Page:Philosophical Review Volume 19.djvu/74

60 in teleological terms, certain results are obtained which are of importance for our discussion. In the first place, it is to be noted that the conception of function has no meaning apart from teleology. In contemporary writing, however, it is not unusual to find the term used to denote a detached or isolated activity, in fact, to find the word 'functional' employed as synonymous with 'dynamic' or 'changing' as opposed to what is regarded as 'static.' The real opposition to the functional, however, is found in what is regarded as mechanical or causally determined. For a dynamic process or activity becomes a function only when it is viewed in relation to some permanent unity or ideal value, and as the bearer or representative of that unity. A function, as thus representative and pointing beyond itself, is a meaning, a universal, not a particular activity or psychic event. To take a functional point of view, then, is just to grasp the end or purpose of a series of events, and to read the parts as the means or members through which this ideal organization is realized. As thus representative and expressive of the whole, functions are ideal and universal in character, and cannot be reduced to the form of mental objects or events. A functional or genetic logic, then, must deal with cognitive experience as an immanent process of attaining truth through the organization of meanings. It can by no means dispense with detailed explanations and analyses, but these must be descriptions in terms of 'end and means,' not in terms of external causality.

From this point of view we are able to understand the meaning and legitimate use of the notion of the Implicit. Indeed, we are able to see that this conception is indispensable, for to deny it, as Aristotle long ago remarked, would be to deny all movement and becoming in the sense of genesis. But it must never be forgotten that, when we look at experience functionally or teleologically, the implicit has not the form of an existing psychical content or object that can be thought of as a prior term, independently real apart from the process and the end. The earlier and later stages are held together in thought, and form an intelligible unity just through the fact that they reflect light upon each other and exhibit their common identity. That is, the end throws back light upon the means, thus disclosing that the latter, in virtue