ions, and dreams, but he
could hardly be said to know anything or to guide his life with
conscious intent. The accretions that might come empirically into any
field of vision would not be new predicates to be added to a known
thing, unless the logical and functional mantle of that thing fell upon
them and covered them. While the right of particulars to existence is
their own, granted them by the free grace of heaven, their ability to
enlarge our knowledge on any particular subject--their relevance or
incidence in discourse--hangs on their fulfilling the requirements which
that subject's dialectical nature imposes on all its expressions.

[Sidenote: Intent determines the functional essence of objects.]

It is on this ground, for instance, that the image of a loaf of bread is
so far from being the loaf of bread itself. External resemblance is
nothing; even psychological derivation or superposition is nothing; the
intent, rather, which picks out what that object's function and meaning
shall be, alone defines its idea; and this function involves a locus and
a status which the image does not possess. Such admirable iridescence as
the image might occasionally put on--in the fine arts, for
instance--would not constitute any iridescence or transformation in the
thing; nor would identity of aspect preserve the thing if its soul, if
its utility, had disappeared. Herein lies the ground for the essential
or functional distinction between primary and secondary qualities in
things, a distinction which a psychological scepticism has so hastily
declared to be untenable. If it was discovered, said these logicians,
that space was perceived through reading muscular sensations, space, and
the muscles too, were thereby proved to be unreal. This remarkable
sophism passed muster in the philosophical world for want of attention
to dialectic, which might so easily have shown that what a thing _means_
is spatial distinction and mechanical efficacy, and that the origin of
our perceptions, which are all equally bodily and dependent on material
stimulation, has nothing to do with their respective claims to
hypostasis. It is intent that makes objects objects; and the same
intent, defining the function of things, defines the scope of those
qualities which are essential to them. In the flux substances and
shadows drift down together; it is reason that discerns the difference.

[Sidenote: Also the scope of ideals.]

Purposes need dialectical articul