Text: Passage from Coleridge, The Friend: "EVERY POWER IN NATURE AND IN SPIRIT must evolve an opposite, as the sole means and condition of its manifestation: AND ALL OPPOSITION IS A TENDENCY TO RE-UNION. This is the universal Law of Polarity or essential Dualism... The Principle may be thus expressed. The Identity of Thesis and Antithesis is the substance of all Being; their Opposition the condition of all Existence, or Being manifested; and every Thing or Phenomenon is the Exponent of a Synthesis as long as the opposite energies are retained in that Synthesis." Hamilton notes on the above passage: "So far as I understand this principle, I would perhaps express it thus:- Power can be manifested only by its effects, that is, by overcoming Resistance, which is Contrary Power. Existence is manifested by the struggle between two opposite tendencies ... Each particular phenomenon, or individual Manifestation of Existence, is determined to be such as it is, and no other, by the kind and degree of its producing Power, that is, by its own particular combination or synthesis of two opposite tendencies. The thought of Being or Existence general (a new name, the property of which may demand a special inquiry), as distinquished from phenomena, that is, from individual manifestations of existence, arises in us along with, and as a realization or externalization of, our belief in a common ground, a hidden principle of unity, belonging to the two opposite tendencies."

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Source: 164