All this would be, if not intelligible, at least acceptable to our reason; but in that universe float thousands of millions of worlds limited by space and time. They are born, they die and they are born again. They form part of the whole; and we see, therefore, that parts of that which has neither beginning nor end themselves begin and end. We, in fact, know only those parts; and they are of a number so infinite that in our eyes they fill all infinity. That which is going nowhere teems with that which appears to be going somewhere. That which has always known what it wants, or will never learn, seems eternally to be making more or less unfortunate experiments. What is that which has already attained perfection trying to achieve? Everything that we discover in that which could not possibly have an aim looks as though it were pursuing one with inconceivable ardour; and the spirit that animates what we see in that which should know everything and possess itself seems to know nothing and to seek itself without intermission. Thus all that is apparent to our senses in infinity gainsays that which our reason is compelled to ascribe to it. According as we fathom it, we understand better the depth of our want of understanding; and, the more we strive to penetrate the two incomprehensibilities that stand face to face, the more they contradict each other.
XXIII
WHICH OF THE TWO SHALL WE
KNOW?
What will become of us amid all this obscurity? Shall we leave the finite wherein we dwell to be swallowed up in this or the other infinite? In other words, shall we end by mingling with the infinite which our reason conceives, or shall we remain eternally in that which our eyes behold, that is to say, in numberless changing and ephemeral worlds? Shall we never leave those worlds which seem doomed to die and to be reborn eternally, to enter at last into that which, since all eternity, can neither have been born nor have died and which exists without either future or past? Shall we one day escape, with all that surrounds us, from the unhappy experiments, to find our way at last into peace, wisdom, the changeless and boundless consciousness, or into the hopeless unconsciousness? Shall we have the fate which our senses foretell, or that which our intelligence demands? Or are both senses and intelligence illusions, puny implements, vain weapons of a brief hour that were never intended to probe or contend with the universe? If there really be a contradiction, is it wise to accept it and to deem impossible that which we do not understand, seeing that we understand almost nothing? Is truth not at an immeasurable distance from those inconsistencies which appear to us enormous and irreducible and which, doubtless, are of no more importance than the rain that falls upon the sea?