according to the strength of that knowledge with which it conflicts. And, once more here, it does not consist in our failure and impotence. The impossible is not rejected, in other words, because we cannot find it. It is rejected because we find it, and find it in collision with positive knowledge. But what is true on the other side is that our knowledge here is finite and fallible. It has to be conditional on account of our inability and impotence.
Before I return to this last point, I will repeat the same truth from another side. A thing is real when, and in so far as, its opposite is impossible. But in the end its opposite is impossible because, and in so far as, the thing is real. And, according to the amount of reality which anything possesses, to that extent its opposite is inconceivable. The more, in other words, that anything exhausts the field of possibility, the less possible becomes that which would essentially alter it. Now, in the case of such truth as we have called absolute, the field of possibility is exhausted. Reality is there, and the opposite of Reality is not privation but absolute nothingness. There can be no outside, because already what is inside is everything. But the case is altered when we come to subordinate truths. These, being not self-subsistent, are conditioned by what is partly unknown, and certainly to that extent they are dependent on our inability. But, on the other hand, our criterion of their truth and strength is positive. The more they are coherent and wide—the more fully they realize the idea of system—so much the more at once are they real and true.[1] And so much the more what would subvert them becomes impossible. The opposite is inconceivable, according and in proportion as it conflicts with positive reality.
We have seen now that some truth is certain
- ↑ Throughout this discussion the reader is supposed to be acquainted with the doctrine of Chapter xxiv.
