So in higher matters.  We are conscious of pain and pleasure only through the predominance of some feeling.  There must be degrees and differences again, and some part more relieved than another, to catch an expression on.  Entire pain or an equal degree of physical suffering in every part of the body would be a perfect blank, complete numbness; and entire pleasure we could not be conscious of, and for the same reason.  How could there be any contrast, any determining hue, any darker or brighter side?  If the waters of the earth were all at the same altitude, how could there be any motion among the parts?  Hence the fullest experience is never defined, and cannot be spoken.  It is like the sphere, which, as it merges all possible form in itself, is properly of no form, as white is no color, and cannot be grasped and used as parts and fragments can; there are no angles and outlines to define and give emphasis.

Hence the pain or pleasure that is definitely shaped in the consciousness and that can be spoken is necessarily partial, and does not go the full circle of our being.  We are not conscious of our health and growth, because they are general and not local, and are not rendered prominent by contrast.

The dictionary and the sciences, in fact the whole province of human knowledge, hinge upon this principle.  To know a thing is but to separate and distinguish it from something else; and classifying and systematizing are carrying the same law from the particular to the general.  We cannot know one thing alone; two ideas enter into every distinct act of the understanding,—­one latent and virtual, the other active and at the surface.  To use familiar examples, we cannot distinguish white without having known black, nor evil without having known good, nor beauty without having known deformity.  Thus every principle has two sides, like a penny, and one presupposes the other, which it covers.

When we come to the intellect and the expression of thought, the same law of detachment and separation prevails.  In contemplation and enjoyment there are unity and wholeness; but in thinking, never.  Our thoughts lie in us, like the granite rock in the earth, whole and continuous, without break or rupture, and shaped by a law of the spheres; but when they come to the surface in utterance, and can be grasped and defined, they lose their entireness and become partial and fragmentary, and hint a local and not a general law.  We cannot speak entire and unmixed truth, because utterance separates a part from the whole, and consequently in a measure distorts and exaggerates and does injustice to other truths.  The moment we speak, we are one-sided and liable to be assailed by the reverse side of the fact.  Hence the hostility that exists between different sects and religions; their founders were each possessed of some measure of truth, and consequently stood near to a common ground of agreement, but in the statement it became vitiated and partial; and the more their disciples