Page:Philosophical Review Volume 27.djvu/276

264 of purpose is primarily applicable to the subject of experience, for it is a characterization of activity. It seems probable that all activity is originally purposive, though oft-repeated actions become less and less consciously purposive and more and more reflex and habitual. In the case of those individuals whose nature we realize most clearly, namely, selves at our own level of development, the ground of activity is in most cases evidently purposive, and not purely material in the scientific sense. For in science, 'material' means 'phenomenal,' whereas the ground of our own activity is the very opposite of phenomenal. Certainly phenomena in part determine the purposes which guide the activity, and the latter may itself be limited by material conditions, but the ground of its initiation is subjective or real as opposed to objective or phenomenal.

We may, however, attempt to apply the category of purpose to the ground of what we observe in the object of experience. In such observation we at once notice actions which may be regarded as purposive by analogy with our own. In fact all organic life appears to exhibit this purposive character. We might perhaps describe the activity of an organism in terms of molecular action, that is, in terms of the purely objective constructions of physics, though it is by no means certain that organic activity could even be completely described thus. In any case, the description, if complete, could not be general, for every organism is unique. Each would therefore require a separate description. On the other hand, we may explain the organism by the organized collective activity of individuals, thus changing the terms from purely mental constructions to concrete entities whose nature we can all more or less realize.

The fact that organic activity is thus apparently teleological strongly suggests the applicability of the pluralistic hypothesis, at all events to organic matter. We say 'apparently teleological,' for it is not certain that the existence of such teleology can be conclusively proved from a logical point of view. Could it be so proved the fact would be of enormous significance, for pluralism would immediately be verified as regards organic matter, since the existence of purpose implies the existence of experiencing