Just the other day I went looking for seven. I began by thinking that I could find it with just what was in my hands: Holding up seven fingers, counting to be sure, I marveled at the simplicity of my discovery. But soon I became troubled. This wasn’t what I was searching for at all. This was seven fingers. I was looking at fingers, not seven.

Quickly I extracted from a drawer and arranged before me seven forks; this proved no better. Instead of fingers, now I was looking at forks. How was I closer? Where was seven hiding? This was tougher that I expected.

Wanting to see seven without looking at fingers or forks, I reached for paper and pencil and sketched a very large 7. Despite my hopes, I still hadn’t found seven. Although the numeral 7 wasn’t seven of something, which could be seen or touched, it was only a symbol representing seven. Since a symbol isn’t the thing it represents (or it wouldn’t be a symbol), I knew I had to look elsewhere. Where was seven to be found?

With a touch of despair, I wondered if maybe there simply wasn’t any such animal and my search for it hopeless. Maybe seven didn’t exist, and I so much the fool chasing after it.

No, that couldn’t be, for I saw seven dwelling in too many places, in fingers and forks, for example. But suppose I had made it up, created this thing called seven with my mind, invented a phantasm and gave it the name seven, a phantasm I kept around because it pleased me. No, this wasn’t an answer, this was short-circuiting the difficulty, dismissing the problem by saying it didn’t exist.

What if I was closer to the goal than I knew when I drew that numeral 7? Since the symbol for seven doesn’t need fingers or forks to dwell in, I was stripping off those things that hid the essence of what I was seeking. If the essence of a thing can be hidden by appearance, then it isn’t the eyes which will prove useful in seeing it.