60 
MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS 
The squares are quite separate. The whole world outside the 
square D is the world of no dogs: outside the square S, the 
world of no-study. But suppose now that I want to make the 
Zero absolute, like our 0° , I must say "No dogs are not in my 
study." 
Or, "There is no absence-of-dog in my study." Tha t is the 
same as saying: "Some dogs are in my study"; diagram again: 
In Diagram I, "the world where no dogs are" included the 
whole of my study; in Diagram 2 that absence-of-dog is no 
longer there; so one or more of them must have got in 
somehow. 
That's that ; I know it may be a little difficult at first; 
fortunately there is a different way- the Chinese way- of 
stating the theorem in very much simpler terms. 
S. The Chinese, like ourselves, begin with the idea of 
"Absolute Nothing." They "make an effort, and call it the 
Tao" ; but that is exactly what the Tao comes to mean, 
when we examine it. They see quite well, as we have done 
above, that merely to assert Nothing is not to explain the 
Universe; and they proceed to do so by means of a 
mathematical equation even simpler than ours, involving as it 
does no operations beyond simple addition and subtraction. 
They say "Nothing obviously means Nothing; it h •. .i no 
qualities nor quantities." (The Advaitists said the same, and 
then stultified themselves completely by calling it One!) 
"But," continue the sages of the Middle Kingdom, "it is 
always possible to reduce any expression to Nothing by 
taking 
any two equal 
and opposite terms." (Thus 
n + (-n) = 0.) "We ought therefore to be able to get any 
expression that we want from Nothing; we merely have to be 
careful that the terms shall be precisely opposite and equal." 
(0 = n + (-n).) 
This then they 
did, and began to 
diagrammatize the Universe as the I- a pair of opposites, the 
·Yang or active Male, and the Yin or passive Female, 
(See Appendix I The Chinese Cosmos)