Page:Logic Taught by Love.djvu/149

Rh and divided it into any two sections, x and not-x, if you then interpenetrate with each other the two conceptions, the result is zero. If any other result presents itself, your brain action has been imperfect.

The old Hindoo sages knew that we can form no idea of Deity except by affirming and then denying every quality in turn. A thing cannot, at one time, be black and white, except of course in different parts; yet to formulate aright a statement about God, we must say that He at once possesses every conceivable quality and its opposite, and yet has no parts. In other words God is No-Thing. Impatient ignorance asks, of course, "Cui bono?" "Who is better for the whole laborious proceeding of Meditation, if there remains to show for it?" The answer is that neither Oken's Zero, nor Boole's, has any connection with negation or non-existence. That Zero means: "No form, but a living Force; No-Thing, but a power of understanding, utilizing, and even creating things." The result of a proper synthesis-lesson is, not the knowledge of any theologic proposition which can be stated in a neat sentence at a Divinity-Examination; but an increased power of understanding the genesis and structure of facts generally, and an improved hygienic condition of brain. The pupil, in fact, gets out of the unification-lesson a supply (commensurate with his week's work) of Creative Energy. Idealists such as Gratry and Boole are too prone to wonder what more any man can want, for this world or the next, than just that, and then plenty more of the same. Practical teachers, however, know very well that man in general wants recognition by his fellow-man. He