76 The Concept of Method 



A process itself ceases to exist as such when it has accom- 

 plished its end — i. e., realised its idea. But inasmuch as a process 

 is not concerned primarily with the individual, but is logically 

 related to the universal, both in experience and in its reflex in 

 language, the process gains a new realtiy. If it ceases to exist as 

 a phenomenon in the realm of fact, it nevertheless has its reality 

 lifted to a higher sphere of idea, where it exists as a formula, a 

 definition, a law, hereafter determinative but not constitutive of 

 reality. From this point of view, formulae, definitions, and laws 

 have a peculiar kind of reality, since they are ontologically condi- 

 tioned by complexes of phenomena upon which, however, they 

 do not depend for their epistemological significance. This is 

 where the danger comes in of applying too rigorously the Prag- 

 matic canon of efficiency, inasmuch as the validity of a phe- 

 nomenon or a process does not depend upon existential condi- 

 tions, any more than the validity of a universal proposition in 

 a syllogism depends upon an enumeration of particulars. 



In so far as process does realise its ends it is a true process — 

 i. e.. it is one with its ideal, without any teleological interpreta- 

 tion from a human standpoint being at all necessary, though from 

 the absolute point of view a process which is actualising itself is 

 teleology made manifest. It is conceivable that an idea, in the 

 sense of a potential concept or a series or system of purposes, 

 may be realised in a process without ever being existent as a 

 percept in a human mind. Only so far as the mind of man cor- 

 responds to the order of nature does this experiential reproduc- 

 tion of the idea of the process occur — i. e., it becomes a part of 

 his world, not merely of the world or cosmos in which it exists 

 already necessarily as an idea. 



When this correspondence of the phenomena of nature with 

 the mind of man happens also to have an emotional correspon- 

 dence at the same time with human conceptions of what is good, 

 then popularly nature is said to be teleological. This tendency 

 on the part of the human mind has done a great deal to obscure 

 the real question at issue and to complicate the problem by the 

 introduction of purely accidental and analogical elements. There 

 must be borne in mind the danger of interpreting what may be 

 called cosmic teleology in the terms of human moral concepts 

 and from the point of view of human analogy, for the following 

 reasons : 



