Page:Idealism and the Theory of Knowledge.djvu/11

Rh course, it must refuse to admit that there is an unintelligible world, a world that cannot be brought in relation to the intelligence.

Here, however we must stop to meet a possible misunderstanding. There are many at present who are justly jealous of an easy monism, and some perhaps, who, less justly, carry their jealousy to the point of practically refusing to admit any ultimate unity at all. Hence, when it is stated to be an essential result of idealism that there is a unity beyond all difference and through all difference, they are apt to think that this involves the denial of the reality of the differences. Thus they seem to hold, as Spencer seems to hold, that we can distinguish without relating, or relate without admitting any unity within which the difference is embraced. And in this they get much support from the ordinary consciousness: for the ‘plain man,’ as he is called, prior to reflexion, is apt to alternate between unity and difference without bringing them together: he is ready, therefore, to take any distinction which he recognizes as absolute: and, on the other hand, if any doubt is thrown on the absoluteness of such a distinction, he is inclined to infer that it ought to be dismissed as altogether unreal. No one who has got beyond this naïve state of consciousness, will allow himself to be impaled on either horn of its unreal dilemma. But, if we have once renounced such abstract ways of thinking, I do not see how we can stop short of the result that the one and the many, so far from being opposed, are factors of thought which cannot be separated without contradiction. An absolute difference would be no difference at all; for it would annihilate all relation between the things distinguished, and, in doing so, it would annihilate itself. This is a principle of logic often illustrated by the fate of dualistic systems of thought, which in seeking to emphasize the reciprocal exclusiveness of two opposite principles, have ended by depriving them both of the very character in virtue of which they were opposed. Thus Manichaeism, when it took evil as absolute, as a reality quite separate from good, inevitably made it lose its character as evil; for it thus turned evil into an independent substance, which in itself had no opposition, because no relation, to good. We can have opposition only within a unity, and, if we try to stretch it farther, we overreach our object, and end by making the opposition itself impossible or meaningless. Any one, therefore, who thinks that a refusal to admit pure abstract contradiction between two terms—say, between truth and falsehood, or good and evil—involves the denial of all validity or reality to the distinction in question, must be reminded that relative opposition is the only real or conceivable opposition, and that distinctions are in effect