280 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



neath being, for it already includes existence in general. 



But we shall be told that, if the representation of Noth- 

 ing, visible or latent, enters into the reasonings of philoso- 

 phers, it is not as an image, but as an idea. It may be 

 agreed that we do not imagine the annihilation of every- 

 thing, but it will be claimed that we can conceive it. We 

 conceive a polygon with a thousand sides, said Descartes, 

 although we do not see it in imagination : it is enough that 

 we can clearly represent the possibility of constructing it. 

 So with the idea of the annihilation of everything. Noth- 

 ing simpler, it will be said, than the procedure by which 

 we construct the idea of it. There is, in fact, not a single 

 object of our experience that we cannot suppose annihilated. 

 Extend this annihilation of a first object to a second, 

 then to a third, and so on as long as you please: the nought 

 is the limit toward which the operation tends. And the 

 nought so defined is the annihilation 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 com- 

 pose 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 



