iv THE IDEA OF NOTHING 291 



understood, that anything exists ? Even here, in the 

 present work, when matter has been defined as a 

 kind of descent, this descent as the interruption of a 

 rise, this rise itself as a growth, when finally a Principle 

 of creation has been put at the base of things, the 

 same question springs up : How, why does this 

 principle exist rather than nothing ? 



Now, if I push these questions aside and go straight 

 to what hides behind them, this is what I find : Exist 

 ence appears to me like a conquest over nought. I 

 say to myself that there might be, that indeed there 

 ought to be, nothing, and I then wonder that there is 

 something. Or I represent all reality extended on 

 nothing as on a carpet : at first was nothing, and being 

 has come by superaddition to it. Or, yet again, if 

 something has always existed, nothing must always 

 have served as its substratum or receptacle, and is 

 therefore eternally prior. A glass may have always 

 been full, but the liquid it contains nevertheless fills a 

 void. In the same way, being may have always been 

 there, but the nought which is filled and, as it were, 

 stopped up by it, pre-exists for it none the less, if not 

 in fact at least in right. In short, I cannot get rid of 

 the idea that the full is an embroidery on the canvas 

 of the void, that being is superimposed on nothing, 

 and that in the idea of &quot; nothing &quot; there is less than in 

 that of &quot; something.&quot; Hence all the mystery. 



It is necessary that this mystery should be cleared 

 up. It is more especially necessary, if we put duration 

 and free choice at the base of things. For the disdain 

 of metaphysics for all reality that endures comes pre 

 cisely from this, that it reaches being only by passing 

 through &quot; not -being,&quot; and that an existence which 

 endures seems to it not strong enough to conquer 



