CHAPTER XIV.

JIVA-ATOMS-OBJECTIVELY, i.e., ATOMS.

After the above general treatment of the Jîvaatom we may now take the two aspects of it separately and in a little more detail. And of these two we may dispose of the particular, the atom-aspect, first, leaving for later treatment the other aspect of the individual, the Jîva, the discussion of which is the main purpose of the rest of the work, reference to the material side of life being made only as necessary to explain and illustrate the spiritual side.

In the first place, the attributes common to the Jîva and the atom, viz., size,1 life, and vibration, may be further particularised with respect to the atom.

Size, in this reference, may be said to break up into the triplet of 'bulk or volume,' 'shape or form,' and 'measure, magnitude, or dimension,' as including both the others. And these again may be looked at as 'large, small,

1 The significance of the word size in reference to the Jiva is explain d at the outset of the next chapter.

average,' 'long, round, ovoid,' 'linear, plane, cubical,' &c.

A hypothesis may be advanced here as to form.

It has been said above that, under the stress of the necessity embodied in the logion, etats appear in pseudo-infinite number as constituent points of the manifold Mûla-prakriti. It has also been said that by that same necessity they are never actually points without magnitude but points with magnitude, with definite volume and form and measure and are therefore atoms. Atoms would be without volume and form and measure if the Etat were not limited. But the Etat is limited, consequently they must have volume and form and measure. And if they must have these, or, rather, as is enough to say, form (for all three are only different ways of looking at the same thing, measure being . limitation pure and simple, while form is limitation from outside, and volume limitation from within), the sphere ought, apparently, to be their primal form, because the only universally nonarbitrary form is the sphere. A form which embodies the essence of pointness-that it is the same however looked at-can only be a sphere, which presents the same appearance from whatever side it is seen. Of course the law of non-arbitrariness requires and necessi

tates the existence of all possible pseudo-infinite kinds of forms and figures in the world-process, but the difference between the non-arbitrariness of the sphere on the one hand, and that of 'all possible figures' on the other, is the difference (if such an expression may be used without fear of misunderstanding) between the Pratyag-âtmâ on the one hand, and the pseudo- infinite contents of its consciousness, the varieties of the Not-Self, on the other. The Pratyag-âtmâ is everywhere and always, but the contents of its consciousness, made up of interminable and intermixing not-selves, are in definite times, spaces, and motions; so the sphere (when we abolish the periphery of limitation) may be said to have its centre potentially everywhere and always, while its contents-all possible figures made up of the numberless interlacing radii, interlacing because the centre is everywhere, each corresponding to a not-self—are only in definite times, spaces, and motions. Because of this fact most figure-symbology represents the self-centred Pratyag-âtmâ as the point, differentiated matter, spirit-matter, as the line or the cross of two lines, and the whole, the Absolute, as the circle; the line or the cross of two lines and the circle being used to meet the exigencies of script in place of what ought, in strictness, to be, apparently, the cross of three

lines meeting at right angles to each other, and the sphere, respectively. The correspondence of the point and the line to the Self and the Not-Self respectively should be noted, and may prove of use hereafter. It may appear at first sight that there is no such opposition between the line and the point as there is between the other pair, the Self and the Not-Self, inasmuch as the line is only a production, a prolongation, of the point. But the opposition is there. From all that has gone before it will be clear that the Not-Self is nothing independent of the Self, nothing else than a production and a lengthening, a limitation and definition, of the Self, that is to say, a going of the immovable Self out of itself into a denial, a negation, of itself. Even so the lines are the first denial of the nonmagnitude of the point; and out of such denial all the endless multiplicity of figures grows in the metaphysic of the Negation, i.e., mathematics, as all the endless multitude of not-selves grows out of the denial of the Self in the complete metaphysic. In describing these imaginary lines, by rushing to and fro, the point without magnitude may be said to be seeking to define itself, to give itself a magnitude, even as the Self appears to define itself by entering into, by imposing upon itself, imagined notselves and saying, 'I am this,' 'I am this.'

Corresponding to this triple sub-division of size, we may note a triple sub-division under duration also. The words in this reference have not such a recognised standing as those connected with size. But we may distinguish 'period' corresponding to form as limited from without; filling' to volume as limited from within; and 'rate' as limitation proper corresponding to measure. Each of these again manifests as 'long, short, average,' 'well-filled, ill-filled, occupied,' 'fast, slow, even,' etc.

We may similarly distinguish under vibration (tentatively, as in the case of duration), the three aspects of extent, rate, and degree,' and subdivide each of these three again into 'great, little, mean,' 'high, low, even,' and 'intense, sluggish, equable,' etc.

In the above-mentioned arrangements of triplets we see illustrated the fact that all the things of the world-process fall into groups of three in accordance with the primal trinity that underlies and is the whole of the universe. And these groupings are not mechanical or empirical but organic. It may appear to the cursory observer that there is no 'why' apparent in them. But the 'why' is there, and in a very simple way too. Each member of a trinity reflects in itself each of the three and so produces three trinities; and this process is a