If a diabolical fraud had not led them astray at that point, they might have recognized in the harmony of this principle of independent existence (with its main idea common to all and its expression so varied) a faith similar to that in the Word, which implies a vow--the voluntary restitution of breath to its divine Source. For every creature, born of the impression of Divine Unity upon indeterminate matter, is the very acknowledgment that he makes to his Creator, and the expression of the nothingness from which he has been drawn. This is the living, breathing rhythm of the world; where Man, dowered with consciousness and language, has been instituted their priest, to make dedication and offering of them,--and, of his own nothingness united to essential grace, to make a filial gift of himself, through love’s most intimate choice. But these blind eyes refused to recognize unconditional being; and to him whom they call Buddha was it given to perfect the Pagan blasphemy. To return to this comparison of the Word; from the moment that they ignored the object of the discourse, its order and sequence escaped them entirely, and nothing remained but the ravings of delirium. But a horror of that which is not the Absolute is essential to man; and to escape the frightful circle of your vanity, Buddha, you have not hesitated to embrace Nothingness! For instead of explaining all things by their final end, he searched in himself for their intrinsic principle; and, finding there only nothingness, his doctrine teaches this monstrous communion. This is the method; that the Sage,--having banished successively from his mind the ideas of form and of space, and the very idea of an idea,--arrives finally at Nothingness, and so enters into Nirvana. And people are awed by this revelation! As for me, I find that to the idea of Nothingness they have added that of Enjoyment. This seems to me the last and most Satanic mystery; the silence of a creature intrenched in its final refusal, the incestuous quietude of a soul seated on its integral difference! THE SEDENTARY