The theory that we can approach God only by analysis or abstraction has already been briefly commented on.  It is no invention of Dionysius.  Plotinus uses similar language, though his view of God as the fulness of all life prevented him from following the negative path with thoroughness.  But in Proclus we find the phrases, afterwards so common, about “sinking into the Divine Ground,” “forsaking the manifold for the One,” and so forth.  Basilides, long before, evidently carried the doctrine to its extremity:  “We must not even call God ineffable,” he says, “since this is to make an assertion about Him; He is above every name that is named.[171]” It was a commonplace of Christian instruction to say that “in Divine matters there is great wisdom in confessing our ignorance”—­this phrase occurs in Cyril’s catechism.[172] But confessing our ignorance is a very different thing from refusing to make any positive statements about God.  It is true that all our language about God must be inadequate and symbolic; but that is no reason for discarding all symbols, as if we could in that way know God as He knows Himself.  At the bottom, the doctrine that God can be described only by negatives is neither Christian nor Greek, but belongs to the old religion of India.  Let me try to state the argument and its consequence in a clear form.  Since God is the Infinite, and the Infinite is the antithesis of the finite, every attribute which can be affirmed of a finite being may be safely denied of God.  Hence God can only be described by negatives; He can only be discovered by stripping off all the qualities and attributes which veil Him; He can only be reached by divesting ourselves of all the distinctions of personality, and sinking or rising into our “uncreated nothingness”; and He can only be imitated by aiming at an abstract spirituality, the passionless “apathy” of an universal which is nothing in particular.  Thus we see that the whole of those developments of Mysticism which despise symbols, and hope to see God by shutting the eye of sense, hang together.  They all follow from the false notion of God as the abstract Unity transcending, or rather excluding, all distinctions.  Of course, it is not intended to exclude distinctions, but to rise above them; but the process of abstraction, or subtraction, as it really is, can never lead us to “the One.[173]” The only possible unification with such an Infinite is the [Greek:  atermon negretos hupnos] of Nirvana.[174] Nearly all that repels us in mediaeval religious life—­its “other-worldliness” and passive hostility to civilisation—­the emptiness of its ideal life—­its maltreatment of the body—­its disparagement of family life—­the respect which it paid to indolent contemplation—­springs from this one root.  But since no one who remains a Christian can exhibit the results of this theory in their purest form, I shall take the liberty of quoting a few sentences from a pamphlet written by