"But evil and good concern only thee—even like night and day, pleasure and pain, death and birth, which are relative only to one corner of space, to a special centre, to a particular interest. Since the Infinite is permanent, the Infinite is;—and that is all."
(The Devil's wings have been gradually expanding: now they cover all space.)
Anthony (now perceives nothing: a great faintness comes upon him):
"A hideous cold freezes me, even to the depths of my soul! This is beyond the extreme of pain! It is like a death that is deeper than death! I roll in the immensity of darkness; and the darkness itself enters within me. My consciousness bursts beneath this dilation of nothingness!"
The Devil. "Yet the knowledge of things comes to thee only through the medium of thy mind. Even as a concave mirror, it deforms the objects it reflects; and thou hast no means whatever of verifying their exactitude."
"Never canst thou know the universe in all its vastness; consequently it will never be possible for thee to obtain an idea of its cause, to have a just notion of God, nor even to say that the universe is infinite,—for thou must first be able to know what the Infinite is!"
"May not Form be, perhaps, an error of thy senses,—Substance a figment of thy imagination?"
"Unless, indeed, that the world being a perpetual flux[1] of things, appearance, on the contrary, be wholly true; illusion the only reality."
"But art thou sure thou dost see?—art thou even sure thou dost live? Perhaps nothing exists!"
(The Devil has seized Anthony, and, holding him at arms' length, glares at him with mouth yawning as though to devour him):