The traditional separation between some things as mere means and others as mere ends is a reflection of the insu¬ lated existence of working and leisure classes, of produc¬ tion that is not also consummatory, and consummation that is not productive. This division is not a merely social phenomenon. It embodies a perpetuation upon the human plane of a division between need and satisfac¬ tion belonging to brute life. And this separation ex¬ presses in turn the mechanically external relationship that exists in nature between situations of disturbed equilibrium, of stress, and strain, and achieved equi¬ librium. For in nature, outside of man, except when events eventuate in “development” or “evolution” (in which a cumulative carrying forward of consequences of past histories in new efficiencies occurs) antecedent events are external transitive conditions of the occurrence of an event having immediate and static qualities. To animals to whom acts have no meaning, the change in the environ¬ ment required to satisfy needs has no significance on its own account; such change is a mere incident of ego-cen¬ tric satisfactions. This physically external relationship EXPERIENCE, NATURE AND ART 369 of antecedents and consequents is perpetuated; it con¬ tinues to hold true of human industry wherever labor and its materials and products are externally enforced necessi¬ ties for securing a living. Because Greek industry was so largely upon this plane of servile labor, all industrial activity was regarded by Greek thought as a mere means, an extraneous necessity. Hence satisfactions due to it were conceived to be the ends or goods of purely animal nature in isolation. With respect to a truly human and rational life, they were not ends or goods at all, but merely "means,” that is to say, external conditions that were antecedently enforced requisites of the life conducted and enjoyed by free men, especially by those devoted to the acme of freedom, pure thinking. As Aristotle asserted, drawing a just conclusion from the assumed premises, there are classes of men who are necessary materials of society but who are not integral parts of it. And he summed up the whole theory of the external and coerced relationship of means and ends when he said in this very connection that: "When there is one thing that is means and another thing that is end, there is nothing common between them, except in so far as the one, the means, pro¬ duces, and the other, the end, receives the product.”
It would thus seem almost self-evident that the distinc¬ tion between the instrumental and the final adopted in philosophic tradition as a solving word presents in truth a problem, a problem so deep-seated and far-reaching that it may be said to be the problem of experience. For all the intelligent activities of men, no matter whether expressed in science, fine arts, or social relationships, have for their task the conversion of causal bonds, relations of succession, into a connection of means-consequence, into EXPERIENCE AND NATURE meanings. When the task is achieved the result is art: and in art everything is common between means and ends. Whenever so-called means remain external and servile, and so-called ends are enjoyed objects whose further causative status is unperceived, ignored or denied, the situation is proof positive of limitations of art. Such a situation consists of affairs in which the problem has not been solved; namely that of converting physical and brute relationships into connections of meanings characteristic of the possibilities of nature.
Tt goes without saying that man, begins as_JL.part of physical and animal nature. Jn as far as he re.acts_.,ta physical things on a strictly physical level, he is pulled and pushed about, overwhelmed, broken to pieces, lifted on the crest of the wave of things, like anything else. His contacts, his sufferings and doings, are matters of direct interaction only. He is in a “state of nature.” As an animal, even upon the brute level, he manages to subor¬ dinate some physical things to his needs, converting them into materials sustaining life and growth. But in so far things that serve as material of satisfaction and the acts that procure and utilize them are not objects, or things- with-meanings. That appetite as such is blind, is notori¬ ous; it may push us into a comfortable result instead of into disaster; but we are pushed just the same. When appetite is perceived in its meanings, in the consequences it jnduces, and these consequences are experimented.
with in reflective imagination, some being seen to be con- sistent with one another, and hence capable of co-exist= ence and of serially ordered achievement, others being incompatible, forbidding conjunction at one time, and getting in one another’s wav serially— when this estate EXPERIENCE, NATURE AND ART 371 is attained, we live on the human plane, responding to things in their meanings. A relationship of cause- effect has been transformed into one of means-consequence. Then consequences belong integrally to the conditions which may produce them, and the latter possess character and distinction. The meaning of causal conditions is carried over also into the consequence, so that the lat¬ ter is no longer a mere end, a last and closing term of arrest. It is marked out in perception, distinguished by the efficacy of the conditions which have entered into it. Its value as fulfilling and consummatory is measurable by subsequent fulfillments and frustrations to which it is contributory in virtue of the causal means which compose it.
Thus to be conscious of meanings or to have an idea, marks a fruition, an enjoyed or suffered arrest of the flux of events. But there are all kinds of ways of perceiving meanings, all kinds of ideas. Meaning may be deter¬ mined in terms of consequences hastily snatched at and torn loose from their connections; then is prevented the formation of wider and more enduring ideas. Or, we may be aware of meanings, may achieve ideas, that unite wide and enduring scope with richness of distinctions. The latter sort of consciousness is more than a passing and superficial consummation or end: it takes up into itself meanings covering stretches of existence wrought into consistency. It marks the conclusion of long con¬ tinued endeavor; of patient and indefatigable search and test. The idea is, in short, art and a work of art. As a work of art, it directly liberates subsequent action and makes it more fruitful in a creation of more meanings and more perceptions.
EXPERIENCE AND NATURE It is the part of wisdom to recognize how sparse and insecure are such accomplishments in comparison with experience in which physical and animal nature largely have their way. Our liberal and rich ideas, our adequate appreciations, due to productive art are hemmed in by an unconquered domain in which we are everywhere exposed to the incidence of unknown forces and hurried fatally to unforeseen consequences. Here indeed we live ser¬ vilely, menially, mechanically; and we so live as much when forces blindly lead to us ends that are liked as when we are caught in conditions and ends against which we blindly rebel. To call satisfactions which happen in this blind way “ends” in a eulogistic sense, as did classic thought, is to proclaim in effect our servile submission to accident. We may indeed enjoy the goods the gods of for¬ tune send us, but we should recognize them for what they are, not asserting them to be good and righteous alto¬ gether. For, since they have not been achieved by any art involving deliberate selection and arrangement of forces, we do not know with what they are charged. It is an old true tale that the god of fortune is capricious, and delights to destroy his darlings after having made them drunk with prosperity. The goods of art are not the less good in their goodness than the gifts of nature; while in addition they are such as to bring with themselves open-eyed confidence. They are fruits of means con¬ sciously employed fulfillments whose further consequences are secured by conscious control of the causal conditions which enter into them. Art is the sole alternative to luck; and divorce from each other of the meaning and value of instrumentalities and ends is the essence of luck. The esoteric character of culture and the supernatural quality of religion are both expressions of the divorce.
EXPERIENCE, NATURE AND ART 373 The modern mind has formally abjured belief in natural teleology because it found Greek and medieval teleol¬ ogy juvenile and superstitious. Yet facts have a way of compelling recognition of themselves. There is little scientific writing which does not introduce at some point or other the idea of tendency. The idea of tendency unites in itself exclusion of prior design and inclusion of movement in a particular direction, a direction that may be either furthered or counteracted and frustrated, but which is intrinsic. Direction involves a limiting position, a point or goal of culminating stoppage, as well as an initial starting point. To assert a tendency and to be fore-conscious of a possible terminus of movement are two names of the same fact. Such a consciousness may be fatalistic; a sense of inevitable march toward impend¬ ing doom. But it may also contain a perception of mean¬ ings such as flexibly directs a forward movement. The end is then an end-in-view and is in constant and cumu¬ lative reenactment at each stage of forward movement. It is no longer a terminal point, external to the conditions that have led up to it; it is the continually developing meaning of present tendencies — the very things which as directed we call “means.” The process is art and its product, no matter at what stage it be taken, is a work of art.
To a person building a house, the end-in- view is not just a remote and final goal to be hit upon after a suffi¬ ciently great number of coerced motions have been duly performed. The end-in-view is a plan which is contem¬ poraneously operative in selecting and arranging materials. The latter, brick, stone, wood and mortar, are means only as the end-in- view is actually incarnate in them, in form- EXPERIENCE AND NATURE ing them. Literally, they are the end in its present stage of realization. The end-in-view is present at each stage of the process; it is present as the meaning of the materials used and acts done; without its informing presence, the latter are in no sense “means;” they are merely extrinsic causal conditions. The statement is generic; it applies equally at every stage. The house itself, when building is complete, is “end” in no exclusive sense. It marks the conclusion of the organization of certain materials and events into effective means; but these material and events still exist in causal interaction with other things. New consequences are foreseen; new purposes, ends-in-view, are entertained; they are embodied in the coordination of the thing built, now reduced to material, although significant material, along with other materials, and thus transmuted into means. The case is still clearer, when instead of considering a process subject to as many rigid external conditions as is the building of a house, we take for illus¬ tration a flexibly and freely moving process, such as paint¬ ing a picture or thinking out a scientific process, when these operations are carried on artistically. Every process of free art proves that the difference between means and end is analytic, formal, not material and chronologic.
What has been said enables us to re-define the distinc¬ tion drawn between the artistic, as objectively productive, and the esthetic. Both involve a perception of meanings in which the instrumental and the consummatory pecu¬ liarly intersect. In esthetic perceptions an object inter¬ penetrated with meanings is given; it may be taken for granted; it invites and awaits the act of appropriative enjoyment. In the esthetic object tendencies are sensed as brought to frui tion; in it is embodied a means-consequence EXPERIENCE, NATURE AND ART 375 relationship, as the past work of his hands was surveyed by the Lord and pronounced good. This good differs from those gratifications to which the name sensual rather than sensuous is given, since the former are pleas¬ ing endings that occur in ways not informed with the meaning of materials and acts integrated into them. In appreciative possession, perception goes out to tendencies which have been brought to happy fruition in such a way as to release and arouse.
Artistic sense on the other hand grasps tendencies as possibilities; the invitation of these possibilities to per¬ ception is more urgent and compelling than that of the given already achieved. While the means-consequence relationship is directly sensed, felt, in both appreciation and artistic production, in the former the scale descends upon the side of the attained; in the latter there pre¬ dominates the invitation of an existent consummation to bring into existence further perceptions. Art in being, the active productive process, may thus be defined as an esthetic perception together with an operative perception of the efficiencies of the esthetic object. In many persons with respect to most kinds of enjoyed perceptions, the sense of possibilities, the arousal or excitation attendant upon appreciation of poetry, music, painting, architecture or landscape remains diffuse and inchoate; it takes effect only in direct and undefined channels. The enjoyed perception of a visual scene is in any case a function of that scene in its total connections, but it does not link up adequately. In some happily constituted persons, this effect is adequately coordinated with other endow¬ ments and habits; it becomes an integral part of craft, taking effect in the creation of a new object of apprecia- EXPERIENCE AND NATURE tion. The integration is, however, progressive and ex¬ perimental, not momentarily accomplished. Thus every creative effort is temporal, subject to risk and deflection. In that sense the difference between the diffuse and post¬ poned change of action due in an ordinary person to release of energies by an esthetic object, and the special and axial direction of subsequent action in a gifted person is, after all, a matter of degree.
Without a sense of moving tendencies which are opera¬ tive in conjunction with a state of fruition, there is appetitive gratification, but nothing that may be termed appreciation. Sense of moving tendencies supplies thrill, stimulation, excitation; sense of completion, con¬ summation, affords composure, form, measure, composi¬ tion. Emphasize the latter, and appreciation is of the classic type. This type fits conditions where production is professionalized among technical craftsmen, as among the Greeks; it is adapted to a contemplative enjoyment of the achievements of past ages or remote places, where conditions forbid urge to emulation or productive activ¬ ity of a similar kind. Any work of art that persistently retains its power to generate enjoyed perception or appreciation becomes in time classic.
In so-called romantic art, the sense of tendencies opera¬ tive beyond the limits of consummation is in excess; a lively sense of unrealized potentialities attaches to the object; but it is employed to enhance immediate appre¬ ciation, not to promote further productive achievement. Whatever is peculiarly romantic excites a feeling that the possibilities suggested go beyond not merely actual pres¬ ent realization, but are beyond effective attainment in any experience. In so far intentionally romantic art is EXPERIENCE, NATURE AND ART 377 wilful, and in so far not art. Excited and uneasy percep¬ tual enjoyment is made ultimate, and the work of art is accommodated to production of these feelings. The sense of unachieved possibilities is employed as a compensatory equivalent for endeavor in achievement. Thus when the romantic spirit invades philosophy the possibilities present in imaginative sentiment are declared to be the real, although “transcendental,” substance of Being itself. In complete art, appreciation follows the object and moves with it to its completion; romanticism reverses the process and degrades the object to an occasion for arous¬ ing a predetermined type of appreciation. In classicism, objective achievement is primary, and appreciation not only conforms to the object, but the object is employed to compose sentiment and give it distinction. Its vice, as an ’ism, is that it turns the mind to what is given; the given is taken as if it were eternal and wholly separate from generation and movement. Art free from subjec¬ tion to any “ism” has movement, creation, as well as order, finality.
To institute a difference of kind between useful and fine arts is, therefore, absurd, since art involves a peculiar interpenetration of means and ends. Many things are termed useful for reasons of social status, implying dep¬ recation and contempt. Things are sometimes said to belong to the menial arts merely because they are cheap and used familiarly by common people. These things of daily use for ordinary ends may survive in later periods, or be transported to another culture, as from Japan and China to America, and being rare and sought by con¬ noisseurs, rank forthwith as works of fine art. Other things may be called fine because their manner of use is EXPERIENCE AND NATURE decorative or socially ostentatious. It is tempting to make a distinction of degree and say that a thing belongs to the sphere of use when perception of its meaning is incidental to something else; and that a thing belongs to fine art when its other uses are subordinate to its use in perception. The distinction has a rough practical value, but cannot be pressed too far. For in production of a painting or a poem, as well as in making a vase or a tem¬ ple, a perception is also employed as means for something beyond itself. Moreover, the perception of urns, pots and pans as commodities may be intrinsically enjoyable, although these things are primarily perceived with refer¬ ence to some use to which they are put. The only basic distinction is that between bad art and good art, and this distinction, between things that meet the require¬ ments of art and those that do not, applies equally to things of use and of beauty. Capacity to offer to per¬ ception meaning in which fruition and efficacy interpene¬ trate is met by different products in various degrees of fulness; it may be missed altogether by pans and poems alike. The difference between the ugliness of a mechani¬ cally conceived and executed utensil and of a meretricious and pretentious painting is one only of content or material; in form, both are articles, and bad articles.
Thinking is pre-eminently an art; knowledge and propo¬ sitions which are the products of thinking, are works of art, as much so as statuary and symphonies. Every successive stage of thinking is a conclusion in which the meaning of what has produced it is condensed; and it is no sooner stated than it is a light radiating to other things — unless it be a fog which obscures them. The anteced¬ ents of a conclusion are as causal and existential as those EXPERIENCE, NATURE AND ART 379 of a building. They are not logical or dialectical, or an affair of ideas. While a conclusion follows from ante¬ cedents, it does not follow from “premises,” in the strict, formal sense. Premises are the analysis of a conclu¬ sion into its logically justifying grounds; there are no premises till there is a conclusion. Conclusion and premise are reached by a procedure comparable to the use of boards and nails in making a box; or of paint and canvas in making a picture. If defective materials are employed or if they are put together carelessly and awk¬ wardly, the result is defective. In some cases the result is called unworthy, in others, ugly; in others, inept; in others, wasteful, inefficient, and in still others untrue, false. But in each case, the condemnatory adjective refers to the resulting work judged in the light of its method of production. Scientific method or the art of constructing true perceptions is ascertained in the course of experience to occupy a privileged position in under¬ taking other arts. But this unique position only places it the more securely as an art; it does not set its product, knowledge, apart from other works of art.
The existential origin of valid cognitive perceptions is sometimes recognized in form and denied in substance; the name “psychological” is given to the events which generate valid beliefs. Then a sharp distinction is made between genesis as psychological and validity as logical. Of course lexicographic names are of no special moment; if any one wishes to call the efficient causes of knowledge and truth psychological, he is entitled to do so — provided the actual traits of these causative events are recognized. Such a recognition will note however that psychological does not mean psychic, or refer to events going on exclu- EXPERIENCE AND NATURE sively within the head or “subcutaneously.” To become aware of an object cognitively as distinct from esthet- ically, involves external physical movements and external physical appliances physically manipulated. Some of these active changes result in unsound and defective per¬ ceptions; some have been ascertained to result usually in valid perceptions. The difference is precisely that which takes place when the art of architecture or sculpture is skilfully conducted or is carried on carelessly, and without adequate appliances. Sometimes the operations pro¬ ductive of tested beliefs are called “inductive;” with an implication in the naming, of discrediting them, as com¬ pared with deductive functions, which are assigned a superior exclusive status. Of deduction, when thus de¬ fined, the following assertions may be made. First, it has nothing to do with truth about any matter of exist¬ ence. Secondly, it is not even concerned with consistency or correctness, save in a formal sense whose opposite (as has been previously pointed out) is not inconsistency but nonsense. Thirdly, the meanings which figure in it are the conclusions of prior inquiries which are “induc¬ tive,” that is, are products of an experimental art of changing external things by appropriate external move¬ ments and appliances.
Deduction as it actually occurs in science is not deduc¬ tion as deduction should be according to a common defini¬ tion- Deduction deals directly with meanings in their relations to one another, rather than with meanings directly referred to existence. But these meanings are what they are in themselves and are related to one an¬ other by means of acts of taking and manipulating — an art of discourse. They possess intellectual import EXPERIENCE, NATURE AND ART 381 and enter fruitfully into scientific method only because they are selected, employed, separated and combined by acts extraneous to them, acts which are as existential and causative as those concerned in the experimental use of apparatus and other physical things. The act of knowing, whether solicitous about inference or about demonstra¬ tion, is always inductive. There is only one mode of thinking, the inductive, when thinking denotes any¬ thing that actually happens. The notion that there is another kind called deduction is another evidence of the prevalent tendency in philosophy to treat functions as antecedent operations, and to take essential meanings of existence as if they were a kind of Being. As a concrete operation, deduction is generative, not sterile; but as a concrete operation, it contains an extraneous act of taking and using which is selective, experimental and checked constantly by consequences.
Knowledge or science, as a work of art, like any other work of art, confers upon things traits and potentialities which did not previously belong to them. Objection from the side of alleged realism to this statement springs from a confusion of tenses. Knowledge is not a distortion or perversion which confers upon its subject-matter traits which do not belong to it, but is an act which confers upon non-cognitive material traits which did not belong to it. It marks a change by which physical events exhibiting properties of mechanical energy, connected by relations of push and pull, hitting, rebounding, split¬ ting and consolidating, realize characters, meanings and relations of meanings hitherto not possessed by them. Architecture does not add to stone and wood something which does not belong to them, but it does add to them EXPERIENCE AND NATURE properties and efficacies which they did not possess in their earlier state. It adds them by means of engaging them in new modes of interaction, having a new order of consequences. Neither engineering nor fine art limits itself to imitative reproduction or copying of antecedent conditions. Their products may nevertheless be more effectively natural, more “life like,” than were anteced¬ ent states of natural existence. So it is with the art of knowing and its works.
The failure to recognize that knowledge is a product of art accounts for an otherwise inexplicable fact: that science lies today like an incubus upon such a wide area of beliefs and aspirations. To remove the deadweight, however, recognition that it is an art will have to be more than a theoretical avowal that science is made by man for man, although such recognition is probably an initial preliminary step. But the real source of the difficulty is that the art of knowing is limited to such a narrow area. Like everything precious and scarce, it has been artifi¬ cially protected; and through this very protection it has been dehumanized and appropriated by a class. As costly jewels of jade and pearl belong only to a few, so with the jewels of science. The philosophic theories which have set science on an altar in a temple remote from the arts of life, to be approached only with peculiar rites, are a part of the technique of retaining a secluded mo¬ nopoly of belief and intellectual authority. Till the art of achieving adequate and liberal perceptions of the mean¬ ings of events is incarnate in education, morals and industry, science will remain a special luxury for a few; for the mass, it will consist of a remote and abstruse body