The priest arose; business matters called him elsewhere.
"I flatter myself I've floored him!" said Pécuchet. "One word more. Since the existence of the world is but a continual passage from life to death, and from death to life, so far from everything existing, nothing is. But everything is becoming—do you understand?"
"Yes; I do understand—or rather I don't."
Idealism in the end exasperated Bouvard.
"I don't want any more of it. The famous cogito stupefies me. Ideas of things are taken for the things themselves. What we understand very slightly is explained by means of words which we don't understand at all—substance, extension, force, matter, and soul. So much abstraction, imagination. As for God, it is impossible to know in what way He is, if He is at all. Formerly, He used to cause the wind, the thunderstorms, revolutions. At present, He is diminishing. Besides, I don't see the utility of Him."
"And morality—in this state of affairs."
"Ah! so much the worse."
"It lacks a foundation in fact," said Pécuchet.
And he remained silent, driven into a corner by premises which he had himself laid down. It was a surprise—a crushing bit of logic.
Bouvard no longer even believed in matter.