1 88 INTRODUCTION 



have something in common with not-A, if their opposition 

 is to have any meaning. l The other stands over against 

 its other 1 .' That is to say, their difference must have 

 some ground, some underlying unity. And on the other 

 hand, every identity, even the identity of a thing with 

 itself, implies some difference. There is no pure ground, 

 no absolute first principle, independent of a sufficient 

 reason. Hegel regards the universe as itself one absolute 

 system. The world we know is the only world, and it 

 is not a merely phenomenal system, the expression of 

 something heterogeneous with it (like the arc electric 

 light between two opposite points of carbon , nor is it an 

 inexplicable product of something other than itself, such 

 as an unconditioned will, nor yet is it the production of 

 some noumenal absolute. It hangs upon nothing ; it 

 needs nothing to hang upon. The universe is one system 

 of endless mutual determinations, yet not a merely static 

 system nor a system of cyclical revolutions, endlessly 

 repeated, which would involve the supposition of an 

 external absolute as the source or support of all. It is 

 rather an evolution of that whose end is in its beginning, 

 that whose development is free, because, being all-com- 

 prehensive, it is perfectly self-determined. 



Thus Hegel points out that 'it is the notion which 

 Leibniz had in his eye when he spoke of sufficient ground 

 and urged the study of things under its point of view.' By 

 the notion Hegel means ' a content objectively and intrin- 

 sically determined and hence self-acting.' This would 

 sufficiently describe the Monad of Leibniz if we keep out 

 of view the Monad's absolute particularity, its isolation as 

 one of an infinite series of independent units, or, in other 

 words, if we omit from the conception of the Monad all 

 that is due to the principle of contradiction, interpreted 

 abstractly as a principle of pure or immediate self-identity. 

 This isolation, of course, is an essential element in 



1 Hegel, Logic, 119 (Wallace's Tr., and ed., p. 222). See the 

 whole passage, and also pp. 224 sqq. 



