or whooping; for he can define. He leaves with Asia the vast and
superlative; he is the arrival of accuracy and intelligence. "He shall
be as a god to me, who can rightly divide and define."

This defining is philosophy. Philosophy is the account which the human
mind gives to itself of the constitution of the world. Two cardinal
facts lie forever at the base: the one, and the two.--1. Unity, or
Identity; and, 2, Variety. We unite all things, by perceiving the law
which pervades them; by perceiving the superficial differences, and
the profound resemblances. But every mental act,--this very perception
of identity or oneness, recognizes the difference of things. Oneness
and otherness. It is impossible to speak, or to think, without embracing
both.

The mind is urged to ask for one cause of many effects; then for the
cause of that; and again the cause, diving still into the profound;
self-assured that it shall arrive at an absolute and sufficient one,--a
one that shall be all. "In the midst of the sun is the light, in the
midst of the light is truth, and in the midst of truth is the
imperishable being, "say the Vedas. All philosophy, of east and west,
has the same centripetence. Urged by an opposite necessity, the mind
returns from the one, to that which is not one, but other or many;
from cause to effect; and affirms the necessary existence of variety,
the self-existence of both, as each is involved in the other. These
strictly-blended elements it is the problem of thought to separate,
and to reconcile. Their existence is mutually contradictory and
exclusive; and each so fast slides into the other, that we can never
say what is one, and what it is not. The Proteus is as nimble in the
highest as in the lowest grounds, when we contemplate the one, the
true, the good,--as in the surfaces and extremities of matter. In all