Page:Knowing and acting.djvu/31

 forms and functions of thinking, reasonings, judgments, definitions, descriptions, observations, &c. In Life there are no ends which are not also beginnings, no aims which are not also points de mire, in a word action never attains but it presents matter for knowledge; knowledge takes cognizance of its achievement and prescribes to it a further effort. Hence in stating their relation we must not use of either in relation to the other the vocabulary of 'means' and 'end': that language is appropriate only when by 'end' we mean a bye-end, and by 'means' something merely useful. With such restriction it is equally true to say that acting subserves thinking and that thinking subserves acting: each supplies to the other the occasion of that other's free exercise and independent development—its stimulus but not its life.

Freeing ourselves from the distorting influence of the terms 'means' and 'ends' we may state their relation thus: action is for the sake of action and knowledge for the sake of knowledge, but each incidentally, or concomitantly, is the condition of the other. Action cannot be except where knowledge precedes, and knowledge can take cognizance only of what has been enacted, i.e. of the results of action informed by knowledge. This doctrine is a paradox to common sense and to science, but not to philosophy. For in philosophy we learn that that only is knowable which is real and that that only can be called real which is the result of a spiritual activity—which has been realized in the light of knowledge. All genuine knowledge is historical—is knowledge of history, and history is as a whole and in every part of it the achievement of will—not of this or that individual will of this or that individual knower, but in and through their wills of that universal Will which endlessly fulfils its good