312 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



must affirm a non-reality equally objective, and, so to 

 say, equally real. In which we are both right and 

 wrong : wrong, because negation cannot be objectified 

 in so far as it is negative ; right, however, in that the 

 negation of a thing implies the latent affirmation of its 

 replacement by something else, which we systematically 

 leave on one side. But the negative form of negation 

 benefits by the affirmation at the bottom of it. Be 

 striding the positive solid reality to which it is attached, 

 this phantom objectifies itself. Thus is formed the idea 

 of the void or of a partial nought, a thing being supposed 

 to be replaced, not by another thing, but by a void 

 which it leaves, that is, by the negation of itself. Now, 

 as this operation works on anything whatever, we 

 suppose it performed on each thing in turn, and 

 finally on all things in block. We thus obtain the 

 idea of absolute Nothing. If now we analyse this idea 

 of Nothing, we find that it is, at bottom, the idea of 

 Everything, together with a movement of the mind 

 that keeps jumping from one thing to another, refuses 

 to stand still, and concentrates all its attention on this 

 refusal by never determining its actual position except 

 by relation to that which it has just left. It is there 

 fore an idea eminently comprehensive and full, as full 

 and comprehensive as the idea of All^ to which it is 

 very closely akin. 



How then can the idea of Nought be opposed to 

 that of All ? Is it not plain that this is to oppose the 

 full to the full, and that the question, &quot; Why does 

 something exist ? &quot; is consequently without meaning, 

 a pseudo-problem raised about a pseudo-idea ? Yet 

 we must say once more why this phantom of a problem 

 haunts the mind with such obstinacy. In vain do we 

 show that in the idea of an &quot; annihilation of the real &quot; 



