And will this everything wherein we shall be included, in a world ever seeking itself, continue a prey to new and perpetual and perhaps painful experiences? Since the part that we were was unhappy, why should the part that we shall be enjoy a better fortune? Who can assure us that yonder unending combinations and endeavours will not be more sorrowful, more stupid and more baneful than those which we are leaving; and how shall we explain that these have come about after so many millions of others which ought to have opened the eyes of the genius of infinity? It is idle to persuade ourselves, as Hindu wisdom would, that our sorrows are but illusions and appearances: it is none the less true that they make us very really unhappy. Has the universe elsewhere a more complete consciousness, a more just and serene understanding than on this earth and in the worlds which we discern? And, if it be true that it has somewhere attained that better understanding, why does the mind that presides over the destinies of our earth not profit by it? Is no communication possible between worlds which must have been born of the same idea and which lie in its depths? What would be the mystery of that isolation? Are we to believe that the earth marks the farthest stage and the most successful experiment? What, then, can the mind of the universe have done and against what darkness must it have struggled, to have come only to this? But, on the other hand, that darkness and those barriers which can have come only from itself, since they could have arisen no elsewhere, have they the power to stay its progress? Who then could have set those insoluble problems to infinity and from what more remote and profound region than itself could they have issued? Some one, after all, must know the answer to them; and, as behind infinity there can be none that is not infinity itself, it is impossible to imagine a malignant will in a will that leaves no point around it which is not wholly covered. Or are the experiments begun in the stars continued mechanically, by virtue of the force acquired, without regard to their uselessness and their pitiful consequences, according to the custom of nature, who knows nothing of our parsimony and squanders the suns in space as she does the seed on earth, knowing that nothing can be lost? Or, again, is the whole question of our peace and happiness, like that of the fate of the worlds, reduced to knowing whether or not the infinity of endeavours and combinations be equal to that of eternity? Or, lastly, to come to what is most likely, is it we who deceive ourselves, who know nothing, who see nothing and who consider imperfect that which is perhaps faultless, we, who are but an infinitesimal fragment of the intelligence which we judge by the aid of the little shreds of understanding which it has vouchsafed to lend us? 5