But we also live in a world in which our reason encounters only the impossible, the insoluble and the incomprehensible. The supreme interpretations do no more than shift the riddle, to permit us to obtain glimpses from a higher standpoint of the boundless immensity in which we are striving. Therefore, apart from the puerile explanations which, after successive changes of form, all the religions have drawn from the original religion, three hypotheses and no more offer themselves for our choice: on the one hand, nothingness, inertia and absolute death, which are inconceivable; on the other hand, chance and its eternal renewals, which are without change, hope, object or end, or which, if they led to anything, would lead either to an inconceivable annihilation or to the third hypothesis, according to which the best becomes infinite, even to total absorption in the imperfectible, the immutable, the immovable, which, as I have said elsewhere,[4] must have occurred already in the eternity that precedes us, since there is no reason why that which could not take place in this eternity should take place in the eternity to come, which is no more infinite, is no more extensive and offers no more chances than the past eternity and which is not of a different nature. The mother religion itself, the only one which is still acceptable, which takes account of everything and which has foreseen everything, does not escape this last dilemma by extending to thousands of millions of years the duration of a year of Brahma, that is to say, the period of evolution, of expiration, of externalization and activity, and to an equal number of thousands of millions of years the duration of a night of this god, that is to say, the period of involution, of inspiration, of internalization, of slumber or inertia, during which all is reabsorbed into the divinity or the sole absolute. It does not escape it either by next multiplying these days and nights by a hundred years which form one life and this life by a hundred lives which lead to figures that defy expression, after which another universe begins. Here, too, there would be either an eternal recommencement without hope or object, or, if there be progression, final perfection and immobility which ought already to be attained. Let each draw from all this such conclusions as he please or can, or bow once more, in silence, before the Unknowable. THE END FOOTNOTES: [1] The English translation of Fabre’s works, by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, is issued in America by the publishers of the present volume. [2] In the volume, published in 1904, entitled _The Double Garden_.--A. T. de M. [3] The first essay in _The Buried Temple_.--A. T. de M. [4] In _Our Eternity_.--A. T. de M. TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.