296 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



implies the latent affirmation of its replacement by some- 

 thing else, which we systematically leave on one side. 

 But the negative form of negation benefits by the affirma- 

 tion at the bottom of it. Bestriding the positive solid 

 reality to which it is attached, this phantom objectifies 

 itself. Thus is formed the idea of the void or of a partial 

 nought, a thing being supposed to be replaced, not by 

 another thing, but by a void which it leaves, that is, by 

 the negation of itself. Now, as this operation works on 

 anything whatever, we suppose it performed on each thing 

 in turn, and finally on all things in block. We thus obtain 

 the idea of absolute Nothing. If now we analyze this idea 

 of Nothing, we find that it is, at bottom, the idea of 

 Everything, together with a movement of the mind that 

 keeps jumping from one thing to another, refuses to stand 

 still, and concentrates all its attention on this refusal by 

 never determining its actual position except by relation 

 to that which it has just left. It is therefore an idea 

 eminently comprehensive and full, as full and compre- 

 hensive as the idea of All, to which it is very closely akin. 



How then can the idea of Nought be opposed to that 

 of All? Is it not plain that this is to oppose the full to 

 the full, and that the question, "Why does something 

 exist?" is consequently without meaning, a pseudo- 

 problem raised about a pseudo-idea? Yet we must say 

 once more why this phantom of a problem haunts the mind 

 with such obstinacy. In vain do we show that in the 

 idea of an "annihilation of the real" there is only the image 

 of all realities expelling one another endlessly, in a circle; 

 in vain do we add that the idea of non-existence is only 

 that of the expulsion of an imponderable existence, or a 

 "merely possible" existence, by a more substantial ex- 

 istence which would then be the true reality; in vain do we 

 find in the sui generis form of negation an element which 



