Page:Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life - Coleridge (1848).djvu/59

 and have their being; while the equal mystery of Time bears the same relation to his Eternity, or what is fully equivalent, his Unity.

Physiologically contemplated, Nature begins, proceeds, and ends in a contradiction; for the moment of absolute solution would be that in which Nature would cease to be Nature, i.e. a scheme of ever-varying relations; and physiology, in the ambitious attempt to solve phenomena into absolute realities, would itself become a mere web of verbal abstractions.

But it is in strict connexion with our subject, that we should make the universal FORMS as well as the not less universal of Life, clear and intelligible in the example of Time and Space, these being both the first specification of the principle, and ever after its indispensable symbols. First, a single act of self-inquiry will show the impossibility of distinctly conceiving the one without some involution of the other; either time expressed in space, in the form of the mathematical line, or space within time, as in the circle. But to form the first conception of a real thing, we state both as one in the idea, duration. The formula is: (A=B+B=A)=(A=A) or the oneness of space and time, is the predicate of all real being.

But as little can we conceive the oneness, except as the mid-point producing itself on each side; that is, manifesting itself on two opposite poles. Thus, from identity we derive duality, and from both together we obtain polarity, synthesis, indifference, predominance. The line is Time + Space, under the predominance of Time: Surface is Space + Time, under the predominance of Space, while Line + Surface as the synthesis of