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, that there was order in the
universe. And so there began to be a real sympathy between the world
within and the world without. The numbers and figures which were present
to the mind's eye became visible to the eye of sense; the truth of nature
was mathematics; the other properties of objects seemed to reappear only in
the light of number. Law and morality also found a natural expression in