shall we end by mingling with the infinite
which our reason conceives, or shall we remain eternally in that which
our eyes behold, that is to say, in numberless changing and ephemeral
worlds? Shall we never leave those worlds which seem doomed to die and
to be reborn eternally, to enter at last into that which, since all
eternity, can neither have been born nor have died and which exists
without either future or past? Shall we one day escape, with all that
surrounds us, from the unhappy experiments, to find our way at last
into peace, wisdom, the changeless and boundless consciousness, or
into the hopeless unconsciousness? Shall we have the fate which our
senses foretell, or that which our intelligence demands? Or are both
senses and intelligence illusions, puny implements, vain weapons of
a brief hour that were never intended to probe or contend with the
universe? If there really be a contradiction, is it wise to accept it
and to deem impossible that which we do not understand, seeing that we
understand almost nothing? Is truth not at an immeasurable distance
from those inconsistencies which appear to us enormous and irreducible
and which, doubtless, are of no more importance than the rain that
falls upon the sea?

XXIV

THE INFINITY WHICH BOTH OUR REASON
AND OUR SENSES CAN ADMIT

But, even to our poor understanding of to-day, the discrepancy between
the infinity conceived by our reason and that perceived by our senses
is perhaps more apparent than real. When we say that, in a universe
that has existed since all eternity, every experiment, every possible
combination has been made; when we declare that there is not a chance
that that which has not taken place in the uncountable past can take
place in the uncountable future, our imagination attributes to the
infinity of time a preponderance which it cannot possess. In truth,
all that infinity contains must be as infinite as the time at its
disposal; and the chances, encounters and combinations that lie
therein have not been exhausted in the eternity that goes before us
any more than they could be in the eternity that comes after us. There
is, therefore, no climax, no changelessness, no immovability. It is
probable that the universe is seeking and finding itself every day,
that it has not become entirely conscious and does not yet know what
it wants. It is almost certain that its ideal is still veiled by the
shadow of its immensity and almost evident that t