each denying what the other affirmed and affirming what the other denied. But he who would reconcile affirmative with negative and negative with affirmative, The "union of impossibilities," which Emerson credits to Plato alone. must do so by the light of nature. _I.e._ Have no established mental criteria, and thus see all things as ONE. "There is nothing which is not objective: there is nothing which is not subjective. But it is impossible to start from the objective. Only from subjective knowledge is it possible to proceed to objective knowledge. Hence it has been said, By Hui Tzŭ. 'The objective emanates from the subjective; the subjective is consequent upon the objective. This is the _Alternation Theory_.' Nevertheless, when one is born, the other dies. When one is possible, the other is impossible. When one is affirmative the other is negative. Which being the case, the true sage rejects all distinctions of this and that. He takes his refuge in GOD, and places himself in subjective relation with all things. It was to this end that Tzŭ Ch'i "buried himself." "And inasmuch as the subjective is also objective, and the objective also subjective, and as the contraries under each are indistinguishably blended, does it not become impossible for us to say whether subjective and objective really exist at all? What is positive under the one will be negative under the other. Yet as subjective and objective are really one and the same, their positives and negatives must also be one and the same. It is as though we were to view them through a kind of mental Pseudoscope, by which means each would appear to be the other. "When subjective and objective are both without their correlates, that is the very axis of TAO. And when that axis passes through the centre at which all Infinities converge, positive and negative alike blend into an infinite ONE. Hence it has been said that there is nothing like the light of nature. Probably an allusion to Lao Tzŭ's "Use the light that is within you to revert to your natural clearness of sight." We should then be able to view things in their true light. See _Tao-Tê-Ching_, ch. lii., and _The Remains of Lao Tzŭ_, p. 34. "To take a finger in illustration of a finger not being a finger is not so good as to take something which is not a finger. To take a horse in illustration of a horse not being a horse is not so good as to take something which is not a horse. "So with the universe and all that in it is. These things are but fingers and horses in this sense. The possible is possible: the impossible is impossible. TAO operates, and given results follow. Things receive names and are what they are. They achieve this by their natural affinity for what they are and their natural antagonism to what they are not. For all things have their own particular constitutions and potentialities. Nothing can exist without these. These last few sentences are repeated in ch. xxvii. _ad init._