282 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



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 "nought" or the "void," 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 prefer- 

 ence 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 

 interference between, this feeling of preference and this 

 idea of substitution. 



Such is the mechanism of the operation by which our 

 mind annihilates an object and succeeds in represent- 

 ing in the external world a partial nought. Let us now 

 see how it represents it within itself. We find in our- 

 selves phenomena that are produced, and not phenomena 

 that are not produced. I experience a sensation or an 

 emotion, I conceive an idea, I form a resolution: my 

 consciousness perceives these facts, which are so many 

 presences, and there is no moment in which facts of this 

 kind are not present to me. I can, no doubt, interrupt 

 by thought the course of my inner life; I may suppose 

 that I sleep without dreaming or that I have ceased to 

 exist; but at the very instant when I make this supposi- 

 tion, I conceive myself, I imagine myself watching over my 

 slumber or surviving my annihilation, and I give up per- 

 ceiving myself from within only by taking refuge in the 

 perception of myself from without. That is to say that 

 here again the full always succeeds the full, and that an 



