THE ABSOLUTE. 573 
an abstract unity, but as a concrete identity, as the harmonious co-working of the hete- 
rogeneous,”* 
446. “ How is it possible that our thought should ever rule over the world of sense, if 
the representation is conditioned in its origin by the objective? The solution of this 
problem, which is the highest of transcendental philosophy, is the answer to the question: 
how can the representations be conceived as directing themselves according to the objects, 
and at the same time the objects conceived as directing themselves according to the repre- 
sentations? This is only conceivable on the ground that the activity through which the 
objective world is produced, is originally identical with that which utters itself in the 
will.” 
447, Hecut. “ Now, those counterparts, or opposites, bear reference altogether to the 
definite antagonism of indifference and difference, identity and difference, matter and 
form, internal and external, and especially positive and negative. It is true that by es- 
sence we usually think at first of the substratum, which has in itself certain determinate 
states, or which lies at the bottom of these. These determinate states, modes, and forms, 
. . are not to be separated from the essence, but to every present appearance there 
must be at bottom a real or essential element, or, to use the expression of Herbart, for 
every appearance there must be a real to which the former points.”{ 
448. “ We thus arrive as a result at the Aristotelian vénas cys vojsews, the self-thinking 
process of thought, or the self-knowing truth, Absolute Idealism, which in itself is abso- 
lute realism, or an identity in which those antagonisms have coalesced, in order to gene- 
rate or engender themselves anew, without positing therewith a duplicity of principles; 
seeing that the production of the antagonisms, or, to speak more concisely, the powers 
of self-opposition or absolute negativity, is the one absolutely self-moving principle.”§ 
449, Hamilton, as we have seen, uses the term Absolute to denote what is “ finished, 
perfected, completed ; in which sense the Absolute will be what is out of relation, &c., as 
finished, perfect, complete, total.” “In this acceptation . . . the Absolute is diametri- 
cally opposed to, is contradictory of, the Infinite.’ He also speaks of the Unconditioned 
as ‘the genus of which the Infinite and Absolute are species,” and says that “the Abso- 
lute and Infinite are conceived only as negations of the conditioned in its opposite poles.” || 
We have already examined some of the contradictions in which, by his own admission, 
these definitions necessarily involved their author, and those necessary contradictions 
might be reasonably assumed as sufficient evidence of error. But even without regard to 
the consequences of the definitions, what can be ‘“‘the opposite pole” to the Infinite or 
* Schwegler, p. 317. + Ib. p. 8238. £ Chalybiius, p. 325. 
§ Ib. p. 311. || Discussions, pp. 21, 36. 
