in the unknown by constant daily experience; but has by further converse with the universe known things previously unknown, and they invariably become known in terms of number, space, motion, time and judgment, and are found to be only combinations of these things. It is thus that something unknown may be conceived, but something unknowable cannot be conceived.
No man conceives reified substrate, reified essence, reified space, reified force, reified time, reified spirit. Words are blank checks on the bank of thought, to be filled with meaning by the past and future earnings of the intellect. But these words are coin signs of the unknowable and no one can acquire the currency for which they call.
Things little known are named and man speculates about these little-known things, and erroneously imputes properties or attributes to them until he comes to think of them as possessing such unknown and mistaken attributes. At last he discovers the facts; then all that he discovers is expressed in the terms of number, space, motion, time and judgment. Still the word for the little-known thing may remain to express something unknown and mystical, and by simple and easily understood processes he reifies what is not, and reasons in terms which have no meaning as used by him. Terms thus used without meaning are terms of reification.
Such terms and such methods of reasoning become very dear to those immersed in thaumaturgy and who love the wonderful and cling to the mysterious, and, in the revelry developed by the hashish of mystery, the pure water of truth is insipid. The dream of intellectual intoxication seems more real and more
