Page:Symbolical Methods of Study.djvu/17

viii the highest union of opposites possible at our present stage of development may be but a partial one ; a fuller union than any we can conceive of now is to be entered into with the "counterpart hereafter : " with the person who seems the incar- nation of all that now we most hate, the thought which seems the denial of all that we believe.

Many philosophers have arrived, in different ways, at a perception of the truth that zero may have two totally different meanings ; it may mean either negation or completion. Stillness may result either from the absence of force, or from a balance of compensating vibrations. Peace may come either from not being stimulated to think and feel at all, or from being stimulated to the intensest mental and moral activity by the presence of one's counterpart. Quiescence may be either death or a blissful Nirvana of activity in rest. The equation o=;r(i — ^), or zero equals anything fused with its polar-opposite^ might be called the equation of Nirvana, as opposed to zero equals no specialization^ no idiosyncrasy, no ^^wrofigness,^ which is the equation of death.

The former is essentially equivalent to Oken's formula, that "the Eternal is the No thing of Nature ... is one and the same with the zero of mathematics." And this zero of completed or