290 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



go on, and persist in shutting our eyes to this move 

 ment of the mind and all it involves, we are no 

 longer dealing with an idea ; all that is left of disorder 

 is a word. Thus the problem of knowledge is com 

 plicated, and possibly made insoluble, by the idea that 

 order fills a void and that its actual presence is super 

 posed on its virtual absence. We go from absence to 

 presence, from the void to the full, in virtue of the 

 fundamental illusion of our understanding. That is 

 the error of which we noticed one consequence in our 

 last chapter. As we then anticipated, we must come 

 to close quarters with this error, and finally grapple 

 with it. We must face it in itself, in the radically 

 false conception which it implies of negation, of the 

 void and of the nought. 1 



Philosophers have paid little attention to the idea 

 of the nought. And yet it is often the hidden spring, 

 the invisible mover of philosophical thinking. From 

 the first awakening of reflexion, it is this that pushes 

 to the fore, right under the eyes of consciousness, the 

 torturing problems, the questions that we cannot gaze 

 at without feeling giddy and bewildered. I have no 

 sooner commenced to philosophize than I ask myself 

 why I exist ; and when I take account of the intimate 

 connection in which 1 stand to the rest of the 

 universe, the difficulty is only pushed back, for I 

 want to know why the universe exists ; and if I refer 

 the universe to a Principle immanent or transcendent 

 that supports it or creates it, my thought rests on 

 this principle only a few moments, for the same 

 problem recurs, this time in its full breadth and 

 generality : Whence comes it, and how can it be 



1 The analysis of the idea of the nought which we give here (pp. 290- 

 314) has appeared before in the Revue philosophique (November 1906). 



