iv.i THE IDEA OF 'NOTHING' 275 



go from absence to presence, from the void to the full, in 

 virtue of the fundamental illusion of our understanding. 

 That is the error of which we noticed one consequence in 

 our last chapter. As we then anticipated, we must come 

 to close quarters with this error, and finally grapple with 

 it. We must face it in itself, in the radically false con- 

 ception which it implies of negation, of the void and of the 

 nought. 1 



Philosophers have paid little attention to the idea 

 of the nought. And yet it is often the hidden spring, 

 the invisible mover of philosophical thinking. From 

 the first awakening of reflection, it is this that pushes 

 to the fore, right under the eyes of consciousness, the 

 torturing problems, the questions that we cannot gaze 

 at without feeling giddy and bewildered. I have no 

 sooner commenced to philosophize than I ask myself 

 why I exist; and when I take account of the intimate 

 connection in which I stand to the rest of the universe, 

 the difficulty is only pushed back, for I want to know 

 why the universe exists; and if I refer the universe to a 

 Principle immanent or transcendent that supports it or 

 creates it, my thought rests on this principle only a few 

 moments, for the same problem recurs, this time in its 

 full breadth and generality: Whence comes it, and how 

 can it be 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 



1 The analysis of the idea of the nought which we give here (pp. 275- 

 298) has appeared before in the Revue philosophique (November 1906). 



