magine that they
can disturb the peace of eternity with their cannon shots!... The
whole universe must first pass through the retort. We shall have a war
between the two Americas, one between the New World and the Yellow
Continent, then the conquerors and the rest of the world.... That is
enough to fill up a few centuries. And I may not have seen all, my
eyes are not very good. Naturally each of these shocks will lead to
social struggles.

"It will all be accomplished in about a dozen centuries. (I am
rather inclined to think that it will be more rapid than it seems by
comparison with the past, for the movement becomes accelerated as
it proceeds.) No doubt we shall arrive at a rather impoverished
synthesis, for many constituent elements, some good, some bad, will
be destroyed in the process, the one being too delicate to resist the
hostile environment, the other injurious and impossible to assimilate.
Then we shall have the celebrated United States of the whole world;
and this union will be all the more solid, because, as is probable,
man will be menaced by a common danger. The canals of Mars, the
drying-up or cooling-off of the planet, some mysterious plague,
the pendulum of Poe, in short, the vision of an inevitable death
overwhelming the human race.... There will be great things to behold!
The Genius of the race, stretched to the uttermost, in its last
agonies.

"There will be, on the other hand, very little liberty; human
multiplicity when near its end will fuse itself into a Unity of Will.
Do we not see the beginnings already? Thus, without abrupt mutations,
will be effected the reintegration of the complex in the one, of old
Empedocles' Hatred in Love."

"And what then?"

"After that? A rest, and then it will all begin over again, there can
be no doubt. A young cycle. The new Kalpa. The world will turn once
more, on the re-forged wheel."

"And what is the answer to the riddle?"

"The Hindoos would tell you Siva. Siva, who creates and destroys;
destroys and creates."

"What a hideous dream."

"That is an affair of temperament. Wisdom liberates. To the Hindoos,
Buddha is the deliverer. As for me, curiosity is a sufficient reward."

"It would not be enough for me, and I cannot content myself either
with the wisdom of a selfish Buddha, who sets himself free by
deserting the rest. I know the Hindoos as you do, and I love them, but
even among them, Buddha has not said the last word of wisdom. Do you
rememb