Thus on a large scale we have seen the law of growth, of development, of life. It may be called growth by antagonism. But the antagonism here is over-ruled, and subject to the guidance of an indwelling unity. _Mere_ antagonism--if there be such a thing--would lead to nothing. A mere positive or affirmative point of being would lead to no antithesis, were it not, so to speak, a point floating in an ether of larger life and being, whence it draws an outside element which it overcomes, assimilates and absorbs. A bare national mind only grows to richer culture, because it lives in a universal human life, and can say _Nihil humani a me alienum puto._ So too the mere unit is always tainted with a dependence on outside: or it is always implicitly more than a mere unit: and what seems to come upon it from outside, is really an enemy from within, and it falls because there is treason within its walls. The revolution succeeds because the party of conservative order is not so hard and homogeneous as it appears. So, too, it is the immanent presence of the complete thought, of the Idea, which is the heart and moving spring that sets going the pulse of the universal movement of thought, and which reappears in every one of these categories to which the actualised thought of an age has been reduced. In every term of thought there are three stages or elements: the original narrow definiteness, claiming to be self-sufficient,--the antagonism and criticism to which this gives rise,--and the union which results when the two supplement and modify each other. In the full life and organic unity of every notion there is a definite kernel, with rigid outlines as if it were immovable: there is a revulsion against such exclusiveness, a questioning and critical attitude: and there is the complete notion, where the two first stages interpenetrate. [Footnote 1: _Eth._ ii 7.] [Footnote 2: _Phenomenologie__des Geistes_, p. 22.] [Footnote 3: Gesetzt.] [Footnote 4: Aufgehoben.] [Footnote 5: Idee: Ideeller Weise.] [Footnote 6: Potenz.] [Footnote 7: 'Nicht nur die Einsicht in die Abhängigkeit des Einzelnen vom Ganzen ist allein das Wesentliche; ebenso dass jedes Moment selbst unabhängig vom Ganzen das Ganze ist, und dies ist das Vertiefen in die Sache.' (Hegels _Leben_, p. 548.)] CHAPTER XXI. ABSTRACT AND CONCRETE I AND THE ORDINARY LOGIC.