"BUT," I shall be told, "there is more in us than the intellect discovers. We have many things within us which our senses have not placed there; we contain a being superior to the one we know."

That is probable, nay, certain: the share occupied by unconsciousness, that is to say, by that which represents the universe, is enormous and preponderant. But how shall the ego which we know and whose destiny alone concerns us recognize all those things and that superior being whom it has never known? What will it do in the presence of that stranger? If I be told that stranger is myself, I will readily agree; but was that which upon earth felt and measured my joys and sorrows and gave birth to the few memories and thoughts that remain to me, was that this unmoved, unseen stranger who existed in me without my cognizance, even as I am probably about to live in him without his concerning himself with a presence that will bring him but the pitiful recollection of a thing that is no more? Now that he has taken my place, while destroying, in order to acquire a greater consciousness, all that formed my small consciousness here below, is it not another life commencing, a life whose joys and sorrows will pass above my head, not even brushing with their new wings that which I feel myself to be to-day?