142 NEGATISM BECOME POSITIVE. 



fore the, Mind, or in the Scope of the Reason ; but which 

 externally, and as things to be seen by the natural 

 eye, or heard, snielled, tasted, or handled, are Pure 

 Nothings. 



170. And yet these same Abstract Ideas, as Units, 

 Points, Lines, Surfaces, and those finer Thought- 

 Lines and Thought- Surf aces, intervening among Units 

 (or Thought-Points), are, from the High Scientific, or 

 Abstract (also called the Logical) Point of View, more 

 POSITIVE and EEAL Things, than Kocks, Trees and 

 Animal Bodies ; somewhat as superheated steam, or 

 gas, which bursts a solid encasement of rock or iron 

 (though in another sense far finer and feebler than 

 it) is, in this encasement, more Positive or Potent 

 than the Bock or Iron itself. Or, as for a better il- 

 lustration the Diamond-Point which cuts the Glass, 

 though a mere point (and hence, theoretically, as it 

 were, a Nothing) is stronger and wore Positive, more 

 a Real Something, than the more massive Glass itself. 

 Or, again, The Thin and Vanishing Edge of any Cut- 

 ting instrument, though a Mere Edge, that is to say, 

 a mere Line, (as nearly as any thing Concrete, for the 

 knife is still Concrete, can be the imitation of an Ab- 

 stract thing such as a Line is, geometrically consid- 

 ered), is Positive to the wood, or meat, or other Concrete 

 Object, which it cuts ; and the Concrete Object is, as 

 it were, Negative, or a mere Nothing before it. Such 

 or similar is the relation between the Ken or K aness 

 (the acumen) of the Intellect, or those Clean-cut Dis- 

 criminations which represent it, (as Point*, Linen, Prin- 

 ciples, Definitions, Laws and Relations), and the Gross 



