THE DEFENCE 219 



j and truth and to melt contraries down into unities of which 

 I affirmation and negation are alike false and alike true. 



To offer a complete defence, if a complete defence is 

 possible at all, is beyond my present task. I should myself 

 admit that the idealistic votaries of this way of thought 

 have to make it more plain to themselves as well as to the 

 world that spirit is a principle of difference as well as of_ 

 unitj. I have tried to indicate elsewhere that it is the 

 unique and crowning characteristic of spirit to hold differ- 

 ence as difference within its own unity, and to be able to 

 manifest its own nature only in a self-externalising process, 

 and by fortifying its opposites against itself. 1 But I am 

 fully aware that the English version of Idealism has to be 

 strengthened on this side, and that the result of doing so 

 would be to restore the significance of the negative and 

 to bring the theory nearer to the form in which it left the 

 hands of Hegel. 



But to admit in this way that Idealism is no perfect or 

 complete theory, and that it has to do fuller justice to 

 negation and difference, is not to admit that its principle 

 is wrong, or that the conclusions of Mr. Hobhouse and 

 the critics are just. Their criticism rests on wrong pre- 

 suppositions and a discredited logic. They have not learnt 

 that to make opposition absolute is to destroy it altogether, 

 though it should be obvious enough that there can be no 

 conflict between right and wrong, or between any other 

 opposites, if they do not meet in the same field. They 

 have not asked what is the meaning of spirit ; and they 

 unconsciously deprive it of its meaning by contemplating 

 it from the point of view of "substance" or " mechanism," 



1 This conception is illustrated in the second of my articles on " The 

 Working Faith of the Social Reformer." 



