eternally living and radiant in the supreme gladnesses:
they are no longer mine; I do not know them. Death has cut the network
of nerves or memories that connected them with I know not what centre
wherein lies the sensitive point which I feel to be all myself. They
are now set loose, floating in space and time, and their fate is as
unknown to me as that of the most distant constellations. Anything
that occurs exists for me only upon condition that I be able to
recall it within that mysterious being which is I know not where and
precisely nowhere, which I turn like a mirror about this world whose
phenomena take shape only in so far as they are reflected in it."

Let us then consider that all that composes our consciousness comes
first of all from our body. Our mind does but organize that which
is supplied by our senses; and even the images and words--which in
reality are but images--by the aid of which it strives to tear itself
from those senses and deny their sway are borrowed from them. How
could that mind remain what it was when there is nothing left to it of
that which formed it? When our mind no longer has a body, what shall
it carry with it into infinity whereby to recognize itself, seeing
that it knows itself only by grace of that body? A few memories of a
life in common? Will those memories, which were already fading in this
world, suffice to separate it for ever from the rest of the universe,
in boundless space and in unlimited time?

XIV

THE SAME, CONTINUED

"But," I shall be told, "there is more in us than the intellect
discovers. We have many things within us which our senses have not
placed there; we contain a being superior to the one we know."

That is probable, nay, certain: the share occupied by unconsciousness,
that is to say, by that which represents the universe, is enormous and
preponderant. But how shall the ego which we know and whose destiny
alone concerns us recognize all those things and that superior being
whom it has never known? What will it do in the presence of that
stranger? If I be told that stranger is myself, I will readily agree;
but was that which upon earth felt and measured my joys and sorrows
and gave birth to the few memories and thoughts that remain to me,
was that this unmoved, unseen stranger who existed in me without my
cognizance, even as I am probably about to live in him without his
concerning himself with a presence that will bring him but the pitiful
reco