Behold us then before the mystery of the cosmic consciousness. Although we are incapable of understanding the act of an infinity that would have to fold itself up in order to feel itself and consequently to define itself and separate itself from other things, this is not an adequate reason for declaring it impossible; for, if we were to reject all the realities and impossibilities that we do not understand, there would be nothing left for us to live upon. If this consciousness exist under the form which we have conceived, it is evident that we shall be there and take part in it. If there be a consciousness somewhere, or some thing that takes the place of consciousness, we shall be in that consciousness or that thing, because we cannot be elsewhere. And, as this consciousness or this thing cannot be unhappy, because it is impossible that infinity should exist for its own unhappiness, neither shall we be unhappy when we are in it. Lastly, if the infinity into which we shall be projected have no sort of consciousness nor anything that stands for it, the reason will be that consciousness or anything that might replace it is not indispensable to eternal happiness. 5 That, I think, is about as much as we may be permitted to declare, for the moment, to the spirit anxiously facing the unfathomable space wherein death will shortly hurl it. It can still hope to find there the fulfilment of its dreams; it will perhaps find less to dread than it had feared. If it prefer to remain expectant and to accept none of the hypotheses which I have expounded to the best of my power and without prejudice, it nevertheless seems difficult not to welcome, at least, this great assurance which we find at the bottom of every one of them, namely, that infinity could not be malevolent, seeing that, if it eternally tortured the least among us, it would be torturing something which it cannot tear out of itself and that it would therefore be torturing its very self.