WHATEVER the ultimate truth may be, whether we admit the abstract, absolute and perfect infinity  –  the changeless, immovable infinity which has attained perfection and which knows everything, to which our reason tends  –  or whether we prefer that offered to us by the evidence, here below undeniable, of our senses m the infinity which seeks itself, which is still evolving and not yet established  –  it behoves us above all to foresee in it our fate, which, in any case, must end by absorption in that very infinity.

The first infinity, the ideal infinity, is so strangely contrary to all that we see that it is best not to attack it until we have tried to explore the second. Moreover, it is quite possible that it may succeed the other. As we have said, that which has not taken place in the eternity before may happen in the eternity after us; and nothing save innumerous accidents is opposed to the prospect that the universe may at last acquire the integral consciousness that will establish it at its climax. After giving a glance, useless, for that matter, and impotent, at all that may perhaps arise, we shall try to interrogate, without hope of answer, the mystery of the boundless peace into which it is possible that we may sink with the other worlds.