SECTION II.

I am ignorant how I was formed, and how I was born. I was perfectly ignorant, for a quarter of my life, of the reasons of all that I saw, heard, and felt, and was a mere parrot, talking by rote in imitation of other parrots.

When I looked about me and within me, I conceived that something existed from all eternity. Since there are beings actually existing, I concluded that there is some being necessary and necessarily eternal. Thus the first step I took to extricate myself from my ignorance, overpassed the limits of all ages--the boundaries of time.

But when I was desirous of proceeding in this infinite career, I could neither perceive a single path, nor clearly distinguish a single object; and from the flight which I took to contemplate eternity, I have fallen back into the abyss of my original ignorance.

I have seen what is denominated "matter," from the star Sirius, and the stars of the "milky way," as distant from Sirius as that is from us, to the smallest atom that can be perceived by the microscope; and yet I know not what matter is.

Light, which has enabled me to see all these different and distant beings, is perfectly unknown to me; I am able by the help of a prism to anatomize this light, and divide it into seven pencillings of rays; but I cannot divide these pencillings themselves; I know not of what they are composed. Light resembles matter in having motion and impinging upon objects, but it does not tend towards a common centre like all other bodies; on the contrary it flies off by some invincible power from the centre, while all matter gravitates towards a centre. Light appears to be penetrable, and matter is impenetrable. Is light matter, or is it not matter? What is it? With what numberless properties can it be invested? I am completely ignorant.

This substance so brilliant, so rapid, and so unknown, and those other substances which float in the immensity of space--seeming to be infinite--are they eternal? I know nothing on the subject. Has a necessary being, sovereignly intelligent, created them from nothing, or has he only arranged them? Did he produce this order in time, or before time? Alas! what is this time, of which I am speaking? I am incapable of defining it. O God, it is Thou alone by whom I can be instructed, for I am neither enlightened by the darkness of other men nor by my own.

Mice and moles have their resemblances of structure, in certain respects, to the human frame. What difference can it make to the Supreme Being whether animals like ourselves, or such as mice, exist upon this globe revolving in space with innumerable globes around it?

Why have we being? Why are there any beings? What is sensation? How have I received it? What connection is there between the air which vibrates on my ear and the sensation of sound? between this body and the sensation of colors? I am perfectly ignorant, and shall ever remain ignorant.

What is thought? Where does it reside? How is it formed? Who gives me thoughts during my sleep? Is it in virtue of my will that I think? No, for always during sleep, and often when I am awake, I have ideas against, or at least without, my will. These ideas, long forgotten, long put away, and banished in the lumber room of my brain, issue from it without any effort or volition of mine, and suddenly present themselves to my memory, which had, perhaps, previously made various vain attempts to recall them.

External objects have not the power of forming ideas in me, for nothing can communicate what it does not possess; I am well assured that they are not given me by myself, for they are produced without my orders. Who then produces them in me? Whence do they come? Whither do they go? Fugitive phantoms! What invisible hand produces and disperses you?

Why, of all the various tribes of animals, has man alone the mad ambition of domineering over his fellow? Why and how could it happen, that out of a thousand millions of men, more than nine hundred and ninety-nine have been sacrificed to this mad ambition?

How is it that reason is a gift so precious that we would none of us lose it for all the pomp or wealth of the world, and yet at the same time that it has merely served to render us, in almost all cases, the most miserable of beings? Whence comes it, that with a passionate attachment to truth, we are always yielding to the most palpable impostures?

Why do the vast tribes of India, deceived and enslaved by the bonzes, trampled upon by the descendant of a Tartar, bowed down by labor, groaning in misery, assailed by diseases, and a mark for all the scourges and plagues of life, still fondly cling to that life? Whence comes evil, and why does it exist?

O atoms of a day! O companions in littleness, born like me to suffer everything, and be ignorant of everything!--are there in reality any among you so completely mad as to imagine you know all this, or that you can solve all these difficulties? Certainly there can be none. No; in the bottom of your heart you feel your own nothingness, as completely as I do justice to mine. But you are nevertheless arrogant and conceited enough to be eager for our embracing your vain systems; and not having the power to tyrannize over our bodies, you aim at becoming the tyrants of our souls.

IMAGINATION.