1 82 ASSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



there, somewhere and nowhere, meet and blend. 

 For him, " a beam and a pillar are identical. So 

 are ugliness and beauty, greatness, wickedness, 

 perverseness, and strangeness. Separation is the 

 same as construction : construction is the same as 

 destruction" (pp. 19, 20). The sage "blends 

 everything into one harmonious whole, rejecting 

 the comparison of this and that. Rank and pre- 

 cedence, which the vulgar prize, the sage stolidly 

 ignores. The universe itself may pass away, but 

 he will flourish still " (p. 29). "Were the ocean 

 itself scorched up, he would not feel hot. Were 

 the milky way frozen hard he would not feel cold. 

 Were the mountains to be riven with thunder, and 

 the great deep to be thrown up by storm, he would 

 not tremble " (pp. 27, 28). 



" Si fractus illabatur orbis, 

 Impavidum ferient ruinae." 



He is "embraced in the obliterating unity of God," 

 and passing into the realm of the Infinite finds rest 

 therein (p. 31). 



It is impossible in reading this chapter on " The 

 Identity of Contraries " not to be reminded of the 

 greatest of the pre-Socratic thinkers, in some ways 

 the greatest of Greek metaphysicians, Heracleitus. 

 The disparagement of sense knowledge, and the 

 contempt for common views is indeed equally 

 marked in Eleaticism, and there is much in 



