and significance of them. It is the evident ideal
of physics, in every department, to attain such an insight into causes
that the effects actually given may be thence _deduced_; and deduction
is another name for dialectic. To be sure, the dialectic applicable to
material processes and to human life is one in which the terms and the
categories needed are still exceedingly numerous and vague: a little
logic is all that can be read into the cataract of events. But the hope
of science, a hope which is supported by every success it scores, is
that a simpler law than has yet been discovered will be found to connect
units subtler than those yet known; and that in these finer terms the
universal mechanism may be exhaustively rendered. Mechanism is the ideal
of physics, because it is the infusion of a maximum of mathematical
necessity into the flux of real things. It is the aspiration of natural
science to be as dialectical as possible, and thus, in their ideal, both
branches of science are brought together.

That the ideal of dialectic is to apply to existence and thereby to
coincide with physics is in a sense no less true, although dialecticians
may be little inclined to confess it. The direct purpose of deduction is
to elucidate an idea, to develop an import, and nothing can be more
irrelevant in this science than whether the conclusion is verified in
nature or not. But the direct purpose of dialectic is not its ultimate
justification. Dialectic is a human pursuit and has, at bottom, a moral
function; otherwise, at bottom, it would have no value. And the moral
function and ultimate justification of dialectic is to further the Life
of Reason, in which human thought has the maximum practical validity,
and may enjoy in consequence the richest ideal development. If dialectic
takes a turn which makes it inapplicable in physics, which makes it
worthless for mastering experience, it loses all its dignity: for
abstract cogency has no dignity if the subject-matter into which it is
introduced is trivial. In fact, were dialectic a game in which the
counters were not actual data and the conclusions were not possible
principles for understanding existence, it would not be a science at
all. It would resemble a counterfeit paper currency, without intrinsic
value and without commercial convenience. Just as a fact without
implications is not a part of science, so a method without application
would not be.

The free excursions of dialectic i