The most drastic, and perhaps the most instructive, illustration of the correct meaning of contradictions is given by the contrast between truth and untruth. These two poles are perhaps more widely separated than the North Pole and the South Pole, and yet they are as intimately connected as these two. The commonplace logic will hardly listen to the demonstration of the unity of such apparently wide opposites as truth and untruth. Therefore you will pardon me, if I illustrate this example by others, for instance by the contrast between day and night. Take it that the day lasts twelve hours and the night likewise. Day and night are opposites. Where there is day cannot be any night, and yet day and night constitute one single day of twenty-four hours, in which they both dwell harmoniously. It is the same with truth and untruth. The world is the truth, and error, pretense, and lies are embodied in it, are parts of the actual world, just as night is a part of day without confusing logic. We may honestly speak of genuine pretense and true lies, without any contradiction. Just as unreason has still some reason left, so untruth still lives inevitably in truth, because the latter is all-embracing, is the universe. "Contradictions cannot exist." But confused brains full of contradictions nevertheless exist. Knives without handles and blades, two mountains without a valley between them, and other nonsense, exist as a phrase. There are two kinds of contradictions: Senseless ones and very sensible ones. Yea, the whole world[5] is an infinite and inexhaustible contradiction, which contains innumerable sensible statements and misstatements, which never disappear and yet may be solved harmoniously by the help of time and reason. From this it follows that the formal criteria of truth which are on everybody's tongue, such as the identity of thought with its object, and the absence of all contradictions, do not furnish a basis at all for the analysis of truth and cannot define it, except in an ignorant and roguish way. Since the prophet Daniel scattered ashes in the temple and unmasked the servants of Baal, other idol worshippers have continued to stimulate the people to daily sacrifices, in order to steal the victuals at night. This continual rascality and its repeated exposure has blunted the desire of the people to serve truth, so that a great many have become frivolous and indifferent. This rascally logic, not to mention ignorance, encourages the frivolous and indifferent in their godless departure from truth. In the pulpit and in the garb of science it preaches the vanity and inadequacy of research. This is preached not as a dogma, but as a logical science, and thus the senseless contradiction is committed of trying to prove truly by the help of the intellect that the intellect is too limited to grasp the truth and prove it.