276 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



to what hides behind them, this is what I find: — Exist- 

 ence appears to me like a conquest over nought. I say 

 to myself that there might be, that indeed there ought to 

 be, nothing, and I then wonder that there is something. 

 Or I represent all reality extended on nothing as on a 

 carpet : at first was nothing, and being has come by super- 

 addition to it. Or, yet again, if something has always 

 existed, nothing must always have served as its substratum 

 or receptacle, and is therefore eternally prior. A glass 

 may have always been full, but the liquid it contains never- 

 theless fills a void. In the same way, being may have 

 always been there, but the nought which is filled, and, as 

 it were, stopped up by it, pre-exists for it none the less, if 

 not in fact at least in right. In short, I cannot get rid of 

 the idea that the full is an embroidery on the canvas 

 of the void, that being is superimposed on nothing, and 

 that in the idea of "nothing" there is less than in that of 

 "something." Hence all the mystery. 



It is necessary that this mystery should be cleared up. 

 It is more especially necessary, if we put duration and 

 free choice at the base of things. For the disdain of 

 metaphysics for all reality that endures comes precisely 

 from this, that it reaches being only by passing through 

 "not-being," and that an existence which endures seems 

 to it not strong enough to conquer non-existence and itself 

 posit itself. It is for this reason especially that it is in- 

 clined to endow true being with a logical, and not a psy- 

 chological nor a physical existence. For the nature of a 

 purely logical existence is such that it seems to be self- 

 sufficient and to posit itself by the effect alone of the force 

 immanent in truth. If I ask myself why bodies or minds 

 exist rather than nothing, I find no answer; but that a 

 logical principle, such as A = A, should have the power 

 of creating itself, triumphing over the nought through- 



