This unity or inseparability of opposite elements in a truth or real notion is the stumbling-block to the incipient Hegelian. The respectable citizens of Germany were amazed, says Heine, at the shamelessness of J. G. Fichte, when he proclaimed that the Ego produced the world, as if that had cast doubts on their reality; and the ladies were curious to know whether Madame Fichte was included in the general denial of substantial existence[7]. If easy-going critics treated Fichte in this way, they had even better source for amusement in Hegel. That Being and Nothing is the same was a perpetual fund for jokes, too tempting to be missed. Now, in the baldness, and occasionally paradoxical style, of Hegel's statements, there is some excuse for such exaggerations. Being and Nothing are not merely the same: they are also different: they at least tend to pass into each other. In the technical language of logicians, the question is not what being denotes, but what it connotes. The word 'is' had, it may be, originally a 'demonstrative' meaning, a 'pronominal' force, which in course of time passed from a local or sensuous meaning to express a thought. No doubt 'is' and 'is not' are wide enough apart in our application of them as copula of a proposition: but if we subtract the two terms and leave only the copula standing, the difference of the two becomes inexpressible and unanalysable. In both there is the same statement of immediacy or face-to-faceness: that two things are brought to confront each other,--united, as it were, without producing any real or specific sort of union. If Thought be unifying, Being is the minimum of unification: if Thought be relating, Being is the most abstract of relations. So abstract, indeed, that its relativity is completely lost sight of: so utterly one, that it vanishes in a point. And just because it _is_ (as it seems) out of relations, it must be nothing. No doubt, between the two terms Being and not-Being a difference is meant; when they are employed, a difference is thrown into them; and then they are not the same: but if we keep out of sight what is meant, and stick to the ultimate point which is said, we shall find that mere being and mere nothing are alike inapprehensible by themselves, and that to institute a difference we must go out of and beyond them. Perhaps some approach to the right point of comprehension may be made, if we note that when two people quarrel and can give no reason or further development to their opposite assertions, the one person's 'is' is exactly equal (apart from subsequent explanations) to the other's 'is not.' The mere 'Is' and 'Is not' have precisely the same amount of content: a mere affirmation or assertion, which is mere nothing,--because connecting, where there is nothing to connect.