"The Solarians," says Campanella, in his City of the Sun, 'think that there exists a marvellous harmony between the worlds celestial, terrestrial, and moral." The parallelism is exact. In each there is an antinomy, in all a harmonizing momentum, bringing the oppositions and contradictions.

to rest.

From the moment the child enters the world it manifests one pre-eminent force, the instinct of self-conservation, or of egoism. Presently, however, another instinct appears. It turns from its mother's breast, and spreads its hands. towards the flowers, plays with the kitten, and smiles upon its brothers. That which draws the infant out of itself towards exterior forms is the centrifugal force-the sentiment, the sympathetic instinct, a hidden magnetism, a veiled ray from the great hearth of love which warms and animates the universe. These twin tendencies, opposed as they are, incessantly contradicting one another, are the principle of all activity. Favoured or repressed, directed aright or warped, they determine the nature of the passions which agitate the man, and of the virtues which govern his soul.

The instinct of egoism gathers all surrounding materials into the ever self-forming and vitally persistent centre: it is an inward spiritual energy concentrating, comprehending, contracting all to one geometric point, and the instinct of sympathy is the dispersion of self over an indefinitely outspreading surface. Egoism draws the world into an apex, sympathy spreads it into an extended plain. The egoistic instinct teaches man what he owes to himself, the sympathetic instinct tells him what is due to his neighbours. That they contradict one another perpetually who can deny? that they are capable of harmonization who can doubt?

If the axiom of ancient heathen logic, which laid down. that contradictories radically exclude one another, that be

In a

of the arctic regions is the summer of the antarctic pole. The descent of one scale is the ascent of the other. word, everything in the world is inverse.

This is

When we talk to English children of the antipodes, they think that the men there walk with their heads downwards; and to New Zealanders we ourselves are reversed. at once true and false for each. True, if each considers the other from his own point of view, with reference to himself alone, but false to both if they consider themselves parts of a whole whose centre of gravity is under the feet of one and the other.

Before Newton discovered the law of gravitation, the New Zealanders did actually for English people walk head downwards, for the relative method of viewing the antipodes was the only method at their disposal.

But now that the law of gravitation to a centre is known, it is indicative of childish ignorance to suppose such to be actually the case, though relatively it remains unalterably the same.

In the world of ideas the notions of one man are the inverse of those in another man. And in every man's own head there is a duality, which often eventuates in an antagonism. What is head upwards to the sentiment is often head downwards to the reason. Faith and logic range themselves on opposite sides. Liberty revolts against authority, and authority imposes on liberty. That which is right to the individual is wrong to the society; that which is true to reason is false to sentiment.

In nature, the law of gravitation governing bodies is the opposition of two contrary forces, the centripetal and the centrifugal. This antinomical principle reappears in all combinations of matter as positive and negative electricity, in its composites as statics and dynamics.

"The Solarians," says Campanella, in his City of the Sun, "think that there exists a marvellous harmony between the worlds celestial, terrestrial, and moral." The parallelism is exact. In each there is an antinomy, in all a harmonizing momentum, bringing the oppositions and contradictions

to rest.

From the moment the child enters the world it manifests one pre-eminent force, the instinct of self-conservation, or of egoism. Presently, however, another instinct appears. It turns from its mother's breast, and spreads its hands towards the flowers, plays with the kitten, and smiles upon its brothers. That which draws the infant out of itself towards exterior forms is the centrifugal force-the sentiment, the sympathetic instinct, a hidden magnetism, a veiled ray from the great hearth of love which warms and animates the universe. These twin tendencies, opposed as they are, incessantly contradicting one another, are the principle of all activity. Favoured or repressed, directed aright or warped, they determine the nature of the passions which agitate the man, and of the virtues which govern his soul.

The instinct of egoism gathers all surrounding materials into the ever self-forming and vitally persistent centre: it is an inward spiritual energy concentrating, comprehending, contracting all to one geometric point, and the instinct of sympathy is the dispersion of self over an indefinitely outspreading surface. Egoism draws the world into an apex, sympathy spreads it into an extended plain. The egoistic instinct teaches man what he owes to himself, the sympathetic instinct tells him what is due to his neighbours. That they contradict one another perpetually who can deny? that they are capable of harmonization who can doubt?

If the axiom of ancient heathen logic, which laid down that contradictories radically exclude one another, that be

tween two things in opposition one cannot be accepted without a rejection of the other, be a true axiom, the conciliation of all possible aspects of thought and feeling, nay more, of opposing facts, can only be irrational.

No doubt this principle is true in the sense that one cannot affirm of the same thing, under the same relations, that it is and is not; that, for instance, the sun revolves on its axis, and does not. This axiom, the base of the mathematical method, is at bottom simply this:-every negation is only a negation, that is, it is Nothing.

But this axiom is completely false, comprehended in the sense that things relatively opposed are not absolutely conciliable, that unity excludes distinction, and reciprocally that variety excludes unity; in other terms, that a thing cannot be opposed to itself; for, on the contrary, this antinomy in the principle, and antagonism in the relation, is the most general-indeed, it is the only general-law with which we are acquainted.

But if we suppose that in the ideal world there is a centre of gravity, then the antinomy is conciliated at once. To recur for a moment to the instance of our antipodes. In intelligence we are all great children. Every idea sees the inverse idea head downwards, that is to say, it envisages it as the antipodes of truth. Thence arises universal division, general contradiction. Every man's view of truth is alone right, every one else's is wrong.

But if we divest ourselves of this optical hallucination, and endeavour to understand that, in the world of ideas, truth, like the earth, has two poles, that one idea no more excludes the inverse idea than the arctic pole excludes the antarctic pole; that, on the contrary, they imply each other, by defining and completing one another, we arrive at an universal conciliation.

Thus, reason and sentiment cease to be absolutely antagonistic, for each complements the other, and the antinomy in man's soul becomes an harmonious discord.

Love is the sense of the universal and undefinable, and reason is that of the particular and defined. The first reveals to us life by that mysterious phase of the infinite which can be felt but not expressed, and the other makes us know it by the intelligible side, which determines the sense and fixes the idea.

Without assuming a centre from which they both radiate, or to which both tend as a focus, the conflict must remain undecided and interminable, but if we admit an ideal, each assumes its place and lives at peace with the other; there is no invasion of each other's functions, no confusion in rights.

As then, every idea has its opposite, and every idea in itself is true to the individual judgment which realizes it, and is a radiation from the central truth, it follows that there is no such thing as absolute falsehood. What is true to one is false to another, and that which is false to the second is truth to the first. But this falsehood is merely relative; false only when seen from the point of view of the individual, but from the centre of gravity of ideas one idea is as true as another, and the false is not; indeed it is inconceivable.

A ray of light penetrates a dark room. I can distinguish the course of the ray, and point out where it is, and where it is not, but when I move into the ray, I see the sun in itself, and of the ray as a ray I am unconscious, I can no longer tell where it is and where it is not. So truths seen sideways are relative and cut off from error, but seen full face streaming from the absolute, error does not exist, nor is truth limited and defined and contradicted.