THE IDEA OF * NOTHING 289 



them ; only, if the present reality is not the one we 

 are seeking, we speak of the absence of this sought-for 

 reality wherever we find the presence of another. We 

 thus express what we have as a function of what we want. 

 This is quite legitimate in the sphere of action. But, 

 whether we will or no, we keep to this way of speaking, 

 and also of thinking, when we speculate on the nature 

 of things independently of the interest they have for 

 us. Thus arises the second of the two illusions. We 

 propose to examine this first. It is due, like the other, 

 to the static habits that our intellect contracts when it 

 prepares our action on things. Just as we pass through 

 the immobile to go to the moving, so we make use of 

 the void in order to think the full. 



We have met with this illusion already in dealing 

 with the fundamental problem of knowledge. The 

 question, we then said, is to know why there is order, 

 and not disorder, in things. But the question has 

 meaning only if we suppose that disorder, understood 

 as an absence of order, is possible, or imaginable, or 

 conceivable. Now, it is only order that is real ; but, 

 as order can take two forms, and as the presence of the 

 one may be said to consist in the absence of the other, 

 we speak of disorder whenever we have before us that 

 one of the two orders for which we are not looking. 

 The idea of disorder is then entirely practical. It 

 corresponds to the disappointment of a certain expecta 

 tion, and it does not denote the absence of all order, 

 but only the presence of that order which does not offer 

 us actual interest. So that whenever we try to deny 

 order completely, absolutely, we find that we are leap 

 ing from one kind of order to the other indefinitely, 

 and that the supposed suppression of the one and the 

 other implies the presence of the two. Indeed, if we 



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