ich was
not itself in some way transitive and ambitious. Intent, though it looks
away from existence and the actual, is the most natural and pervasive of
things. Physics and dialectic meet in this: that the second brings to
fruition what the first describes, namely, existence, and that both have
their transcendental root in the flux of being. Matter cannot exist
without some form, much as by shedding every form in succession it may
proclaim its aversion to fixity and its radical formlessness or
infinitude. Nor can form, without the treacherous aid of matter, pass
from its ideal potentiality into selected and instant being.

[Sidenote: A fable about matter and form.]

In order to live--if such a myth may be allowed--the Titan Matter was
eager to disguise his incorrigible vagueness and pretend to be
something. He accordingly addressed himself to the beautiful company of
Forms, sisters whom he thought all equally beautiful, though their
number was endless, and equally fit to satisfy his heart. He wooed them
hypocritically, with no intention of wedding them; yet he uttered their
names in such seductive accents (called by mortals intelligence and
toil) that the virgin goddesses offered no resistance--at least such of
them as happened to be near or of a facile disposition. They were
presently deserted by their unworthy lover; yet they, too, in that
moment's union, had tasted the sweetness of life. The heaven to which
they returned was no longer an infinite mathematical paradise. It was
crossed by memories of earth, and a warmer breath lingered in some of
its lanes and grottoes. Henceforth its nymphs could not forget that they
had awakened a passion, and that, unmoved themselves, they had moved a
strange indomitable giant to art and love.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote F: Cf. the motto on the title-page.]

[Footnote G: Not, of course, in human experience, which is incapable of
containing the heart of a flea, much less what may be endured in remoter
spheres. But if an intelligence were constructed _ad hoc_ there is
nothing real that might not fall within the scope of experience. The
difference between existence and truth on the one side and knowledge or
representation on the other may be reduced to this: that knowledge
brings what exists or what is true under apperception, while being
diffuses what is understood into an impartial subsistence. As truth is
indistinguishable from an absolute motionless intellect, which should no
lon