Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/670

656 self) has been set up for him, but because the child is not adequately aware of his specific self. Furthermore, the wider range of the educator’s knowledge would be useless merely as wider. The mere fact that he saw further ahead, that he foresaw a later development would not avail in determining the self to be realized unless the educator were capable of translating this development back into the present activities of the child. In other words, in no sense does the artistic capacity of the child, in general, fix his end; his end is fixed by the fact that even now he has a certain quickness, vividness, and plasticity of vision, a certain deftness of hand, and a certain motor coördination by which his hand is stimulated to work in harmony with his eye. It is such considerations as these, having absolutely nothing to do with mere or with general possibilities, but concerned with existing activities, which determine the end of conduct in the case referred to. Capacity, in any sense in which it requires to be realized for the sake of morality, is not only relative to specific action, but is itself action.

If capacity is itself definite activity and not simply possibility of activity, the question arises why we conceive of it as capability, not as complete in itself. If, for example, the artistic capacity of the child is already activity of the eye, hand, and brain, and if the realization of this capacity refer not to some remote attainment, but to the immediate activity of the time, why do we think of it as capacity at all?

In answer, we may note that our first conception of our activity is highly vague and indeterminate. We are conscious of the activity of our eye and ear in general, but not of just the way in which they work. We are apt, almost certain, however, to identify this partial and abstract conception of their activity with the real activity. Then, when the more specific factors of the activity force themselves into consciousness, these lie outside of the previous idea of the activity, and (the activity having been identified with our consciousness of it) seem, therefore, to be external or indifferent to the activity itself.