y. It is
almost certain that an intellect devoid of senses, devoid of organs to
create and nourish it, exists; but it is impossible to imagine that
ours could thus exist and yet remain similar to that which derived
from our sensibility all that gave it life.

XIII

IT SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE

This ego, as we conceive it when we reflect upon the consequences of
its destruction, this ego is neither our mind nor our body, since
we recognize that both are waves that flow away and are renewed
incessantly. Is it an immovable point, which could not be form or
substance, for these are always in evolution, nor life, which is the
cause or effect of form and substance? In truth, it is impossible for
us to apprehend or define it, to tell where it dwells. When we try to
go back to its last source, we find hardly more than a succession of
memories, a series of ideas, confused, for that matter, and unsettled,
attached to the one instinct of living: a series of habits of our
sensibility and of conscious or unconscious reactions against the
surrounding phenomena. When all is said, the most steadfast point of
that nebula is our memory, which seems, on the other hand, to be a
somewhat external, a somewhat accessory faculty and, in any case, one
of the frailest faculties of our brain, one of those which disappear
the most promptly at the least disturbance of our health. "As an
English poet has very truly said, that which clamours aloud for
eternity is the very part of me that will perish."

It matters not: that uncertain, indiscernible, fleeting and precarious
ego is so much the centre of our being, interests us so exclusively,
that every reality of our life disappears before this phantom. It is a
matter of utter indifference to us that throughout eternity our body
or its substance should know every joy and every glory, undergo the
most splendid and delightful transformations, become flower, perfume,
beauty, light, air, star; it is likewise indifferent to us that our
intellect should expand until it mixes with the life of the worlds,
understands and governs it. We are persuaded that all this will not
affect us, will give us no pleasure, will not happen to ourselves,
unless that memory of a few almost always insignificant facts
accompany us and witness those unimaginable joys.

"I care not," says this narrow ego, in its firm resolve to understand
nothing. "I care not if the loftiest, the freest, the fairest portions
of my mind be