5
Before fathoming that sea, let us remark to those who aspire to maintain their ego that they are calling for the sufferings which they dread. The ego implies limits. The ego cannot subsist except in so far as it is separated from that which surrounds it. The stronger the ego, the narrower its limits and the clearer the separation. The more painful too; for the mind, if it remain as we know it—and we are not able to imagine it different—will no sooner have seen its limits than it will wish to overstep them; and, the more separated it feels, the greater will be its longing to unite with that which lies outside. There will therefore be an eternal struggle between its being and its aspirations. And really it would have served no object to be born and die only to arrive at these interminable contests. Have we not here yet one more proof that our ego, as we conceive it, could never subsist in the infinity where it must needs go, since it cannot go elsewhere? It behoves us therefore to clear away conceptions that emanate only from our body, even as the mists that veil the daylight from our sight emanate only from the lowlands. Pascal has said, once and for all:
“The narrow limits of our being conceal infinity from our view.”
6
On the other hand—for we must keep nothing back, nor turn from the adverse darkness should it seem nearest to the truth, nor show any bias—on the other hand, we can grant to those who yearn to remain as they are that the survival of an atom of themselves would suffice for a new entrance into an infinity from which their body no longer separates them.
If it seems impossible that anything—a movement, a vibration, a radiation—should stop or disappear, why then should thought be lost? There will, no doubt, subsist more than one idea powerful enough to allure the new ego, which will nourish itself and thrive on all that it will find in that boundless environment, just as the other ego, on this earth, nourished itself and throve on all that it met there. Since we have been able to acquire our present consciousness, why should it be impossible for us to acquire another? For that ego which is so dear to us and which we believe ourselves to possess was not made in a day; it is not at present what it was at the hour of our birth. Much more chance than purpose has entered into it; and much more alien substance than any inborn substance which it contained. It is but a long series of acquisitions and transformations, of which we do not become aware until the awakening of our memory; and its kernel, of which we do not know the nature, is perhaps more immaterial and less concrete than a thought. If the new environment which we enter on leaving our mother’s womb transforms us to such a point that there is, so to speak, no connection between the embryo that we were and the man that we have become, is it not right to think that the far newer, stranger, wider and richer environment which we enter on quitting life will transform us even more? We can see in what happens to us here a figure of what awaits us elsewhere and can readily admit that our spiritual being, liberated from its body, if it does not mingle at the first onset with the infinite, will develop itself there gradually, will choose itself a substance and, no longer trammelled by space and time, will go on for ever growing. It is very possible that our loftiest wishes of to-day will become the law of our future development. It is very possible that our best thoughts will welcome us on the farther shore and that the quality of our intellect will determine that of the infinite which crystallizes around it. Every hypothesis is permissible and every question, provided it be addressed to happiness; for unhappiness is no longer able to answer us. It finds no place in the human imagination that methodically explores the future. And, whatever be the force that survives us and presides over our existence in the other world, this existence, to presume the worst, could be no less great, no less happy than that of to-day. It will have no other career than infinity; and infinity is nothing if it be not felicity. In any case, it seems fairly certain that we spend in this world the only narrow, grudging, obscure and sorrowful moment of our destiny.
7
We have said that the peculiar sorrow of the mind is the sorrow of not knowing or not understanding, which includes the sorrow of being powerless; for he who knows the supreme causes, being no longer paralysed by matter, becomes one with them and acts with them; and he who understands ends by approving, or else the universe would be a mistake, which is not possible, an infinite mistake being inconceivable. I do not believe that another sorrow of the sheer mind can be imagined. The only one sorrow which, at first thought, might seem admissible—and which, in any case, could be but ephemeral—would arise from the sight of the pain and misery remaining on the earth which we have left. But this sorrow, after all, would be but one aspect and an insignificant phase of the sorrow of being powerless and of not understanding. As for the latter, though it is not only beyond the domain of our intelligence, but even at an insuperable distance from our imagination, we may say that it would be intolerable only if it were without hope. But, for that, the universe would have to abandon any attempt to understand itself, or else admit within itself an object that remained for ever foreign to it. Either the mind will not perceive its limits and, consequently, will not suffer from them, or else it will overstep them as it perceives them; for how could the universe have parts eternally condemned to form no part of itself and of its knowledge? Hence we cannot understand that the torture of not understanding, supposing it to exist for a moment, should not end by absorption in the state of infinity, which, if it be not happiness as we comprehend it, could be naught but an indifference higher and purer than joy.