perplexity only arises out of the confusion of the human faculties; the art
of measuring shows us what is truly great and truly small. Though the just
and good in particular instances may vary, the IDEA of good is eternal and
unchangeable. And the IDEA of good is the source of knowledge and also of
Being, in which all the stages of sense and knowledge are gathered up and
from being hypotheses become realities.

Leaving the comparison with Plato we may now consider the value of this
invention of Hegel. There can be no question of the importance of showing
that two contraries or contradictories may in certain cases be both true.
The silliness of the so-called laws of thought ('All A = A,' or, in the
negative form, 'Nothing can at the same time be both A, and not A') has
been well exposed by Hegel himself (Wallace's Hegel), who remarks that 'the
form of the maxim is virtually self-contradictory, for a proposition
implies a distinction between subject and predicate, whereas the maxim of
identity, as it is called, A = A, does not fulfil what its form requires.
Nor does any mind ever think or form conceptions in accordance with this
law, nor does any existence conform to it.' Wisdom of this sort is well
parodied in Shakespeare (Twelfth Night, 'Clown: For as the old hermit of
Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a niece of King
Gorboduc, "That that is is"...for what is "that" but "that," and "is" but
"is"?'). Unless we are willing to admit that two contradictories may be
true, many questions which lie at the threshold of mathematics and of
morals will be insoluble puzzles to us.

The influence of opposites is felt in practical life. The understanding
sees one side of a question only--the common sense of mankind joins one of
two parties in politics, in religion, in philosophy. Yet, as everybody
knows, truth is not wholly the possession of either. But the characters of
men are one-sided and accept this or that aspect of the truth. The