Everything that a thing is not is nothing, taken as meaning not that thing.

A thing is not that thing in two ways: One, by not being at all; and two, in terms of another thing. For example, water is not, simply by not being present. Or, water, in a room having furniture, floor, etc., is nothing, too, because other things are present. These two forms of a thing as nothing are the all or absolute form, and the “as to” or relative form.

The word not has both these meanings. I can say that a man, Rudolph H. Halberstadt Pitt, is not: because I have just made up this person, and I know that as I have made him up, he doesn’t exist—in the directory sense. Then I can say of a Rudolph I know to exist, that he is not there. With there taken as the world for a while, Rudolph is not or is nothing, too. To say that there is not sugar or there is no sugar, is to say that sugar is nothing in a certain form of existence taken as existence.

All thought is negation. To say bush, for that while is to say that the world is but bush, and nothing else is bush, but bush. In every inclusion in thought, the thing excluded is made like nothing as to the thing included. All thought is an interaction of something and nothing.

When a child becomes aware of objects, its previous self in itself becomes like nothing, in so far as the object is given attention. The child looks at the object. For the while, the self of the child is like nothing; for the child, that while, is the object. Attention does things with nothing.

To concentrate on something is to negate, in a fashion, what is not concentrated on. The definite, in so far as it limits, makes what is outside the definite thing not it; therefore like not that thing, or nothing, as to the thing definitely seen.