DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 175 



qualities as God; in the latter, these 

 qualities with corresponding limita- 

 tions. 



For an illustration of how all lim- 

 ited beings are incorporated in an ab- 

 solute personality, Bostrom likes to 

 fall back on the numerical system. 

 Spiritual beings form a series, as it 

 were, of lower and higher entities, 

 where the latter contain the former 

 pretty much as higher numbers contain 

 the smaller. Bostrom distinguishes be- 

 tween positive and negative attributes, 

 and means by the former those attri- 

 butes without which the being cannot 

 be thought, and which it therefore in 

 one sense contains. So for instance in 

 the number ten, all the previous num- 

 bers are positive attributes because ten 

 cannot be thought without them, which, 

 however, does not imply identity with 

 either of the lower numbers. On the 

 other hand all the following numbers 

 are negative attributes to the number 

 ten because this may well be thought 

 without them. It contains them onlv 



