Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/721

 INDIVIDUAL TELESIS 705

duction of the entire panorama displayed by the external world to the organs of special sense, which register all impressions and preserve them for future comparison and use. The mind itself thus actually feels, or, as it were, sees, not only all that is presented to the senses but all that has been so presented in the past, or so much of it as it has the power to retain. The simultaneous felt presence of so many impressions renders it possible to make comparisons and recognize differences and samenesses. It thus declares agreements and disagreements, which constitute the basis of all thought. Agreement of wholes is identity, agreement of parts is similarity. These are the funda- mental relations, but there are many kinds of relations, and the intellectual process per se is the perception of relations.

How, then, does this simple faculty of 'perceiving relations become a new power in the world for the storage and use of the universal energy ? What is the precise form of indirection that so greatly multiplies the effect pro- duced ? Is there anything essentially new in the nature of the force con- stituting a final cause? To the last of these questions a negative answer must be given. There is only one genus of cause in the sense of a force, and that is the direct impact. The difference between efficient and final causes must be sought in the mode of their application. While the final cause, as its name implies, is inspired by an end in view, it is in reality not directed toward that end. In mere motive or will, unaided by the intuitive faculty, the force of the organism is so directed, but for want of this faculty it may fail to attain it. The telic power differs essentially from the conative power in being directed not to the end but to some means to the end. Intelligence works exclusively through means, and only in so far as it does this does it employ the final cause. Instead of seeking the thing desired it seeks some other thing, unimportant in itself, whose attainment it perceives will secure the thing desired. This is the essence of intellectual action and all that constitutes a final cause. It is the process of converting means into ends. It thus becomes necessary that the means be desired, otherwise there is no force for the accomplishment of results. So far as the pursuit of the means is concerned the action is purely conative and does not differ from that which pursues the end directly. The whole difference consists in the knowledge that the end will follow upon the means. A final cause, therefore, stripped of its manifold concomitants which so obscure its true nature, consists in the pure intellectual perception that a certain end is attainable through a certain means. But this is simply saying that in and of itself it is not a cause at all. Knowledge is merely a guide to action. Intellect is a directive agent and can no more be called the cause of the result accomplished than the rudder can be called the cause of the progress of a boat.

There are all degrees in the amount of indirection involved in ideological action, from a mere dttour necessary to avoid an obstacle to the highest feats of engineering, in which each separate part, say, of a Ferris wheel, must be