s. "To say you know, and you know
that you know, is to add nothing in the last clause; it is as idle as
to say that you lie, and you know that you lie," for if you know it not
you lie not.

Philosophy seeks to grasp totality, "but the power of grasping or
consenting to totality involves the power of thought to make itself its
own object. Totality itself may indeed be taken by the _naive_
intellect as an immediate topic, in the sense of being just an
_object_, but it cannot be just that; for the knower, as other or
opposite, would still be within that totality. The 'universe' by
definition must contain all opposition. If distinction should vanish,
what would remain? To what other could it change as a whole? How can
the loss of distinction make a _difference_? Any loss, at its utmost,
offers a new status with the old, but obviously it is too late now to
efface distinction by a _change_. There is no possible conjecture, but
such as carries with it the subjective that holds it; and when the
conjecture is of distinction in general, the subjective fills the void
with distinction of itself. The ultimate, ineffaceable distinction is
self-distinction, self-consciousness. . . . 'Thou art the unanswered
question, couldst see thy proper eye.' . . . The thought that must be
is the very thought of our experience; the ultimate opposition, the to
be _and_ not to be, is personality, spirit--somewhat that is in knowing
that it is, and is nothing else but this knowing in its vast
relations.[3]

"Here lies the bed-rock; here the brain-sweat of twenty-five centuries
crystallizes to a jewel five words long: 'The Universe has No
Opposite.' For there the wonder of that which is, rests safe in the
perception that all things _are_ only through the opposition which is
their only fear."

"The inevitable generally," in short, is exactly and identically that
which in point of fact is actually here.

This is the familiar nineteenth-century development of Kant's
idealistic vision. To me it sounds monistic enough to charm the monist
in me unreservedly. I listen to the felicitously-worded concept-music
circling round itself, as on some drowsy summer noon one listens under
the pines to the murmuring of leaves and insects, and with as little
thought of criticism.

But Mr. Blood strikes a still more vibrant note: "No more can be than
rationally is; and this was always true. There is no reason for what
is not; but for what there is rea