more to say. This
conception of God is the conception of an absolutely empty being.

Monism, I said, is a necessary idea in philosophy. The Absolute must
be one. But an utterly abstract monism is impossible. If the Absolute
is simply one, wholly excludent of all process and multiplicity, out
of such an abstraction the process and multiplicity of the {71} world
cannot issue. The Absolute is not simply one, or simply many. It must
be a many in one, as correctly set forth in the Christian doctrine of
the Trinity. Religion moves from an abstract polytheism (God is many)
to an abstract monotheism (God is one; Judaism, Hinduism and Islam).
But it does not stop there. It rightly passes on to a concrete
monotheism (God is many in one; Christianity). There are two popular
misconceptions regarding the doctrine of the Trinity. The first
mistake is that of popular rationalism, the second is that of popular
theology. Popular rationalism asserts that the doctrine of the Trinity
is contrary to reason. Popular theology asserts that it is a mystery
which transcends reason. But the truth is that it neither contradicts
nor transcends reason. On the contrary, it is in itself the highest
manifestation of reason. What is really a mystery, what really
contradicts reason, is to suppose that God, the Absolute, is simply
one without any multiplicity. This contradiction results in the fatal
dualism which broke out in Eleaticism, and has broken out in every
other system of thought, such as that of the Hindus or that of
Spinoza, which begins with the conception of the Absolute as a pure
one, totally exclusive of the many.

{72}

CHAPTER V

HERACLEITUS

Heracleitus was born about 535 B.C., and is believed to have lived to
the age of sixty. This places his death at 475 B.C. He was thus
subsequent to Xenophanes, contemporary with Parmenides, and older than
Zeno. In historical order of time, therefore, he runs parallel to the
Eleatics. Heracleitus was a man of Ephesus in Asia Minor. He was an
aristocrat, descendant of a noble Ephesian family, and occupied in
Ephesus the nominal position of basileus, or King. This, however,
merely meant that he was the Chief Priest of the local branch of the
Eleusinian mysteries, and this position he resigned in favour of his
brother. He appears to have been a man of a somewhat aloof, solitary,
and scornful nature. He looked down, not only upon the common herd,
but even upon the great men of his own race. He men