gs there is a thesis and
antithesis, a law of action and of reaction. In politics we require
order as well as liberty, and have to consider the proportions in which
under given circumstances they may be safely combined. In religion there
is a tendency to lose sight of morality, to separate goodness from
the love of truth, to worship God without attempting to know him.
In philosophy again there are two opposite principles, of immediate
experience and of those general or a priori truths which are supposed to
transcend experience. But the common sense or common opinion of mankind
is incapable of apprehending these opposite sides or views--men are
determined by their natural bent to one or other of them; they go
straight on for a time in a single line, and may be many things by turns
but not at once.

Hence the importance of familiarizing the mind with forms which will
assist us in conceiving or expressing the complex or contrary aspects
of life and nature. The danger is that they may be too much for us, and
obscure our appreciation of facts. As the complexity of mechanics cannot
be understood without mathematics, so neither can the many-sidedness of
the mental and moral world be truly apprehended without the assistance
of new forms of thought. One of these forms is the unity of opposites.
Abstractions have a great power over us, but they are apt to be partial
and one-sided, and only when modified by other abstractions do they make
an approach to the truth. Many a man has become a fatalist because he
has fallen under the dominion of a single idea. He says to himself, for
example, that he must be either free or necessary--he cannot be both.
Thus in the ancient world whole schools of philosophy passed away in the
vain attempt to solve the problem of the continuity or divisibility of
matter. And in comparatively modern times, though in the spirit of an
ancient philosopher, Bishop Berkeley, feeling a similar perplexity,
is inclined to deny the truth of infinitesimals in mathematics. Many
difficulties arise in practical religion from the impossibility of
conceiving body and mind at once and in adjusting their movements to one
another. There is a border ground between them which seems to belong to
both; and there is as much difficulty in conceiving the body without the
soul as the soul without the body. To the 'either' and 'or' philosophy
('Everything is either A or not A') should at least be added the clause
'or neither,' 'or bo