Collected Works (Vol. II)

238 TYR | whole system-of numbers, and of manipulating them, is merely a series of conventions When I say that the square root of three is unreal, I know quite well that it is only so in relation to the series 1, 2, 3, &c., and that this series is equally unreal if I make 4/3, 7, 2/50 the members of a ternary scale. But this, theoretically true, is practically absurd. If I mean ‘‘the number of.a, b, and c,”’ it does not matter if I write 3 or 3/50; the idea is a definite one; and it is the funda- mental ideas of consciousness of which we are treating, and to which we are compelled to refer everything, whether, proximately or ultimately. So also my equation, fantastic as it may seem, has a perfect and absolute parallel in logic. Thus: let us convert twice the pro- position ‘‘some books are on the table.” By negativing both terms we get “ Absence- of-book is not on the table,’ which is precisely my equation backwards, and a thinkable thing. To reverse the process, what .do I mean when I say “some pigs, but not the black pig, are not in the sty”? I imply that the black pig is in the sty. All I have done is to represent the con- version as a change, rather than as merely another way of expressing the same thing. And ‘‘change”’ is really not my meaning either; for change, to our minds, involves the idea of time. But the whole thing is inconceivable—to ratiocination, though not to thought. Note well too that if I say ‘© Absence-of-books is not on the _ table,” I cannot convert it into ‘‘ All books are on the table” but only to ‘‘some_ books are on the table.” The proposition is an ‘“*T” and not an ‘‘A” proposition. It is the Advaita blunder to make it so; and many a schoolboy has fed off the mantelpiece for less. There is yet another proof—the proof by exclusion. I have shown, and meta- physicians practically admit, the falsity alike of Dvaitism and Advaitism. The third, the only remaining theory, ¢hés theory, must, however antecedently impro- bable, however difficult to assimilate, be true.} ‘* My friend, my young friend,” I think I hear some Christian cleric say, with an air of profound wisdom, not untinged with pity, condescending to pose beardles and brainless impertinence : ‘‘ where is the Cause for this truly remarkable change ?”’ That is exactly where the theory rears to heaven its stoutest. bastion! There is not, and could not be, any cause. Had 0° been extended in causality, no change could have taken place.? Here, then, are we, finite beings in a finite universe, time, space, and causality them- selves finite (inconceivable as it may seem) with our individuality, and all the ‘illu- sions” of the Advaitists, just as real as they practically are to our normal consciousness. As Schopenhauer, following Buddha, points out, suffering is a necessary condition of this existence.2 The war of the contend- ing forces as they grind themselves down to the final resultant must cause endless agony. We may one day be able to transform the categories of emotion as certainly and easily as we now transform the categories of force, so that in a few years Chicago may be im- porting suffering in the raw state and turning it into tinned salmon: but at present the reverse process is alone practicable. How, then, shall we escape? Can we expect the entire universe to resolve itself back into the phase of 0°2 Surely not. In the first place, there is no reason why the whole should do so; > is just as con. vertible as x, But worse, the category of causality has been formed, and its inertia is 1 I may remark that the distinction between this theory and the normal one of the _Imma- nence of the Universe, is trivial, perhaps even verbal only. Its advantage, however, is that, by hypostatising nothing, we avoid the neces- sity of any explanation. How did nothing come to be? is a question which requires no answer. 2 See the Questions of King Milinda, vol. ii. p. 103 3 Se also Huxley, ‘‘ Evolution and Ethics."’