ABSTRACT
In the first sentence of our first chapter we pointed out that thought is an activity with an end or aim. Its end is truth. Now if we are to understand any purposive activity, some knowledge of its end is required. To a person who had no knowledge of what wealth and its attractions were like, most of the activities of commerce would be so much ‘busywork’; and if one had no experience of beauty, the activity of artists would be unintelligible. Similarly, if we are to make anything of the activity of thought, we must know what sort of satisfaction the thinker is seeking. But thought at the level of perception is still in its infancy, and when an activity is at this stage, it is usually very difficult to know what its end is ; the school-boy who is taking his first lessons in arithmetic or music would give a very sorry account of the musical or mathematical ideal. The end we are seeking reveals itself only as the seeking goes on. Thus to insert a study of the goal of thought into an account of perception would be an anachronism. Yet it is only with reference to this goal that we can select the functions within perception that are relevant to our study. The best course, perhaps, is to compromise, to indicate in a few sentences what we take the end to be, and to leave the justification to later chapters. 1
