ity
without outlet, wherein nothing perishes, wherein everything is
dispersed, but nothing lost. Neither a body nor a thought can drop out
of the universe, out of time and space. Not an atom of our flesh, not
a quiver of our nerves will go where they will cease to be, for there
is no place where anything ceases to be. The brightness of a star
extinguished millions of years ago still wanders in the ether where
our eyes will perhaps behold it this very night, pursuing its endless
road. It is the same with all that we see, as with all that we do not
see. To be able to do away with a thing, that is to say, to fling it
into nothingness, nothingness would have to exist; and, if it exist,
under whatever form, it is no longer nothingness. As soon as we
try to analyze it, to define it, or to understand it, thoughts and
expressions fail us, or create that which they are struggling to deny.
It is as contrary to the nature of our reason and probably of all
imaginable reason to conceive nothingness as to conceive limits to
infinity. Nothingness, besides, is but a negative infinity, a sort of
infinity of darkness opposed to that which our intelligence strives to
enlighten, or rather it is but a child-name or nickname which our mind
has bestowed upon that which it has not attempted to embrace, for we
call nothingness all that which escapes our senses or our reason and
exists without our knowledge. The more that human thought rises and
increases, the less comprehensible does nothingness become. In any
case--and this is what matters here--if nothingness were possible,
since it could not be anything whatever, it could not be dreadful.

XII

THE SURVIVAL OF OUR CONSCIOUSNESS

Next comes survival with our consciousness of to-day. I have broached
this question in an essay on _Immortality_,[2] of which I will only
reproduce an essential passage, contenting myself with supporting it
with a few new considerations.

[Footnote 2: This essay forms part of the volume published under the
title of _The Measure of the Hours_.--TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.]

What composes this sense of the ego which turns each of us into
the centre of the universe, the only point that matters in space
and time? Is it formed of sensations of our body, or of thoughts
independent of our body? Would our body be conscious of itself without
our mind? And, on the other hand, what would our mind be without our
body? We know bodies without mind, but no mind without a bod