r the same
problem recurs, this time in its full breadth and generality: Whence
comes it, and how can it be understood, that anything exists? Even here,
in the present work, when matter has been defined as a kind of descent,
this descent as the interruption of a rise, this rise itself as a
growth, when finally a Principle of creation has been put at the base of
things, the same question springs up: How--why does this principle exist
rather than nothing?

Now, if I push these questions aside and go straight to what hides
behind them, this is what I find:--Existence appears to me like a
conquest over nought. I say to myself that there might be, that indeed
there ought to be, nothing, and I then wonder that there is something.
Or I represent all reality extended on nothing as on a carpet: at first
was nothing, and being has come by superaddition to it. Or, yet again,
if something has always existed, nothing must always have served as its
substratum or receptacle, and is therefore eternally prior. A glass may
have always been full, but the liquid it contains nevertheless fills a
void. In the same way, being may have always been there, but the nought
which is filled, and, as it were, stopped up by it, pre-exists for it
none the less, if not in fact at least in right. In short, I cannot get
rid of the idea that the full is an embroidery on the canvas of the
void, that being is superimposed on nothing, and that in the idea of
"nothing" there is _less_ than in that of "something." Hence all the
mystery.

It is necessary that this mystery should be cleared up. It is more
especially necessary, if we put duration and free choice at the base of
things. For the disdain of metaphysics for all reality that endures
comes precisely from this, that it reaches being only by passing through
"not-being," and that an existence which endures seems to it not strong
enough to conquer non-existence and itself posit itself. It is for this
reason especially that it is inclined to endow true being with a
_logical_, and not a psychological nor a physical existence. For the
nature of a purely logical existence is such that it seems to be
self-sufficient and to posit itself by the effect alone of the force
immanent in truth. If I ask myself why bodies or minds exist rather than
nothing, I find no answer; but that a logical principle, such as A=A,
should have the power of creating itself, triumphing over the nought
throughout eternity, seems to me na