on itself. And
what gives negation its subjective character is precisely this, that in
the discovery of a replacement it takes account only of the replaced,
and is not concerned with what replaces. The replaced exists only as a
conception of the mind. It is necessary, in order to continue to see it,
and consequently in order to speak of it, to turn our back on the
reality, which flows from the past to the present, advancing from
behind. It is this that we do when we deny. We discover the change, or
more generally the substitution, as a traveller would see the course of
his carriage if he looked out behind, and only knew at each moment the
point at which he had ceased to be; he could never determine his actual
position except by relation to that which he had just quitted, instead
of grasping it in itself.

To sum up, for a mind which should follow purely and simply the thread
of experience, there would be no void, no nought, even relative or
partial, no possible negation. Such a mind would see facts succeed
facts, states succeed states, things succeed things. What it would note
at each moment would be things existing, states appearing, events
happening. It would live in the actual, and, if it were capable of
judging, it would never affirm anything except the existence of the
present.

Endow this mind with memory, and especially with the desire to dwell on
the past; give it the faculty of dissociating and of distinguishing: it
will no longer only note the present state of the passing reality; it
will represent the passing as a change, and therefore as a contrast
between what has been and what is. And as there is no essential
difference between a past that we remember and a past that we imagine,
it will quickly rise to the idea of the "possible" in general.

It will thus be shunted on to the siding of negation. And especially it
will be at the point of representing a disappearance. But it will not
yet have reached it. To represent that a thing has disappeared, it is
not enough to perceive a contrast between the past and the present; it
is necessary besides to turn our back on the present, to dwell on the
past, and to think the contrast of the past with the present in terms of
the past only, without letting the present appear in it.

The idea of annihilation is therefore not a pure idea; it implies that
we regret the past or that we conceive it as regrettable, that we have
some reason to linger over it. The idea arises