1
Let us turn our thoughts towards it. The problem goes beyond humanity and embraces all things. It is possible, I think, to view infinity under two distinct aspects. Let us contemplate the first of them. We are plunged in a universe that has no limits in space or time. It can neither go forward nor go back. It has no origin. It never began, nor will it ever end. The myriads of years behind it are even as the myriads which it has yet to unroll. From all time it has been at the boundless centre of the days. It could have no aim, for, if it had one, it would have attained it in the infinity of the years that lie behind us; besides, that aim would lie outside itself and, if anything lay outside it, infinity would be bounded by that thing and would cease to be infinity. It is not making for anywhere, for it would have arrived there; consequently, all that the worlds within its pale, all that we ourselves do can have no influence upon it. All that it will do it has done. All that it has not done remains undone because it can never do it. If it have no mind, it will never have one. If it have one, that mind has been at its climax from all time and will remain there, changeless and immovable. It is as young as it has ever been and as old as it will ever be. It has made in the past all the efforts and all the trials which it will make in the future; and, as all the possible combinations have been exhausted since what we cannot even call the beginning, it does not seem as if that which has not taken place in the eternity that stretches before our birth can happen in the eternity that will follow our death. If it have not become conscious, it will never become conscious; if it know not what it wishes, it will continue in ignorance, hopelessly, knowing all or knowing nothing and remaining as near its end as its beginning.
This is the gloomiest thought to which man can attain. So far, I do not think that its depths have been sufficiently sounded. If it were really irrefutable—and some may contend that it is—if it actually contained the last word of the great riddle, it would be almost impossible to live in its shadow. Naught save the certainty that our conceptions of time and space are illusive and absurd can lighten the abyss wherein our last hope would perish.
2
The universe thus conceived would be, if not intelligible, at least admissible by our reason; but in that universe float billions 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 to be eternally experimenting with more or less ill-success. At what goal is it aiming, since it is already there? Everything that we discover in that which could not possibly have an object looks as though it were pursuing one with inconceivable ardour; and the mind 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 come to understand how deep is our want of understanding; and, the more we strive to penetrate the two incomprehensible problems that stand face to face, the more they contradict each other.
3
What will become of us amid all this confusion? 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 absorption in 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, from 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 this unhappy speculation, to find our way at last into peace, wisdom, changeless and boundless consciousness, or into hopeless unconsciousness? Shall we have the fate which our senses foretell, or that which our intelligence demands? Or are both senses and intelligence only illusions, puny implements, vain weapons of an hour, which were never intended to examine or defy 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 these inconsistencies which appear to us enormous and irreducible and which, doubtless, are of no more importance than the rain that falls upon the sea?