But will our mind be able to entertain together two directly opposite assertions?  Will contradiction no longer be the sign of error?  We must come to this; we must acknowledge that the modern mind, breaking with superannuated traditions, has proclaimed the principle “that one assertion is not more true than an opposite assertion.”  We must proclaim that the thinker has not to disquiet himself “about the real contradictions into which he may fall; and that a true philosopher has absolutely nothing to do with consistency."[155] The fear of self-contradiction may be excused in Aristotle and Plato, in St. Anselm and St. Thomas, in Descartes and Leibnitz.  These writers were still wrapped in the swaddling clothes of old errors; the light of the nineteenth century had not shone upon their cradles; but the epoch of enfranchisement is come.  These things, Gentlemen, are printed now-a-days; they are printed at Paris, one of the metropolises of thought!

Mark well whereabouts we are.  We must admit—­what? that all is true.  But, if all is true, there is nothing true, just as if all is good, there is nothing good.  There are thoughts in men’s heads; to make history of them is an agreeable pastime; but there is no truth.  We must not say that two contradictory propositions are equally true; that would be to make use of the old notion of truth; we must say that they are, and that is all about it.  The night is approaching, the sun of intelligence is sinking towards the horizon, and thick vapors are obscuring its setting.  But wait!

If the Humanity-God is always right, it must be that two contradictory propositions can be true at the same time, since contradictions abound in the history of human thoughts.  If two contradictory propositions can be true, there is no more truth.  What then is our reason, of which truth is the object?  We are seized with giddiness.  Might not everything in the world be illusion? and myself—?  Listen to a voice which reaches us, across the ages, from the countries crowned by the Himalayas.  “Nothing exists....  By the study of first principles, one acquires this knowledge, absolute, incontestable, comprehensible to the intelligence alone:  I neither am, nor does anything which is mine, nor do I myself, exist."[156] What is there beneath these strange lines?  The feeling of giddiness, which seeks to steady itself by language.  Here is now the modern echo of these ancient words.  One of those writers who accept all, in the hope of understanding all, describes himself as having come at last to be aware that he is “only one of the most fugitive illusions in the bosom of the infinite illusion.”  One of his colleagues expresses himself on this subject as follows:  “Is this the last word of all?—­And why not?—­The illusion which knows itself—­is it in fact an illusion?  Does it not in some sort triumph over itself?  Does it not attain to the sovereign reality, that of the thought which thinks itself, that of the dream which knows itself a dream,