pe of answer, the mystery of the boundless peace into which
it is possible that we may sink with the other worlds.

XXVI

THE SAME, CONTINUED

Behold us, then, in the infinity of those worlds, the stellar
infinity, the infinity of the heavens, which assuredly veils other
things from our eyes, but could never be a total illusion. It seems to
us to be peopled only with objects--planets, suns, stars, nebulae,
atoms, imponderous fluids--which move, unite and separate, repel and
attract one another, which shrink and expand, displace one another
incessantly and never arrive, which measure space in that which has
no limit and number the hours in that which has no term. In a word,
we are in an infinity that seems to have almost the same character,
the same habits as that power in the midst of which we breathe and
which, upon our earth, we call nature or life.

What will be our fate in that infinity? It is not vain to ask one's
self the question, even if we should mingle with it after losing all
consciousness, all notion of the ego, even if our existence should be
no more than a little substance without name, soul or matter--one
cannot tell--suspended in the equally nameless abyss that replaces
time and space. It is not vain to ask one's self the question, for we
are concerned with the history of the worlds or of the universe; and
this history, far more than that of our petty existence, is our own
great history, in which perhaps something of ourselves or something
incomparably better and vaster will end by finding us again some day.

XXVII

SHALL WE BE UNHAPPY THERE?

Shall we be unhappy there? It is hardly reassuring when we consider
the habits of our nature and remember that we form part of a universe
that has not yet collected its wisdom. We have seen, it is true, that
good and bad fortune exist only in so far as regards our body and
that, when we have lost the agent of our sufferings, we shall not meet
any of the earthly sorrows again. But our anxiety does not end here;
and will not our mind, lingering upon our erstwhile sorrows, drifting
derelict from world to world, unknown to itself in the unknowable that
seeks itself hopelessly; will not our mind know here the frightful
torture of which we have already spoken and which is doubtless the
last which the imagination can touch with its wing? Lastly, if there
were nothing left of our body and our mind, there would still remain
the matter and the sp