Is this substance which is so brilliant, so swift and so unknown, are
these other substances which roll in the immensity of space, eternal as
they seem infinite? I have no idea. Has a necessary being, of sovereign
intelligence, created them out of nothing, or has he arranged them? did
he produce this order in Time or before Time? What even is this Time of
which I speak? I cannot define it. O God! Teach me, for I am enlightened
neither by other men's darkness nor by my own.
What is sensation? How have I received it? what connection is there
between the air which strikes my ear and the sensation of sound? between
this body and the sensation of colour? I am profoundly ignorant thereof,
and I shall always be ignorant thereof.
What is thought? where does it dwell? how is it formed? who gives me
thought during my sleep? is it by virtue of my will that I think? But
always during my sleep, and often while I am awake, I have ideas in
spite of myself. These ideas, long forgotten, long relegated to the back
shop of my brain, issue from it without my interfering, and present
themselves to my memory, which makes vain efforts to recall them.
External objects have not the power to form ideas in me, for one does
not give oneself what one has not; I am too sensible that it is not I
who give them to me, for they are born without my orders. Who produces
them in me? whence do they come? whither do they go? Fugitive phantoms,
what invisible hand produces you and causes you to disappear?
Why, alone of all animals, has man the mania for dominating his
fellow-men?
Why and how has it been possible that of a hundred thousand million men
more than ninety-nine have been immolated to this mania?
How is reason so precious a gift that we would not lose it for anything
in the world? and how has this reason served only to make us the most
unhappy of all beings?
Whence comes it that loving truth passionately, we are always betrayed
to the most gross impostures?
Why is life still loved by this crowd of Indians deceived and enslaved
by the bonzes, crushed by a Tartar's descendants, overburdened with
work, groaning in want, assailed by disease, exposed to every scourge?
Whence comes evil, and why does evil exist?
O atoms of a day! O my companions in infinite littleness, born like me
to suffer everything and to be ignorant of everything, are there enough
madmen among you to believe that they know all these things? No, there
are not; no, at the bottom of your hearts you feel your nonentity as I
render justice to mine.
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