s have not rejected the analogous
problem whether the good did or did not create the animals.

[Sidenote: Practical role of dialectic.]

So long as in using terms there is no fixed intent, no concretion in
discourse with discernible predicates, controversy will rage as
conceptions waver and will reach no valid result. But when the force of
intellect, once having arrested an idea amid the flux of perceptions,
avails to hold and examine that idea with perseverance, not only does a
flash of light immediately cross the mind, but deeper and deeper vistas
are opened there into ideal truth. The principle of dialectic is
intelligence itself; and as no part of man's economy is more vital than
intelligence (since intelligence is what makes life aware of its
destiny), so no part has a more delightful or exhilarating movement. To
understand is pre-eminently to live, moving not by stimulation and
external compulsion, but by inner direction and control. Dialectic is
related to observation as art is to industry; it uses what the other
furnishes; it is the fruition of experience. It is not an alternative to
empirical pursuits but their perfection; for dialectic, like art, has no
special or private subject-matter, nor any obligation to be useless. Its
subject-matter is all things, and its function is to compare them in
form and worth, giving the mind speculative dominion over them. It
profits by the flux to fix its signification. This is precisely what
mathematics does for the abstract form and multitude of sensible things;
it is what dialectic might do everywhere, with the same incidental
utility, if it could settle its own attitude and learn to make the
passions steadfast and calm in the consciousness of their ultimate
objects.

[Sidenote: Hegel's satire on dialectic.]

The nature of dialectic might be curiously illustrated by reference to
Hegel's Logic; and though to approach the subject from Hegel's satirical
angle is not, perhaps, quite honest or fair, the method has a certain
spice. Hegel, who despised mathematics, saw that in other departments
the instability of men's meanings defeated their desire to understand
themselves. This insecurity in intent he found to be closely connected
with change of situation, with the natural mutability of events and
opinions in the world. Instead of showing, however, what inroads
passion, oblivion, sophistry, and frivolity may make into dialectic, he
bethought himself to represent all these in