To understand the universe, then, means to become aware that this being of all beings has no beginning, no cause, no truth nor reason outside and beside itself, but has everything in and by itself. To understand the universe means to recognize that one is rushing beyond the worldly infinity into the realm of fantastic transcendentalism and abusing the intellect, when illogically applying such terms as beginning and end, cause and effect, being and not being, to the absolute universe. Such an illogical use of the faculty of thought is well illustrated and rebuked by the poet who questions and answers: "And when my life has passed away, What will become of me? The world has one eternal day, 'Thereafter' cannot be." In order to acquire the universal sense, you will strive to understand that the universe includes all relative things, while as a whole it embodies the absolute or the edifying deity. If you would become world-wise, you must learn that the things called opposites and contradictions have a different meaning than is ordinarily applied to them by the logic of the idolators. They say that God and the world, body and soul, truth and error, life and death, etc., are irreconcilable antipodes; that they exclude one another; that they cannot be brought under the same roof, but must be kept wide apart by the laws of eternal reason. But this doctrine of contradiction is merely narrow dogmatism, which confuses the minds instead of enlightening them. Certainly, death differs from life, the perishable from the imperishable, black from white, crooked from straight, large from small. Who would be silly enough to deny that? But even the apparently most contradictory and opposite things may be classified under the same genus, family, or species, as twins in a mother's womb. The same thing that does not prevent male and female from sitting in the same nest, does not prevent the most widely different things, in spite of their separate characters, from being one and the same, from being two pieces of the same caliber. You are certainly still the same Eugene that you were as a little baby, and yet you are at the same time another. The experts in physiology even claim that they can compute how often a man of sixty has changed his flesh, bones, skin, and hair. Although the old man is the same individual that he was when first born, yet he never remained the same. You will see by this illustration that all difference is of the same nature, a general, supreme, universal being, absolute and divine, and this absolute world being is highly edifying, because it comprises all other beings and is the Alpha and Omega of all things.