iv THE IDEA OF * NOTHING 297 



of which I speak, therefore, is, at bottom, only the 

 absence of some definite object, which was here at first, 

 is now elsewhere and, in so far as it is no longer in its 

 former place, leaves behind it, so to speak, the void of 

 itself. A being unendowed with memory or prevision 

 would not use the words &quot; void &quot; or &quot; nought &quot; ; he 

 would express only what is and what is perceived ; 

 now, what is, and what is perceived, is the presence of 

 one thing or of another, never the absence of anything. 

 There is absence only for a being capable of remember 

 ing and expecting. He remembered an object, and 

 perhaps expected to encounter it again ; he finds 

 another, and he expresses the disappointment of his 

 expectation (an expectation sprung from recollection) 

 by saying that he no longer finds anything, that he 

 encounters &quot; nothing/ Even if he did not expect to 

 encounter the object, it is a possible expectation of it, 

 it is still the falsification of his eventual expectation, 

 that he expresses by saying that the object is no longer 

 where it was. What he perceives in reality, what he 

 will succeed in effectively thinking of, is the presence 

 of the old object in a new place or that of a new object 

 in the old place ; the rest, all that is expressed negatively 

 by such words as &quot; nought &quot; or the &quot; void,&quot; is not so 

 much thought as feeling, or, to speak more exactly, it 

 is the tinge that feeling gives to thought. The idea 

 of annihilation or of partial nothingness is therefore 

 formed here in the course of the substitution of one 

 thing for another, whenever this substitution is thought 

 by a mind that would prefer to keep the old thing in 

 the place of the new, or at least conceives this pre 

 ference as possible. The idea implies on the subjective 

 side a preference, on the objective side a substitution, 

 and is nothing else but a combination of, or rather an 



