live. But for the
assurance of a certain amount of respect from them, I should hardly
have ventured to print what must be such caviare to the general.

But now comes the reverse of the medal. What is the principle of unity
in all this monotonous rain of instances? Although I did not see it at
first, I soon found that it was in each case nothing but the abstract
_genus_ of which the conflicting terms were opposite species. In other
words, although the flood of ontologic _emotion_ was Hegelian through
and through, the _ground_ for it was nothing but the world-old
principle that things are the same only so far and no farther than they
_are_ the same, or partake of a common nature,--the principle that
Hegel most tramples under foot. At the same time the rapture of
beholding a process that was infinite, changed (as the nature of the
infinitude was realized by the mind) into the sense of a dreadful and
ineluctable fate, with whose magnitude every finite effort is
incommensurable and in the light of which whatever happens is
indifferent. This instantaneous revulsion of mood from rapture to
horror is, perhaps, the strongest emotion I have ever experienced. I
got it repeatedly when the inhalation was continued long enough to
produce incipient nausea; and I cannot but regard it as the normal and
inevitable outcome of the {298} intoxication, if sufficiently
prolonged. A pessimistic fatalism, depth within depth of impotence and
indifference, reason and silliness united, not in a higher synthesis,
but in the fact that whichever you choose it is all one,--this is the
upshot of a revelation that began so rosy bright.

Even when the process stops short of this ultimatum, the reader will
have noticed from the phrases quoted how often it ends by losing the
clue. Something 'fades,' 'escapes;' and the feeling of insight is
changed into an intense one of bewilderment, puzzle, confusion,
astonishment. I know no more singular sensation than this intense
bewilderment, with nothing particular left to be bewildered at save the
bewilderment itself. It seems, indeed, _a causa sui_, or 'spirit
become its own object.'

My conclusion is that the togetherness of things in a common world, the
law of sharing, of which I have said so much, may, when perceived,
engender a very powerful emotion, that Hegel was so unusually
susceptible to this emotion throughout his life that its gratification
became his supreme end, and made him tolerably u