10
When I say “No cat has two tails” I do not mean,
as the old fallacy runs, that “ Absence-of-cat possesses
two tails” but that “In the category of two-tailed things,
there is no extension of cat.”
Nothingness is that about which no positive pro-
position is valid. We cannot truly affirm : ‘Nothingness
is green, or heavy, or sweet.”
Let us call time, space, being, heaviness, hunger, the
categories. “ If a man be heavy and hungry, he is
extended in all these, besides, of course, many more.
But let us suppose that these five are all. Call the man
X; his formula is then Xt+#+4+», If he now eat, he
will cease to be extended in hunger; if he be cut off
from time and gravitation as well, he will now be repre-
sented by the formula X++*, Should he cease to occupy
space and to exist, his formula would then be X*. This
expression is equal to 1; whatever X may represent, if it
be raised to the power of 0, (this meaning mathemat-
ically “if it be extended in no dimension or category”)
the result is Unity, and the unknown factor X is
eliminated. A
This is the Advaitist idea of the future of man; his
personality, bereft of all its qualities, disappears and is
lost, while in its place arises the impersonal Unity, The
Pleroma, Parabrahma, or the Allah of the Unity-adoring
followers of Mehammed. (To the Musulman fakir, Allah
is by no means a personal God.)
+I cannot here diseuss the propriety of representing the categories a&
dimensfons, It-will be obvious to anystudent
of the integeal calculi, OF
{© anyone who appreciates the geometrical sigaincance of the rm X*