thers shall
forthwith _emanate_ from it and infallibly reproduce the whole. In the
_modus operandi_ of the emanation comes in, as I said, that partnership
of the principle of totality with that of the identity of
contradictories which so recommends the latter to beginners in Hegel's
philosophy. To posit one item alone is to deny the rest; to deny them
is to refer to them; to refer to them is to begin, at least, to bring
them on the scene; and to begin is in the fulness of time to end.

If we call this a monism, Hegel is quick to cry, Not so! To say simply
that the one item is the rest {280} of the universe is as false and
one-sided as to say that it is simply itself. It is both and neither;
and the only condition on which we gain the right to affirm that it is,
is that we fail not to keep affirming all the while that it is not, as
well. Thus the truth refuses to be expressed in any single act of
judgment or sentence. The world appears as a monism _and_ a pluralism,
just as it appeared in our own introductory exposition.

But the trouble that keeps us and Hegel from ever joining hands over
this apparent formula of brotherhood is that we distinguish, or try to
distinguish, the respects in which the world is one from those in which
it is many, while all such stable distinctions are what he most
abominates. The reader may decide which procedure helps his reason
most. For my own part, the time-honored formula of empiricist
pluralism, that the world cannot be set down in any single proposition,
grows less instead of more intelligible when I add, "And yet the
different propositions that express it are one!" The unity of the
propositions is that of the mind that harbors them. Any one who
insists that their diversity is in any way itself their unity, can only
do so because he loves obscurity and mystification for their own pure
sakes.

Where you meet with a contradiction among realities, Herbart used to
say, it shows you have failed to make a real distinction. Hegel's
sovereign method of going to work and saving all possible
contradictions, lies in pertinaciously refusing to distinguish. He
takes what is true of a term _secundum quid_, treats it as true of the
same term _simpliciter_, and then, of course, applies it to the term
_secundum aliud_. A {281} good example of this is found in the first
triad. This triad shows that the mutability of the real world is due
to the fact that being constantly negates its