What is it to exist and in what sense do we
speak of things as not existing?
In its etymological signification to exist is to be outside of
ourselves, outside of our mind: _ex-sistere_. But is there anything
outside of our mind, outside of our consciousness which embraces the sum
of the known? Undoubtedly there is. The matter of knowledge comes to us
from without. And what is the mode of this matter? It is impossible for
us to know, for to know is to clothe matter with form, and hence we
cannot know the formless as formless. To do so would be tantamount to
investing chaos with order.
This problem of the existence of God, a problem that is rationally
insoluble, is really identical with the problem of consciousness, of the
_ex-sistentia_ and not of the _in-sistentia_ of consciousness, it is
none other than the problem of the substantial existence of the soul,
the problem of the perpetuity of the human soul, the problem of the
human finality of the Universe itself. To believe in a living and
personal God, in an eternal and universal consciousness that knows and
loves us, is to believe that the Universe exists _for_ man. For man, or
for a consciousness of the same order as the human consciousness, of the
same nature, although sublimated, a consciousness that is capable of
knowing us, in the depth of whose being our memory may live for ever.
Perhaps, as I have said before, by a supreme and desperate effort of
resignation we might succeed in making the sacrifice of our personality
provided that we knew that at our death it would go to enrich a Supreme
Personality; provided that we knew that the Universal Soul was nourished
by our souls and had need of them.
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