The Sword of Song

tycarb 96 whole system of numbers, and of manipulating them, is merely a series of conventions. When I s ay that the s quare root of three is unreal, I know quite well that it is only so in relation to the series 1, 2, 3, &c., and that this series is equally unreal if I make 3 , p, 50 3 the m embers of a ternary s cale. But this, theoretically true, is practically absurd. If I mean “the number of a, b, and c,” it does not matter if I write 3 or 50 3 ; the idea is a definite one ; and it is the funda-mental ideas of consciousness of which we are treating, and to which we are com pelled to refer every thing, whether proximately or ultimately. So also my equation, fantastic as it may seem, has a perfect and absolute parallel in logic. Thus: let us convert twice the pro- position “some books are on the table.” By negativing both terms we get “Absence- of-book is not on the table,” which is precisely my equation backwards, and a thinkable thing. To reverse the process, what do I mean when I say “some pigs, but not the black pig, are not in the sty” ? I im ply that the black pig is in the sty. All I have done is to represent the con- version as a change, rather than as m erely another way of expressi ng the same thing. And “change” is really not my meaning either; for change, to our minds, involves the idea of tim e. But the whole thing is inconceivable—to ratiocination, though not to thought. Note well too that if I say “Absence-of-books is not on the table,” I cannot convert it only “All books are on the table” but only to “some books are on the table.” The proposition is an “I” and not an “A” proposition. It is the Advaita blunder to make it so; and many a schoolboy has fed off the m antelpiece for less. There is y et another proof—the proof by exclusion. I have shown, and meta- physicians practically adm it, the falsity alike of Dvaitism and Advaitism. The third, the only rem aining theory , this theory, m ust, however antecedently impro- bable, however difficult to assimilate, be true.1 “My friend, my young friend,” I think I hear some Christian cleric say, with an air of profound wisdom, not untinged with pity, condescending to pose beardless and brainless impertinence: “where is the Cause for this truly remarkable change?” That is exactly where the theory rears to heaven its s toutest bas tion! There is not, and could not be, any cause. Had 00 been extended in causality, no change could have taken place.2 Here then, are we, finite beings in a finite universe, time, space, and causality them - selves finite (inconceivable as it m ay seem) with our individuality , and all the “ ill- usions” of the Advaitists, just as real as t hey practically are to our normal consciousness. As Schopenhauer, following Buddha, points out, suffering is a necessary condition of this existence. 3 The war of the contend- ing forces as they grind themselves down to the final resultant must cause endless agony. We may one day be able to transform the categories of emotion as certainly and easily as we now transform the categories of force, so that in a few y ears Chicago m ay be im- porting suffering in the raw state and turning it into tinned salmon: but at present the reverse process is alone practicable. How, then, shall we es cape? Can we expect the entire univers e to res olve itself back into the phase of 0 0 ? Surely not. In the first place there is no reason why the whole should do so; x y is just as con- vertible as x. But wors e, the category of causality has already been form ed, and its 1 I may remark that the distinction between this theory and the nor mal one of the I mmanence of the Universe, is trivial, pe rhaps even verbal only. Its advantage, however , is that, by hypostatising nothing, we avoid the necessity of any explanation. How did nothing com e to be ? is a question which requires no answer. 2 See the Questions of King Milinda, vol. ii. p. 103. 3 See also Huxley, “Evolution and Ethics.”