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Rh ; the question, Are contrary, opposite, or, as I will call them, contradictory determinations incompatible in the same subject? If they are, then I hold that the philosophy of the Eleatics must be accepted with all its consequences. There is no escape from the paradoxes of Zeno if this principle be true. And, certainly, at first sight it appears not only to be true, but to be forced upon us as true by the very necessities of reason. It seems to be a necessary truth of thought that a thing cannot be one and not one, cannot be universal and not universal, cannot be infinite and finite, and, in fine, cannot be and not be: and, accordingly, this principle has been recognised as a necessary truth in most of the schools of philosophy, even by those which abjure the conclusions of Parmenides and Zeno. Reserving this question for subsequent discussion, I may just here remark that this principle, so far from being a necessary truth of reason (however like one it may look), is, on the contrary, a downright contradiction, an absurdity to all reason; and that its opposite, namely, the principle that opposite determinations are not only compatible in the same subject, but are necessary to the constitution of every subject—this is a necessary truth of reason, is, in fact, the law of the universe, the law of the universe of things as well as of the universe of thought, and that its discovery and enunciation rest with Heraclitus.

30. Reserving for a future opportunity what I