Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/59

Rh little mouse returned, it was unable to enter her mouth, and as a consequence she awoke no more. But where was this mysterious inhabitant of the human body, the cause and explanation of the great phenomena of life and death, of sleep and dreams, where did it live before the birth of its landlord and where did it go at the death of the latter? It had occupied other bodies before this, and would go into still others afterwards; this was the doctrine of transmigration of souls. Another theory was that it was born with the body, but lived after it, remaining always in its vicinity; this was the theory believed by the ancient Egyptians, which led to their careful preservation of the dead body. In no case did primitive man conceive of it as ceasing to exist with the living body. And this is quite natural; absolute non-existence is an idea beyond the reach of the human intellect; it is even entirely opposed to human thought. We can not expect a machine to exert an amount of power beyond the strength and capacity of its constituent parts. The conception of absolute non-existence is an effort beyond the power of human intellect. We say that Nature abhors a vacuum; human processes of thought have the same horror vacui. That which thinks in man, is his I, his Ego; it is the foundation, the necessary presupposition of the act of thinking; without the Ego, no thought, no conception, not even sensibility—the idea of non-existence is conceived by the Ego, but while it is trying to represent the idea of absolute non-existence to itself, it has at the same time the full consciousness of its own existence, and this coincident impression prevents completely any real, distinct conception of the actuality of non-existence. In order to grasp this idea clearly and convincingly, the Ego would be obliged to suspend its consciousness of existence for a few moments, cease to be conscious, cease to think. In this state of