without this division there can be no truth; nor any complete truth without
the reunion of the parts into a whole. And hence the coexistence of
opposites in the unity of the idea is regarded by Hegel as the supreme
principle of philosophy; and the law of contradiction, which is affirmed by
logicians to be an ultimate principle of the human mind, is displaced by
another law, which asserts the coexistence of contradictories as imperfect
and divided elements of the truth. Without entering further into the
depths of Hegelianism, we may remark that this and all similar attempts to
reconcile antinomies have their origin in the old Platonic problem of the
'One and Many.'

II. 1. The first of Plato's categories or elements is the infinite. This
is the negative of measure or limit; the unthinkable, the unknowable; of
which nothing can be affirmed; the mixture or chaos which preceded distinct
kinds in the creation of the world; the first vague impression of sense;
the more or less which refuses to be reduced to rule, having certain
affinities with evil, with pleasure, with ignorance, and which in the scale
of being is farthest removed from the beautiful and good. To a Greek of
the age of Plato, the idea of an infinite mind would have been an
absurdity. He would have insisted that 'the good is of the nature of the
finite,' and that the infinite is a mere negative, which is on the level of
sensation, and not of thought. He was aware that there was a distinction
between the infinitely great and the infinitely small, but he would have
equally denied the claim of either to true existence. Of that positive
infinity, or infinite reality, which we attribute to God, he had no
conception.

The Greek conception of the infinite would be more truly described, in our
way of speaking, as the indefinite. To us, the notion of infinity is
subsequent rather than prior to the finite, expressing not absolute vacancy