blind as universal darkness. Universal thing and universal
no-thing were indistinguishable. Why, then, assume the positive, the
immediately affirmative, as alone the ingenious? Is not the mould as
shapely as the model? The original ingenuity does not show in bringing
light out of darkness, nor in bringing things out of nothing, but in
evolving, through the just opposition of light and darkness, this
wondrous picture, in which the black and white lines have equal
significance--in evolving from life and death at once, the conscious
spirit. . . .

"It is our habit to think of life as dear, and of death as cheap
(though Tithonus found them otherwise), or, continuing the simile of
the picture, that paper is cheap while drawing is expensive; but the
engraver had a different estimation in one sense, for all his labor was
spent on the white ground, while he left untouched those parts of the
block which make the lines in the picture. If being and non-being are
both necessary to the presence of either, neither shall claim priority
or preference. Indeed, we may fancy an intelligence which, instead of
regarding things as simply owning entity, should regard chiefly their
background as affected by the holes which things are making in it.
Even so, the paper-maker might see your picture as intrusive!"

Thus "does the negation of being appear as indispensable in the making
of it." But to anyone who should appeal to particular forms of being
to refute this paradox, Mr. Blood admits that "to say that a picture,
or any other sensuous thing, is the same as the want of it, were to
utter nonsense indeed: there is a difference equivalent to the whole
stuff and merit of the picture; but in so far as the picture can be
there for thought, as something either asserted or negated, its
presence or its absence are the same and indifferent. By _its_ absence
we do not mean the absence of anything else, nor absence in general;
and how, forsooth, does its absence differ from these other absences,
save by containing a complete description of the picture? The hole is
as round as the plug; and from our thought the 'picture' cannot get
away. The negation is specific and descriptive, and what it destroys
it preserves tor our conception."

The result is that, whether it be taken generally or taken
specifically, all that which _either is or is not_ is or is not _by
distinction or opposition_. "And observe the life, the process,
through which this