno limit and number the hours in that which has no term. In a word, we are in an infinity that seems to have almost the same character, the same habits as that power in the midst of which we breathe and which, upon our earth, we call nature or life.

What will be our fate in that infinity? It is not vain to ask one’s self the question, even if we should mingle with it after losing all consciousness, all notion of the ego, even if our existence should be no more than a little substance without name, soul or matter—one cannot tell—suspended in the equally nameless abyss that replaces time and space. It is not vain to ask one’s self the question, for we are concerned with the history of the worlds orof the universe; and this history, far more than that of our petty existence, is our own great history, in which perhaps something of ourselves or something incomparably better and vaster will end by finding us again some day.

Shall we be unhappy there? It is hardly reassuring when we consider the habits of our nature and remember that we form part of a universe that has not yet collected its wisdom. We have seen, it is true, that good and bad fortune exist only in so far as regards our body and that, when we have lost the agent of our sufferings, we shall not meet any of the earthly sorrows again. But our anxiety does not end here; and will not our mind, lingering upon our erstwhile sorrows,drifting derelict from world to world, unknown to itself in the unknowable that seeks itself hopelessly; will not our mind know here the frightful torture of which we have already spoken and which is doubtless the last which the imagination can touch with its wing? Lastly, if there were nothing left of our body and our mind, there would still remain the matter and the spirit (or, at least, the obviously single force to which we give that double name) which composed them and whose fate must be no more indifferent to us than our own fate; for, let us repeat, from our death onwards, the adventure of the universe becomes our own adventure. Let us not, therefore, say to ourselves:

“What can it matter? We shall not be there.”

We shall be there always, because everything will be there.

Will all this to which we shall belong, in a world ever seeking itself, continue a prey to new, unceasing and perhaps painful experiments? Since the part that we were was unhappy, why should the part that we shall be enjoy a better fortune? Who can assure us that those unending combinations and endeavours will not be more sorrowful, more awkward and more baneful than those which we are leaving; and how shall we explain that these have come about after so many millionsof others which should have opened the eyes of the genius of infinity? It is idle to persuade ourselves, as Hindu wisdom would, that our sorrows are but illusions and appearances: it is none the less true that they make us very really unhappy. Has the universe elsewhere a more complete consciousness, a more just and serene principle of thought than on this earth and in the worlds which we perceive? And, if it be true that it has somewhere attained that better thought, why does the thought that presides over the destinies of our earth not profit by it? Could no communication be possible between worlds which must have been born of the same idea and are steeped in it? What would be the mystery of that isolation?Are we to believe that the earth marks the most advanced stage and the most favoured experiment? What, then, can the thought of the universe have done and against what darkness must it have struggled, to have come no farther than this? But, on the other hand, can it have been stayed by that darkness or by those obstacles which, being unable to arise from any elsewhere, can but have sprung from itself? Who then could have set those insoluble problems to infinity and from what more remote and profound region than itself would they have issued? Some one, after all, must know what they ask; and, as behind infinity there can be none that is not infinity itself, it is impossible toimagine a malignant will in a will that leaves no point around it but what it fills entirely. Or are the experiments begun in the stars continued mechanically, by virtue of the force acquired, without regard to their uselessness and to their pitiful consequences, according to the custom of nature, which knows nothing of our parsimony and squanders the suns in space as it does the seed on earth, knowing that nothing can be lost? Or, again, is the whole question of our peace and happiness, like that of the fate of the worlds, reduced to knowing whether or not the infinity of endeavours and combinations be equal to that of eternity? Or, lastly, to come to the greatest probability, is it we who deceiveourselves, who know nothing, who see nothing and who consider imperfect that which is perhaps faultless, we, who are but an infinitesimal fragment of the intelligence which we judge with the aid of the little shreds of thought which it has vouchsafed to lend us?

How could we reply, how could our thoughts and glances penetrate the infinite and the invisible, we who neither understand nor even see the thing by which we see and which is the source of all our thoughts? In fact, as has been very justly observed, man does not see light itself. He sees only matter, or rather the small part of the great worlds which he knows by the name of matter, touched by light. He does not perceive the immense rays that cross the heavens saveat the moment when they are stopped by an object of the nature of those which his eye is accustomed to see upon this earth: were it otherwise, the whole space filled with innumerable suns and boundless forces, instead of being an abyss of absolute darkness which absorbs and extinguishes the clusters of beams that shoot across it from every side, would be but a prodigious, untenable ocean of flashes. Shakespeare’s famous lines:

“There are more things in heaven and earth,Horatio,Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

have long since become utterly inadequate. There are no longer more things than our philosophy can dream of or imagine: there is none but things which it cannotdream of, there is nothing but the unimaginable; and, if we do not even see the light, which is the only thing that we believed we saw, it may be said that there is nothing all around us but the invisible.

We move in the illusion of seeing and knowing that which is strictly indispensable to our little lives. As for all the rest, which is well-nigh everything, our organs not only debar us from reaching, seeing or feeling it, but even restrain us from suspecting what it is, just as they would prevent us from understanding it, if an intelligence of a different order were to bethink itself of revealing or explaining it to us. It is impossible for us, therefore, to appreciate in anydegree whatsoever, in the smallest conceivable respect, the present state of the universe and to say, as long as we are men, whether it follows a straight line or describes an immense circle, whether it is growing wiser or madder, whether it is advancing towards the eternity which has no end or retracing its steps towards that which had no beginning. Our sole privilege within our tiny confines is to struggle towards that which appears to us the best and to remain heroically persuaded that no part of what we do within those confines can ever be wholly lost.

But let not all these insoluble questions drive us towards fear. From the point of view of our future beyond the grave, it is in no way necessary that we should have an answer to everything. Whether the universe have already found its consciousness, whether it find it one day or see it everlastingly, it could not exist for the purpose of being unhappy and of suffering, neither in its entirety, nor in any one of its parts; and it matters little ifthe latter be invisible or incommensurable, considering that the smallest is as great as the greatest in what has neither limit nor measure. To torture a point is the same thing as to torture the worlds; and, if it torture the worlds, it is its own substance that it tortures. Its very destiny, in which we are placed, protects us. Our sufferings there could be but ephemeral; and nothing matters that is not eternal. It is possible, although somewhat incomprehensible, that parts should err and go astray; but it is impossible that sorrow should be one of its lasting and necessary laws; for it would have brought that law to bear against itself. In like manner, the universe is and must be its own law and itssole master; if not, the law or the master whom it must obey would then be the universe; and the centre of a word which we pronounce without being able to grasp its scope would be simply displaced. If it be unhappy, that means that it wills its own unhappiness; if it will its unhappiness, it is mad; and, if it appear to us mad, that means that our reason works contrary to everything and to the only laws possible, seeing that they are eternal, or, to speak more humbly, that it judges what it wholly fails to understand.

Everything, therefore, must finish, or perhaps everything already is, if not in a state of happiness, at least in a state exempt from all suffering, all anxiety, all lasting unhappiness; and what, after all, is our happiness upon this earth, if it be not the absence of sorrow, anxiety and unhappiness?

But it is childish to talk of happiness and unhappiness where infinity is in question. The idea which we entertain of happiness and unhappiness is something sospecial, so human, so fragile that it does not exceed our stature and falls to dust as soon as we go beyond its little sphere. It proceeds entirely from a few accidents of our nerves, which are made to appreciate very slight happenings, but which could as easily have felt everything the reverse way and taken pleasure in that which is now pain. We believe that we see nothing hanging over us but catastrophes, deaths, torments and disasters; we shiver at the mere thought of the great interplanetary spaces, with their cold and formidable and gloomy solitudes; and we imagine that the revolving worlds are as unhappy as ourselves because they freeze, or clash together, or are consumed in unutterable flames. We inferfrom this that the genius of the universe is an outrageous tyrant, seized with a monstrous madness, and that it delights only in the torture of itself and all that it contains. To millions of stars, each many thousand times larger than our sun, to nebulæ whose nature and dimensions no figure, no word in our languages is able to express, we attribute our momentary sensibility, the little ephemeral and chance working of our nerves; and we are convinced that life there must be impossible or appalling, because we should feel too hot or too cold. It were much wiser to say to ourselves that it would need but a trifle, a few papillæ more or less to our skin, the slightest modification of our eyes and ears, to turn thetemperature, the silence and the darkness of space into a delicious spring-time, an unequalled music, a divine light. It were much more reasonable to persuade ourselves that the catastrophes which we think that we behold are life itself, the joy and one or other of those immense festivals of mind and matter in which death, thrusting aside at last our two enemies, time and space, will soon permit us to take part. Each world dissolving, extinguished, crumbling, burnt or colliding with another world and pulverized means the commencement of a magnificent experiment, the dawn of a marvellous hope and perhaps an unexpected happiness drawn direct from the inexhaustible unknown. What though they freeze or flame,collect or disperse, pursue or flee one another: mind and matter, no longer united by the same pitiful hazard that joined them in us, must rejoice at all that happens; for all is but birth and re-birth, a departure into an unknown filled with wonderful promises and maybe an anticipation of some unutterable event....

And, should they stand still one day, become fixed and remain motionless, it will not be that they have encountered calamity, nullity or death; but they will have entered into a thing so fair, so great, so happy and bathed in such certainties that they will for ever prefer it to all the prodigious chances of an infinity which nothing can impoverish.

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