Berashith

7 Consider * Darkness! Can we philosophically or actually regard as different the darkness produced by interference of light and that existing in the mere absence of light? Is Unity really indentical with .9 recurring? Do we not mean different things when we speak respectively of 2sine6o° and of y3? Charcoal and diamond are obviously different in the categories of colour, crystallisation, hardness, and so on; but are they not really so even in that of existence? The third example is to my mind the best. 2 sine 60° and V3 are unreal and therefore never conceivable, at least to the present constitution of our human intelligences. Worked out, neither has meaning; unworked, both have meaning, and that a different meaning in one case and the other. We have thus two terms, both unreal, both incon: ceivable, yet both representing intelligible and diverse ideas to our minds (and this is the point!) though identical in reality and convertible by a process of reason which simulates or replaces that apprehension which we can never attain to. Let us apply this idea to the Beginning of all things, about which the Christians lie frankly, the Hindus preva- ricate, and the Buddhists are discreetly silent, while not contradicting even the gross and ridiculous accounts of the more fantastic Hindu visionaries. 7 Ratiocination may perhaps not take us far. But perhaps a continuous ‘and attentive study of these quaint points of distinction may give us an. jtion, or diteet mind-apperception of what we want, one way or the