At the word 'contradiction' there is heard a murmur of objection, partly on technical, partly on material grounds. There are, it is said, other ways of getting from one idea to another than by contradiction: and it is not right to give the title to mere cases of contrast and correlation. Now it may be the case that the relations of ideas are many and various. In particular there is to many people a decided pleasure in the mere accumulation of bits of knowledge. In their mental stock there are only aggregates,--conjunctions due to accidents of time and place,--associations and fusions which do not reach organised unity. In all of us, perhaps, there are more or less miscellaneous collections of beliefs, perceptions, hopes, and wishes, in no very obvious connexion with one another. An united self, one, harmonious, and complete, is probably rather an ideal of development than a fact realised. There are in each two or three discordant selves,--among which it might sometimes be difficult to select the right and true one (for that will depend on the momentary point of view). The deeper consciousness may go on entirely independent of the train of the more superficial ideas: the world of reality may glide past without touching the world of dream or of fiction: our business part may live in a region parted off from our religion by gulfs inscrutable. In all these cases there cannot be said to be any contradiction. But Hegel speaks of the essential progress of knowledge, and of that true self or real mind which has attained complete harmony--the self and mind that is implicitly or explicitly Absolute. In such a mind where the finite has passed or is passing into the infinite, in a mind that is really becoming one and total, its parts must meet and modify each other. At each phase, if that phase is earnest, self-certain, and real, it claims to be complete, and can brook no rival. The bringer of new things must appear as an enemy: for the old system, however imperfect as a mere form, has behind it the strength of an infinite and perfect content: it is more than it has explicated: but as it (from its imperfection and honesty) identifies itself with its form, it is resolved to resist change. Progress then must be by antagonism: it cannot be real progress otherwise, but only the mere shifting of dilettante doubt and dilettante toleration. Both new and old are worth something, and they must prove their value by neither being lost, but both recognised, in a completer scheme of things.