Page:John Dewey's Interest and Effort in Education (1913).djvu/43

 and "end" apply primarily to the position occupied by acts as stages of a single developing activity, and only secondarily to things or objects. The end really means the final stage of an activity, its last or terminal period; the means are the earlier phases, those gone through before the activity reaches its termination. This is plainly seen in, say, the leisurely eating of a meal, as distinct from rushing through it to have it over as soon as possible; in the playing of the game of ball, in listening to a musical theme. In each case there is a definite outcome; after the meal is eaten, there is a certain amount of food in the system; when the nine innings of the game of baseball are ended, one side or the other has won. Henceforth—afterwards—it is possible to separate the external result from the process, from the continuous activity which led up to it. Afterwards we tend to separate the result from the process; to regard the result of the process as the end and the whole process as simply a means to the external result. But in civilized society, eating is not merely a means to getting so much food-power into the system; it is a social process, a