why not?--The illusion which knows itself--is it in fact an illusion?
Does it not in some sort triumph over itself? Does it not attain to _the
sovereign reality_, that of the thought which thinks itself, that of the
dream which knows itself a dream, that _of nothingness which ceases to
be so_, in order to recognize itself and to assert itself?"[157] We are
gone back to ancient India. You will remark here three stages of
thought. The fugitive illusion is man. The infinite illusion is the
universe. The universal principle of the appearances which compose the
universe is nothingness. Here is the explanation of the universe!
Nothingness takes life; nothingness takes life only to know itself to be
nothingness; and the nothingness which says to itself, "I am
nothingness," is the reason of existence of all that is. I said just now
that the sun was declining to the horizon. Now the last glimmer of
twilight has disappeared; night has closed in--a dark and starless
night. Yes, Sirs, but there is never on the earth a night so dark as to
warrant us in despairing of the return of the dawn. If the modern mind
is such as it is described to us, it has lost all the rays of light; but
the sun is not dead.

The doctrine of non-existence and of illusion is entirely
incomprehensible, in the sense in which to comprehend signifies to have
a clear idea, and one capable of being directly apprehended. But, if one
follows the chain of ideas as logically unrolled, in the way that a
mathematician follows the transformations of an algebraical formula,
without considering its real contents, it is easy to account for the
origin of this theory. If the human mind has no rule superior to itself,
if it is the absolute mind, God, all its thoughts are equally true,
since we cannot point out error without having recourse to a rule of
truth. If all doctrines are equally true, propositions directly and
absolutely contradictory are equally true. If all is true, there is no