108 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



task can be one whit truer than its contradictory. Thus being 

 and naught, somewhat and other, positive and negative are the 

 same and yet not the same; the whole is prior to its parts, and 

 yet they are equally prior to it; there must be a mere given 

 somewhere in the universe, else the whole system of necessary 

 connections has nothing to hang up on and yet any phenomenon 

 which one attempts to regard as such a mere given shows itself 

 at once to be a link in the chain of universal necessitation. It 

 is startling to common sense to be told that each of two contra 

 dictory propositions is both true and false; but it is merely one 

 of the growing-pains of thought. When categories which have 

 heretofore seemed absolute begin to show their limitations, what 

 else is to be expected? The law of contradiction is not thereby 

 abolished. It is simply pointed out that the application of this 

 law implies a certain finality in the terms involved, which they 

 do not always possess. 



We repeat that what is especially remarkable with respect to 

 Hegel s treatment of the principle of contradiction is not his real 

 or alleged assaults upon it, but the tremendous scope which he 

 allows it. That no contradiction can be actual, and so eternal, 

 is with him not simply a permanent condition but a motive force 

 the force to which all progress is due. For all progress is but 

 the becoming explicit of contradictions that are everywhere im 

 plicit, and their reconciliation; and this process takes place with 

 out the necessity of outside interference, solely by reason of the 

 existence of the contradiction itself. Thus, in the logic, no ex 

 ternal reflection, no induction need intervene ; in the development 

 of the state no pressure of the natural environment plays a part. 

 It is what the lower form has in it its organic concept that 

 determines w T hat it is to be. The order and connection of thoughts 

 and the order and connection of things are the same. 



This freedom of the development from outside interference 

 has its characteristic explanation, which we must not neglect 

 to note. The logic is independent of experience because it is 

 its outgrowth. The development of the state is essentially inde- 



