iv] THE IDEA OF 'NOTHING' 297 



is not intellectual — negation being the judgment of a 

 judgment, an admonition given to some one else or to 

 oneself, so that it is absurd to attribute to negation the 

 power of creating ideas of a new kind, viz. ideas without 

 content ; — in spite of all, the conviction persists that before 

 things, or at least under things, there is "Nothing." If 

 we seek the reason of this fact, we shall find it precisely 

 in the feeling, in the social and, so to speak, practical 

 element, that gives its specific form to negation. The 

 greatest philosophic difficulties arise, as we have said, 

 from the fact that the forms of human action venture 

 outside of their proper sphere. We are made in order 

 to act as much as, and more than, in order to think — 

 or rather, when we follow the bent of our nature, it is in 

 order to act that we think. It is therefore no wonder 

 that the habits of action give their tone to those of thought, 

 and that our mind always perceives things in the same 

 order in which we are accustomed to picture them when we 

 propose to act on them. Now, it is unquestionable, as 

 we remarked above, that every human action has its 

 starting-point in a dissatisfaction, and thereby in a feeling 

 of absence. We should not act if we did not set before 

 ourselves an end, and we seek a thing only because we feel 

 the lack of it. Our action proceeds thus from "nothing" 

 to "something," and its very essence is to embroider 

 "something" on the canvas of "nothing." The truth 

 is that the "nothing" concerned here is the absence not 

 so much of a thing as of a utility. If I bring a visitor 

 into a room that I have not yet furnished, I say to him 

 that "there is nothing in it." Yet I know the room is 

 full of air; but, as we do not sit on air, the room truly 

 contains nothing that at this moment, for the visitor 

 and for myself, counts for anything. In a general way, 

 human work consists in creating utility; and, as long as 



