The question _Whose_is_the_real_activity?_ is
thus tantamount to the question _What_will_be_
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_the_actual_results?_ Its interest is dramatic; how
will things work out? If the agents are of
one sort, one way; if of another sort, they may
work out differently. The pragmatic
meaning of the various alternatives, in short,
is great. It makes no merely verbal difference
which opinion we take up.
You see it is the old dispute come back!
Materialism and teleology; elementary short-
span actions summing themselves 'blindly,' or
far foreseen ideals coming with effort into act.
Naively we believe, and humanly and dramatically
we like to believe, that activities
both of wider and of narrower span are at
work in life together, that both are real, and
that the long-span tendencies yoke the others
in their service, encouraging them in the right
direction, and damping them when they tend
in other ways. But how to represent clearly
the _modus_operandi_ of such steering of small
tendencies by large ones is a problem which
metaphysical thinkers will have to ruminate
upon for many years to come. Even if such
control should eventually grow clearly picturable,
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the question how far it is successfully
exerted in this actual world can be answered
only by investigating the details of fact.
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