ty. In this coming and going of our mind
between the without and the within, there is a point, at equal distance
from both, in which it seems to us that we no longer perceive the one,
and that we do not yet perceive the other: it is there that the image of
"Nothing" is formed. In reality, we then perceive both, having reached
the point where the two terms come together, and the image of Nothing,
so defined, is an image full of things, an image that includes at once
that of the subject and that of the object and, besides, a perpetual
leaping from one to the other and the refusal ever to come to rest
finally on either. Evidently this is not the nothing that we can oppose
to being, and put before or beneath being, for it already includes
existence in general.

But we shall be told that, if the representation of Nothing, visible or
latent, enters into the reasonings of philosophers, it is not as an
image, but as an idea. It may be agreed that we do not imagine the
annihilation of everything, but it will be claimed that we can conceive
it. We conceive a polygon with a thousand sides, said Descartes,
although we do not see it in imagination: it is enough that we can
clearly represent the possibility of constructing it. So with the idea
of the annihilation of everything. Nothing simpler, it will be said,
than the procedure by which we construct the idea of it. There is, in
fact, not a single object of our experience that we cannot suppose
annihilated. Extend this annihilation of a first object to a second,
then to a third, and so on as long as you please: the nought is the
limit toward which the operation tends. And the nought so defined is the
annihilation of everything. That is the theory. We need only consider it
in this form to see the absurdity it involves.

An idea constructed by the mind is an idea only if its pieces are
capable of coexisting; it is reduced to a mere word if the elements that
we bring together to compose it are driven away as fast as we assemble
them. When I have defined the circle, I easily represent a black or a
white circle, a circle in cardboard, iron, or brass, a transparent or an
opaque circle--but not a square circle, because the law of the
generation of the circle excludes the possibility of defining this
figure with straight lines. So my mind can represent any existing thing
whatever as annihilated;--but if the annihilation of anything by the
mind is an operation whose mechanism implies that i