w THE IDEA OF NOTHING 295 



effort by which we strive to create this image simply 

 ends in making us swing to and fro between the 

 vision of an outer and that of an inner reality. In this 

 coming and going of our mind between the without 

 and the within, there is a point, at equal distance from 

 both, in which it seems to us that we no longer perceive 

 the one, and that we do not yet perceive the other : it 

 is there that the image of &quot; Nothing &quot; is formed. In 

 reality, we then perceive both, having reached the point 

 where the two terms come together, and the image of 

 Nothing, so defined, is an image full of things, an image 

 that includes at once that of the subject and that of 

 the object and, besides, a perpetual leaping from one 

 to the other and the refusal ever to come to rest finally 

 on either. Evidently this is not the nothing that we 

 can oppose to being, and put before or beneath being, 

 for it already includes existence in general. 



But we shall be told that, if the representation of 

 Nothing, visible or latent, enters into the reasonings 

 of philosophers, it is not as an image, but as an idea. 

 It may be agreed that we do not imagine the annihila 

 tion of everything, but it will be claimed that we can 

 conceive it. We conceive a polygon with a thousand 

 sides, said Descartes, although we do not see it in 

 imagination : it is enough that we can clearly represent 

 the possibility of constructing it. So with the idea of 

 the annihilation of everything. Nothing simpler, it 

 will be said, than the procedure by which we construct 

 the idea of it. There is, in fact, not a single object of 

 our experience that we cannot suppose annihilated. 

 Extend this annihilation of a first object to a second, 

 then to a third, and so on as long as you please : 

 the nought is the limit toward which the operation 

 tends. And the nought so defined is the annihilation 



