s 



286 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



In other words, to represent an object as unreal cannot 

 consist in depriving it of every kind of existence, since the 

 representation of an object is necessarily that of the object 

 existing. Such an act consists simply in declaring that the 

 existence attached by our mind to the object, and in- 

 separable from its representation, is an existence wholly 

 ideal — that of a mere possible. But the "ideality" of an 

 object, and the " simple possibility" of an object, have 

 meaning only in relation to a reality that drives into the 

 region of the ideal, or of the merely possible, the object 

 which is incompatible with it. Suppose the stronger and 

 more substantial existence annihilated: it is the attenuated 

 and weaker existence of the merely possible that becomes 

 the reality itself, and you will no longer be representing 

 the object, then, as non-existent. In other words, and 

 however strange our assertion may seem, there is more, 

 and not less, in the idea of an object conceived as u not exist- 

 ing" than in the idea of this same object conceived as " exist- 

 i> n 9" °> for the idea of the object u not existing" is necessarily 

 the idea of the object "existing" with, in addition, the repre- 

 sentation of an exclusion of this object by the actual reality 

 taken in block. 



But it will be claimed that our idea of the non-existent 

 is not yet sufficiently cut loose from every imaginative 

 element, that it is not negative enough. "No matter," 

 we shall be told, "though the unreality of a thing consist 

 in its exclusion by other things; we want to know nothing 

 about that. Are we not free to direct our attention where 

 we please and how we please? Well then, after having 

 called up the idea of an object, and thereby, if you will 

 have it so, supposed it existent, we shall merely couple 

 to our affirmation a ' not/ and that will be enough to make 

 us think it non-existent. This is an operation entirely 

 intellectual, independent of what happens outside the 



