t works on a part of
the whole, and not on the whole itself, then the extension of such an
operation to the totality of things becomes self-contradictory and
absurd, and the idea of an annihilation of everything presents the same
character as that of a square circle: it is not an idea, it is only a
word. So let us examine more closely the mechanism of the operation.

In fact, the object suppressed is either external or internal: it is a
thing or it is a state of consciousness. Let us consider the first case.
I annihilate in thought an external object: in the place where it was,
there is no longer anything.--No longer anything of that object, of
course, but another object has taken its place: there is no absolute
void in nature. But admit that an absolute void is possible: it is not
of that void that I am thinking when I say that the object, once
annihilated, leaves its place unoccupied; for by the hypothesis it is a
_place_, that is a void limited by precise outlines, or, in other words,
a kind of _thing_. The void of which I speak, therefore, is, at bottom,
only the absence of some definite object, which was here at first, is
now elsewhere and, in so far as it is no longer in its former place,
leaves behind it, so to speak, the void of itself. A being unendowed
with memory or prevision would not use the words "void" or "nought;" he
would express only what is and what is perceived; now, what is, and what
is perceived, is the _presence_ of one thing or of another, never the
_absence_ of anything. There is absence only for a being capable of
remembering and expecting. He remembered an object, and perhaps expected
to encounter it again; he finds another, and he expresses the
disappointment of his expectation (an expectation sprung from
recollection) by saying that he no longer finds anything, that he
encounters "nothing." Even if he did not expect to encounter the object,
it is a possible expectation of it, it is still the falsification of his
eventual expectation that he expresses by saying that the object is no
longer where it was. What he perceives in reality, what he will succeed
in effectively thinking of, is the presence of the old object in a new
place or that of a new object in the old place; the rest, all that is
expressed negatively by such words as "nought" or the "void," is not so
much thought as feeling, or, to speak more exactly, it is the tinge that
feeling gives to thought. The idea of annihilation or of par