The Interpretation of Experience 7 5 



conscious of his humanity. Life is now raised to the level of an 

 idea. The significance of human everyday acts is seen, not in 

 reference to the stubborn material with which we have to strive, 

 but in relation to the ideal which we are seeking to realise. It 

 is this spiritualising of materials which is the objective task of 

 education : it is the revelation of the pantheism of nature which 

 is the first step towards the realisation of the divinity in man. 



III. The Philosophical Significance of Ends 



As soon as an end or purpose is thought of merely as end. i. e., 

 as finish, conclusion, something shut up and closed, from that 

 moment does it lose all pragmatic vitality and all energetic sig- 

 nificance for a functional theory of education. In this sense, 

 " end " has no teleological significance, for its reference is purely 

 retrospective. It can be interpreted only as the conclusion or 

 completion of a process which had such and such a beginning, 

 and its significance is only that it is the end of that beginning. 



In any case of this simplified process whose end is merely 

 conclusion, there is no loss of energy even in the ideal sense. 

 What was kinetic, so to speak, now becomes potential. That 

 power which the process had in it with reference to end, it now 

 has in another way with reference to means — i. e., the phenomena 

 which were the conclusion of that process become in turn by 

 virtue of their character of finality in respect to the first process, 

 the starting-point of a second, a third, etc., so that we get a 

 series of hierarchy of " ends " which when viewed from the 

 standpoint of evolutionary Idealism are but microscopic phases of 

 the cosmic development. Of this the ordinary experience of 

 every individual furnishes abundant illustration, which has 

 been to some degree systematised in the various moral theories 

 that have been evolved in the course of the history of human 

 thought. 



Again, from another point of view and elaborating this simple 

 phase, we find that, especially in the complex of phenomena that 

 go to make up social life, a phenomenon may occupy at the same 

 time several positions, more or less genetic or final in several 

 sets or series of processes, each of which is genetically inter- 

 related and each of which is teleologically potential, (e. g.. the 

 average human being in his daily relations.) 



