indred interlocutors except that which it receives from the disposition
and habit of bodies. People who have not yet been born into the world
have not yet begun to think about it.

There is, of course, an inner dialectical relevance among all
propositions that have the same ideal theme, no matter how remote or
unknown to one another those who utter the propositions may be; but the
medium in which this infinite dialectical network is woven is
motionless, and indifferent to the direction in which thought might
traverse it; in other words, it is not discourse or intelligence but
eternal truth. From the point of view of experience this prior
dialectical relation of form to form is merely potential; for the
thoughts between which it would obtain need never exist or be enacted.
There is society only among incarnate ideas; and it is only by
expressing some material situation that an idea is selected out of the
infinity of not impossible ideas and promoted to the temporal dignity of
actual thought.

[Sidenote: It is necessarily relevant to earth.]

Moreover, even if the faculty of intelligence were disembodied and could
exist in a vacuum, it would still be a vain possession if no data were
given for it to operate upon and if no particular natural structure,
animal, social, or artistic, were at hand for intelligence to ally
itself to and defend. Reason would in that case die of inanition; it
would have no subject-matter and no sanction, as well as no seat.
Intelligence is not a substance; it is a principle of order and of art;
it requires a given situation and some particular natural interest to
bring it into play. In fact, it is nothing but a name for the empire
which conscious, but at bottom irrational, interests attain over the
field in which they operate; it is the fruition of life, the token of
successful operation.

Every theme or motive in the Life of Reason expresses some instinct
rooted in the body and incidental to natural organisation. The intent by
which memory refers to past or absent experience, or the intent by which
perception becomes recognition, is a transcript of relations in which
events actually stand to one another. Such intent represents
modifications of structure and action important to life, modifications
that have responded to forces on which life is dependent. Both desire
and meaning translate into cognitive or ideal energy, into intent,
mechanical relations subsisting in nature. These mechanical r