Berashith

12 by chance, chance in the truest sense of the term, we are found with gods, men, stars, planets, devils, colours, forces, and all the materials of the Cosmos.: and with time, space and causality, the conditions limiting and inyolving them all. Remember that it is not true to say that our 0° existed, nor that it did not exist. The idea of existence ‘was just as much unformulated as that of toasted cheese. But0? is a finite expression, or has a finite phase, and our universe is a finite universe ; its categories are themselves finite, and the expression “infinite space” isa contradiction in terms. The idea of an-absolute and ofan infinite God, is relegated to the limbo of all similar idle and pernicious perversions of truth. Infinity remains, but only as a mathematical conception, as impossible in nature as the square root of— 1. Against all this mathema- tical, or semi-mathematical, reasoning, it may doubtless be objected that our 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, know quite well that it is only so in relation to the series 1, 2, 3eetc., and that is equally unreal if] make the /3, = 250 the members of a ternary scale. But this, theoretically true, is practically absurd. IfI mean “the number of a, b, and c”, it does not matter ifI write y3 or *y50; theidea is a definite one; and it is the fundamental 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 @