ely
dialectical. They give it its status in the ideal world; but the
appearance of these characters and values here and now is what needs
explanation in physics, an explanation which can be furnished, of
course, only by the physical concatenation and distribution of causes.

[Sidenote: Aristotle's final causes. Modern science can avoid such
expedients.]

Aristotle himself did not fail to Aristotle's make this necessary
distinction between efficient cause and formal essence; but as his
science was only natural history, and mechanism had no plausibility in
his eyes, the efficiency of the cause was always due, in his view, to
its ideal quality; as in heredity the father's human character, not his
physical structure, might seem to warrant the son's humanity. Every
ideal, before it could be embodied, had to pre-exist in some other
embodiment; but as when the ultimate purpose of the cosmos is considered
it seems to lie beyond any given embodiment, the highest ideal must
somehow exist disembodied. It must pre-exist, thought Aristotle, in
order to supply, by way of magic attraction, a physical cause for
perpetual movement in the world.

It must be confessed, in justice to this consummate philosopher, who is
not less masterly in the use of knowledge than unhappy in divination,
that the transformation of the highest good into a physical power is
merely incidental with him, and due to a want of faith (at that time
excusable) in mechanism and evolution. Aristotle's deity is always a
moral ideal and every detail in its definition is based on
discrimination between the better and the worse. No accommodation to the
ways of nature is here allowed to cloud the kingdom of heaven; this
deity is not condemned to do whatever happens nor to absorb whatever
exists. It is mythical only in its physical application; in moral
philosophy it remains a legitimate conception.

Truth certainly exists, if existence be not too mean an attribute for
that eternal realm which is tenanted by ideals; but truth is repugnant
to physical or psychical being. Moreover, truth may very well be
identified with an impassible intellect, which should do nothing but
possess all truth, with no point of view, no animal warmth, and no
transitive process. Such an intellect and truth are expressions having a
different metaphorical background and connotation, but, when thought
out, an identical import. They both attempt to evoke that ideal standard
which human thought pr