Berashith

19 street) gives of the existence of the infinite. ‘“Think of a circle!" says he. ‘You will in a moment become conscious of an infinite circle around your original small one.” The fallacy is obvious. The big circle is not infinite at all, but is itself limited by the little one. But to take away the little circle, that is the method of the esoteric Christian or the mystic. But the process is never perfect, because however small the little circle becomes, its relation with the big circle is still finite. But even allowing for a moment that the Absolute is really attainable, is the nothingness of the finity related to it really identical with that attained directly by the Buddhist Arahat? This, consistently with my former attitude, I feel constrained to deny. The consciousness of the Absolute-wala really extended infinitely rather than diminished infinitely, as he will himself assure you. True, Hegel says: “ Pure being is pure nothing!” and it is true that the infinite heat and cold, joy and sorrow, light and darkness, and all the other pairs of opposites * cancel one another out: yet I feel rather afraid of this Absolute! Maybe its joy and sorrow are represented in phases, just as 0° and finity are phases of an identical expression, and I have an even chance only of being on the right side of the fence| The Buddhist leaves no chances of this kind; in all his categories he is infinitely unextended; though the * The Hindus see this as well as anyone, and call Atman Sat ~chit~ ananda, these being alone the pairs of opposites, rather on the Hegelian, Vines of the reconciliation (rather than the identity) of opposites in a We have dismissed infinity as the figment of a morbid ‘mathematic: but in any case the same disproof applies to it as to'God.