th.' The double form makes reflection easier and
more conformable to experience, and also more comprehensive. But
in order to avoid paradox and the danger of giving offence to the
unmetaphysical part of mankind, we may speak of it as due to the
imperfection of language or the limitation of human faculties. It is
nevertheless a discovery which, in Platonic language, may be termed a
'most gracious aid to thought.'

The doctrine of opposite moments of thought or of progression by
antagonism, further assists us in framing a scheme or system of the
sciences. The negation of one gives birth to another of them. The double
notions are the joints which hold them together. The simple is developed
into the complex, the complex returns again into the simple. Beginning
with the highest notion of mind or thought, we may descend by a series
of negations to the first generalizations of sense. Or again we may
begin with the simplest elements of sense and proceed upwards to the
highest being or thought. Metaphysic is the negation or absorption of
physiology--physiology of chemistry--chemistry of mechanical philosophy.
Similarly in mechanics, when we can no further go we arrive at
chemistry--when chemistry becomes organic we arrive at physiology:
when we pass from the outward and animal to the inward nature of man we
arrive at moral and metaphysical philosophy. These sciences have each of
them their own methods and are pursued independently of one another.
But to the mind of the thinker they are all one--latent in one
another--developed out of one another.

This method of opposites has supplied new instruments of thought for the
solution of metaphysical problems, and has thrown down many of the walls
within which the human mind was confined. Formerly when philosophers
arrived at the infinite and absolute, they seemed to be lost in a region
beyond human comprehension. But Hegel has shown that the absolute and
infinite are no more true than the relative and finite, and that they
must alike be negatived before we arrive at a true absolute or a true
infinite. The conceptions of the infinite and absolute as ordinarily
understood are tiresome because they are unmeaning, but there is
no peculiar sanctity or mystery in them. We might as well make an
infinitesimal series of fractions or a perpetually recurring decimal
the object of our worship. They are the widest and also the thinnest of
human ideas, or, in the language of logicians, they have t