Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/212

Rh But hereby the final sense of Mysticism, and the final reply to the mystic, once more clearly enough comes to sight. Overlooking the merely formal defect of the argument as to the limiting state of knowledge one can say: It is true, in arithmetic, that zero is a very important member of the number series. But it gets its whole importance by its contrasts and its definite quantitative relations with the other numbers. Just so here, if the Absolute is not only zero, but also real, also the goal, also the valuable, it is so by contrast with the finite search for that goal. But to suppose, as the mystic does, that the finite search has of itself no Being at all, is illusory, is Mâya, is itself nothing, this is also to deprive the Absolute of even its poor value as a contrasting goal. For a nothing that is merely other than another nothing, a goal that is a goal of no real process, a zero that merely differs from another zero, has as little value as it has content, as little Being as it has finitude. What the mystic has positively defined, then, is the law that our consciousness of Being depends upon a contrast whereby we set all our finite experience over against some other that we seek but do not yet possess. As a fact, however, it is not only the goal, but the whole series of stages on the way to this goal that is the Reality. It is the sum, then, or some other function of the terms of the series, that has Being. And, as a fact, Being must be attributed to both the principal members of the relation of contrast, both to the seeking and to the attainment. Else is the attainment the fulfilment of nothing. The finite then also is, even if imperfect. Its imperfection is not the same as any mere failure to be real in