Page:Philosophical Review Volume 11.djvu/277

No. 3.] a development from a greater number of minor oppositions to a smaller number of greater and more fundamental oppositions; and this entails, as its reverse side, the growth of more wide-reaching harmonies. Such a development would obviously be favorable to growth of harmony and to increase of value in the individual consciousness, and yet the negative factor would still be present to form one of the necessary moments in the sense of value. It is well worth considering whether times of the strongest affirmation and negation, of religious belief, for instance, do not afford a spectacle of greater inner freedom and keener sense of personal value in individuals than periods of infinitesimal differences which permeate more the individual consciousness. We have seen that the personal values arising from inner harmony may be relatively independent of the group of social content harmonized in the subject. We now see that this very harmonization, with its increase of the sense of value, may take place with reference to one group of content that is set in opposition to another, and that this very opposition may favor the development of the personal values. In 'tragical elevation' we have a second æsthetic realization of the absolute moment in the imputation of personal values, the moment of inner peace being the first, and here the factor of external opposition is all important. It arises from an extreme of volitional energy, of concentration and systematization of tendencies in the face of oppositions and mutations of external values. It represents the zero of internal negation and opposition, where all opposition is conceived as external to the real self and the series of inner values. Although the opposition may start as an inner contradiction, before the moment of elevation can enter, the opposition must be conceived as external to the subject, as an opposing social force. Tragical elevation may arise through the individual associating himself with a particular social group, but then it involves an equally strong moment of social opposition, the enemy; or it may arise in opposition to the entire social order, but then the individual identifies himself with an ideal society which is the projection of his own personal values. The important point is that the law of the personal series is not the reduction of the moment of negation to zero—