In himself, the second horse of the charioteer had
always been obedient as the first. But love and hate, he thought now,
good and evil, lived side by side in the human heart, and not merely
in differing proportions in one man and the next, but all good
and all evil. One had merely to look for a little of either to find it
all, one had merely to scratch the surface. All things had opposites
close by, every decision a reason against it, every animal an animal
that destroys it, the male the female, the positive the negative. The
splitting of the atom was the only true destruction, the breaking of
the universal law of oneness. Nothing could be without its opposite
that was bound up with it. Could space exist in a building without
objects that stopped it? Could energy exist without matter, or matter
without energy? Matter and energy, the inert and the active,
once considered opposites, were now known to be one.
-- Patricia Highsmith. Strangers on a Train. 1950. p. 180.