_All_, to which it is very closely
akin.

How then can the idea of Nought be opposed to that of All? Is it not
plain that this is to oppose the full to the full, and that the
question, "Why does something exist?" is consequently without meaning, a
pseudo-problem raised about a pseudo-idea? Yet we must say once more why
this phantom of a problem haunts the mind with such obstinacy. In vain
do we show that in the idea of an "annihilation of the real" there is
only the image of all realities expelling one another endlessly, in a
circle; in vain do we add that the idea of non-existence is only that of
the expulsion of an imponderable existence, or a "merely possible"
existence, by a more substantial existence which would then be the true
reality; in vain do we find in the _sui generis_ form of negation an
element which is not intellectual--negation being the judgment of a
judgment, an admonition given to some one else or to oneself, so that it
is absurd to attribute to negation the power of creating ideas of a new
kind, viz. ideas without content;--in spite of all, the conviction
persists that before things, or at least under things, there is
"Nothing." If we seek the reason of this fact, we shall find it
precisely in the feeling, in the social and, so to speak, practical
element, that gives its specific form to negation. The greatest
philosophic difficulties arise, as we have said, from the fact that the
forms of human action venture outside of their proper sphere. We are
made in order to act as much as, and more than, in order to think--or
rather, when we follow the bent of our nature, it is in order to act
that we think. It is therefore no wonder that the habits of action give
their tone to those of thought, and that our mind always perceives
things in the same order in which we are accustomed to picture them when
we propose to act on them. Now, it is unquestionable, as we remarked
above, that every human action has its starting-point in a
dissatisfaction, and thereby in a feeling of absence. We should not act
if we did not set before ourselves an end, and we seek a thing only
because we feel the lack of it. Our action proceeds thus from "nothing"
to "something," and its very essence is to embroider "something" on the
canvas of "nothing." The truth is that the "nothing" concerned here is
the absence not so much of a thing as of a utility. If I bring a visitor
into a room that I have not yet furnished, I say to him that