I am the centre of my universe, the centre of the universe, and in my supreme anguish I cry with Michelet, “Mon moi, ils m’arrachent mon moi!” What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? (Matt. xvi. 26).  Egoism, you say?  There is nothing more universal than the individual, for what is the property of each is the property of all.  Each man is worth more than the whole of humanity, nor will it do to sacrifice each to all save in so far as all sacrifice themselves to each.  That which we call egoism is the principle of psychic gravity, the necessary postulate.  “Love thy neighbour as thyself,” we are told, the presupposition being that each man loves himself; and it is not said “Love thyself.”  And, nevertheless, we do not know how to love ourselves.

Put aside the persistence of your own self and ponder what they tell you.  Sacrifice yourself to your children!  And sacrifice yourself to them because they are yours, part and prolongation of yourself, and they in their turn will sacrifice themselves to their children, and these children to theirs, and so it will go on without end, a sterile sacrifice by which nobody profits.  I came into the world to create my self, and what is to become of all our selves?  Live for the True, the Good, the Beautiful!  We shall see presently the supreme vanity and the supreme insincerity of this hypocritical attitude.

“That art thou!” they tell me with the Upanishads.  And I answer:  Yes, I am that, if that is I and all is mine, and mine the totality of things.  As mine I love the All, and I love my neighbour because he lives in me and is part of my consciousness, because he is like me, because he is mine.

Oh, to prolong this blissful moment, to sleep, to eternalize oneself in it!  Here and now, in this discreet and diffused light, in this lake of quietude, the storm of the heart appeased and stilled the echoes of the world!  Insatiable desire now sleeps and does not even dream; use and wont, blessed use and wont, are the rule of my eternity; my disillusions have died with my memories, and with my hopes my fears.

And they come seeking to deceive us with a deceit of deceits, telling us that nothing is lost, that everything is transformed, shifts and changes, that not the least particle of matter is annihilated, not the least impulse of energy is lost, and there are some who pretend to console us with this!  Futile consolation!  It is not my matter or my energy that is the cause of my disquiet, for they are not mine if I myself am not mine—­that is, if I am not eternal.  No, my longing is not to be submerged in the vast All, in an infinite and eternal Matter or Energy, or in God; not to be possessed by God, but to possess Him, to become myself God, yet without ceasing to be I myself, I who am now speaking to you.  Tricks of monism avail us nothing; we crave the substance and not the shadow of immortality.