Note Footnote 1: — Chapter IV

"Thought is not only distinction; it is, at the same time, relation.1 If it marks off one thing from another, it, at the same time, connects one thing with another. Nor can either of these functions of thought be separated from the other: as Aristotle himself said, the knowledge of opposites is one. A thing which has nothing to distinguish it is unthinkable, but equally unthinkable is a thing which is so separated from all other things as to have no community with them. If then the law of contradiction be taken as asserting the self-identity of things or thoughts in a sense that excludes their community—in other words, if it be not taken as limited by another law which asserts the relativity of the things or thoughts distinguished—it involves a false abstraction.... If, then, the world, as an intelligible world, is a world of distinction, differentiation, individuality, it is equally true that in it as an intelligible world there are no absolute separations or oppositions, no antagonisms which cannot be reconciled."2