Creation. 279 



constitute the greatest part of the material of thought, 

 and the more completely abstract the relation is the 

 more entirely apart from concrete things the more 

 definite and exact the process of reasoning. If the 

 criterion in question were valid, arithmetic should get 

 rid of as being the sign of a concept of which no 

 mental representation is possible. Symbolic represen- 

 tation, it may be said, furnishes the means of thinking' *jf 

 abstract relations : if so, we can equally well think 

 under a symbol the relation of Creator and creation. 

 But is not-being, is no-thing so far removed from ex- 

 perience ? Does it not rather run alongside of all ex- 

 perience ? The school-boy becomes alive to it when 

 he puts his hand into an empty pocket; we find it 

 laid as a competent mode of thought at the basis of 

 his philosophy by one of the greatest thinkers of this 

 century. How can that be said to be unthinkable 

 which is being constantly thought ? " Note the am- 

 biguity of saying that the idea of destruction is un- 

 thinkable, in the face of the fact that for centuries it 

 has been thought. This has been evaded by the asser- 

 tion that * men did not really think the idea, they only 

 thought that they thought it/ But this is to confound 

 conception with imagination. In almost every thought, 

 idea, conception, there are, over and above the con- 

 densed perceptions capable of definite expression in 

 terms of sense, elements incapable of such expression."* 



* Lewes, Problems qfiLife and Mind, Vol. II., p. 270. 



