This ego, as we conceive it when we reflect upon the consequences of its destruction, this ego, therefore, is neither our mind nor our body, since we recognize that both are waves that roll by and are incessantly renewed. Is it an immovable point, which could not be form or substance, for these are always in evolution, nor yet life, which is the cause or effect of form and substance? In truth, it is impossible for us either to apprehend or define it, or even to say where it dwells. When we try to go back to its last source, we find little more than a succession of memories, a mass of ideas, confused, for that matter, and unsettled, all connected with the same instinct, the instinct of living: a mass of habits of our sensibility and of conscious or unconscious reactions against the surrounding phenomena. When all is said, the most steadfast point of that nebula is our memory, which seems, on the other hand, to be a somewhat external, a somewhat accessory faculty and, in any case, one of the frailest faculties of our brain, one of those which disappear the most promptly at the least disturbance of our health. As an English poet has very truly said, “that which cries aloud for eternity is the very part of me that will perish.” ----- Footnote 2: This essay forms part of the volume published under the title of _Life and Flowers_.—_Translator’s Note._ ----- 2 It matters not: that uncertain, indiscernible, fleeting and precarious ego is so much the centre of our being, interests us so exclusively, that every reality disappears before this phantom. It is utterly indifferent to us that, throughout eternity, our body or its substance should know every joy and every glory, undergo the most splendid and delightful transformations, become flower, perfume, beauty, light, air, star—and it is certain that it does so become and that we must look for our dead not in our graveyards, but in space and light and life—it is likewise indifferent to us that our intelligence should expand until it takes part in the life of the worlds, until it understands and governs it. We are persuaded that all this will not affect us, will give us no pleasure, will not happen to ourselves, unless that memory of a few almost always insignificant facts accompany us and witness those unimaginable joys.