It is also true, as already mentioned, that in the process of fulfilling
the plan, of realizing the idea, further determination and specification
is produced in the plan itself. The idea as a plan is certainly not
formed all at once. Nor does it reach and maintain a fixed content. No
purpose is ever realized in its original content. But this does not mean
that its realization is, therefore, "partial," "incomplete," or
"fragmentary." It is a part of its business to change. The purpose is
not there for its own sake. The purpose is there as a _means_ to the
reorganization and reconstruction of experience. It exists, as Mr. Royce
says, as an instrument, "as a tool" for "introducing control into
experience." And as, in the process of use, a tool always undergoes
modification, so here, as an instrument for reconstructing habit, the
plan, too, undergoes reconstruction. Indeed, as regards its content, it
is itself, as Mr. Royce says, as much a habit, as much "the product of
association," as any part of experience. The purposing function, the
purposing activity, remains; its content is constantly shifting.
Here, too, is where "the submission of the idea to the object" takes
place. Only, here, it is not a submission to an object already
constituted as it is in Mr. Royce's conception of the absolute system.
The idea as an hypothetical plan of action, as a trial construction,
must be tested by the activities it is attempting to reconstruct. That
is to say, at this point the question is: Does the plan apply to the
activities actually involved in the unrest? Has it diagnosed the case
properly, and is it therefore one in and through which these activities
can operate and come to unity again? The "submission" here is the
submission of the purpose, the end, to the material out of which it is
formed, and with which it must work. But again this material to which
the idea submits itself is anything but finally fixed and "complete" in
form. On the contrary, as we have seen, it is just the fragmentary and
incomplete condition of this material that calls for the idea. Yet the
idea as a plan must be true to its mission, and to this material, and in
this sense must submit itself to whatever modifications and
reconstruction the material "dictates" as necessary in order that it may
function in and through the plan.[204]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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