296 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



of everything. That is the theory. We need only 

 consider it in this form to see the absurdity it involves. 



An idea constructed by the mind is an idea only if 

 its pieces are capable of coexisting ; it is reduced to a 

 mere word if the elements that we bring together to 

 compose it are driven away as fast as we assemble them. 

 When I have defined the circle, I easily represent a 

 black or a white circle, a circle in cardboard, iron, or 

 brass, a transparent or an opaque circle but not a 

 square circle, because the law of the generation of the 

 circle excludes the possibility of defining this figure with 

 straight lines. So my mind can represent any existing 

 thing whatever as annihilated ; but if the annihilation 

 of anything by the mind is an operation whose 

 mechanism implies that it works on a part of the 

 whole, and not on the whole itself, then the extension 

 of such an operation to the totality of things becomes 

 self-contradictory and absurd, and the idea of an anni 

 hilation of everything presents the same character as 

 that of a square circle : it is not an idea, it is only a 

 word. So let us examine more closely the mechanism 

 of the operation. 



In fact, the object suppressed is either external or 

 internal : it is a thing or it is a state of consciousness. 

 Let us consider the first case. I annihilate in thought 

 an external object : in the place where it was, there 

 is no longer anything. No longer anything of that 

 object, of course, but another object has taken its place : 

 there is no absolute void in nature. But admit that 

 an absolute void is possible : it is not of that void that 

 I am thinking when I say that the object, once anni 

 hilated, leaves its place unoccupied ; for by the hypo 

 thesis it is a place, that is a void limited by precise 

 outlines, or, in other words, a kind of thing. The void 



