ed them--the (Greek), as it was technically
termed--began at once to appear. Two are truer than three, one than two.
The words 'being,' or 'unity,' or essence,' or 'good,' became sacred to
them. They did not see that they had a word only, and in one sense the
most unmeaning of words. They did not understand that the content of
notions is in inverse proportion to their universality--the element
which is the most widely diffused is also the thinnest; or, in the
language of the common logic, the greater the extension the less the
comprehension. But this vacant idea of a whole without parts, of a
subject without predicates, a rest without motion, has been also the
most fruitful of all ideas. It is the beginning of a priori thought, and
indeed of thinking at all. Men were led to conceive it, not by a love
of hasty generalization, but by a divine instinct, a dialectical
enthusiasm, in which the human faculties seemed to yearn for
enlargement. We know that 'being' is only the verb of existence, the
copula, the most general symbol of relation, the first and most meagre
of abstractions; but to some of the ancient philosophers this little
word appeared to attain divine proportions, and to comprehend all truth.
Being or essence, and similar words, represented to them a supreme or
divine being, in which they thought that they found the containing and
continuing principle of the universe. In a few years the human mind was
peopled with abstractions; a new world was called into existence to give
law and order to the old. But between them there was still a gulf, and
no one could pass from the one to the other.

Number and figure were the greatest instruments of thought which were
possessed by the Greek philosopher; having the same power over the mind
which was exerted by abstract ideas, they were also capable of practical
application. Many curious and, to the early thinker, mysterious
properties of them came to light when they were compared with one
another. They admitted of infinite multiplication and construction;
in Pythagorean triangles or in proportions of 1:2:4:8 and 1:3:9:27, or
compounds of them, the laws of the world seemed to be more than half
revealed. They were also capable of infinite subdivision--a wonder and
also a puzzle to the ancient thinker (Rep.). They were not, like being
or essence, mere vacant abstractions, but admitted of progress and
growth, while at the same time they confirmed a higher sentiment of the
mind,