was to make peal through me with unutterable power the
conviction that Hegelism was true after all, and that the deepest
convictions of my intellect hitherto were wrong. Whatever idea or
representation occurred to the mind was seized by the same logical
forceps, and served to illustrate the same truth; and that truth was
that every opposition, among whatsoever things, vanishes in a higher
unity in which it is based; that all contradictions, so-called, are but
differences; that all differences are of degree; that all degrees are
of a common kind; that unbroken continuity is of the essence of being;
and that we are literally in the midst of _an infinite_, to perceive
the existence of which is the utmost we can attain. Without the _same_
as a basis, how could strife occur? Strife presupposes something to be
striven about; and in this common topic, the same for both parties, the
differences merge. From the hardest contradiction to the tenderest
diversity of verbiage differences evaporate; _yes_ and _no_ agree at
least in being assertions; a denial of a statement is but another mode
of stating the same, contradiction can only occur of the same
thing,--all opinions are thus synonyms, are synonymous, are the same.
But the same phrase by difference of emphasis is two; and here again
difference and no-difference merge in one.

It is impossible to convey an idea of the torrential character of the
identification of opposites as it streams through the mind in this
experience. I have sheet after sheet of phrases dictated or written
during the intoxication, which to the sober reader seem meaningless
drivel, but which at the moment of transcribing were fused in the fire
of infinite rationality. God and devil, good and evil, life and death,
I and thou, sober and drunk, matter and form, black and white, quantity
and quality, shiver of ecstasy and shudder of horror, vomiting and
swallowing, inspiration and expiration, fate and reason, great and
small, extent and intent, joke and earnest, tragic and comic, and fifty
other {296} contrasts figure in these pages in the same monotonous way.
The mind saw how each term _belonged_ to its contrast through a
knife-edge moment of transition which _it_ effected, and which,
perennial and eternal, was the _nunc stans_ of life. The thought of
mutual implication of the parts in the bare form of a judgment of
opposition, as 'nothing--but,' 'no more--than,' 'only--if,' etc.,
produced a perfect deli