§ 1. “To the mind of the philosopher”, according to Plato,1 “there belongs a vision of all time and all being"; and certainly many of the great thinkers have made it their business to speculate about the omnitudo realitatis or the ens realissimum—about the universe as a whole and in its wholeness, or about that which is supremely real—in short about ‘ the Absolute ‘. It may be that this interest in the Whole lies at the heart of all genuine (...) philosophy, giving to it its distinctive inspiration and character. It may be, on the other hand, that it is a misdirected solicitude—an anxiety to solve the inherently insoluble. The Absolute, we shall perhaps be told, is a vox nihili—a name for that which, being nothing, has no attributes ; or we, at least, can never hope to characterize it. All our available predicates, being drawn of necessity from a limited field, must ‘ come short‘must prove inadequate for so immense and so august a subject. (shrink)