The Sword of Song

AN ESSAY IN ONTOLOGY 95 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 X t+s+b+h+h. 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 represented by the formula Xs+b. Should he cease to occupy s pace and to exist, his formula would then be X 0. This expression is equal to 1; whatever X may represent, if it be raised to the power of 0 (this meaning mathematically “if it be extended in no dimension or category”), the result is Unity, and the unknown factor X is eliminated. This is the Advaitist idea of the future of m an; his personality , bereft of all qualities, disappears and is lost, while in its place aris es the im personal Unity, The Pleroma, Parabrahma, or the Allah of the Unity-adoring followers of Mohammed. (To the Musulman fakir, Allah is by no means a personal God.) Unity is thus unaffected, whether or no it be extended in any of the categories. But we have already agreed to look to 0 for the Uncaused. Now if there was in truth 0 “before the beginning of y ears,” THAT 0 WAS EX- TENDED IN NONE OF THE CATE- GORIES, FOR THERE COULD HAVE BEEN NO CATEGORIES IN WHICH IT COULD EXTEND! If our 0 was the ordinary 0 of mathematics, there was not truly absolute 0, for 0 is, as I have shown, de- pendent on the idea of categories. If these existed, then the whole question is m erely thrown back; we m ust reach a state in which this 0 is absolute. Not only must we get rid of all subjects, but of all predi- cates. By 0 (in mathematics) we really mean 0 n, where n is the final term of a natural scale of dimensions, categories, or predicates. Our Cos mic Egg, then, from which the pres ent univers e arose, was Nothingness, extended in no categories, or graphically, 0 0. This expression is in its present form meaningless. Let us dis- cover its value by a sim ple m athematical process! 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 = = ⎡ ⎣⎢ ⎤ ⎦⎥ − Multiply by1 = n n Then 0 0 0 1 1 n n × = × ∞. Now the multiplying of the infinitely great by the infinitely sm all results in SOME UNKNOWN FINITE NUMBER EX- TENDED IN AN UNKNOWN NUMBER OF CATEGORIES. It happened, when this our Great Inversion took place, from the essence of all nothingness to finity ex- tended in innumerable categories, that an incalculably vas t s ystem was produced. Merely by chance, chance in the trues t sense of the term, we are found with gods, men, stars, planets , devils , colours , forces , and a ll the materials of the Cosm os: and with tim e, space, and causality , the conditions lim iting and involving them all.1 Remember that it is not true to say that our 0 0 existed; nor that it did not exist. The idea of exis tence was just as much un- formulated as that of toasted cheese. But 00 is a finite expression, or has a f inite phase, and our universe is a finite universe ; its categories are them selves finite, and the expression “infinite space” is a contradiction in terms. The idea of an absolute and of an infinite2 God is relegated to the lim bo of all similar idle and pernicious perversions of truth. Infinity remains, but only as a mathe- matical conception as impossible in nature as the square root of -1. Against all this mathematical, or s emi-mathematical, reason- ing, it may doubtless be objected that our 1 Compare and contrast this doctrine with that of Herbert Spencer (“First Principles,” Pt. I.), and see my “Science and Buddhism ” for a full discussion of the difference involved. —A. C. 2 If by “infinitely gr eat” we only mean “indefinitely gr eat,” as a m athematician would perhaps tell us, we of cour se begin at the very point I am aim ing at, viz. , E crasez l’Infini. —A.C.