Our first question is to define the nature of an aim so far as it
falls within an activity, instead of being furnished from
without. We approach the definition by a contrast of mere
results with ends. Any exhibition of energy has results. The
wind blows about the sands of the desert; the position of the
grains is changed. Here is a result, an effect, but not an end.
For there is nothing in the outcome which completes or fulfills
what went before it. There is mere spatial redistribution. One
state of affairs is just as good as any other. Consequently
there is no basis upon which to select an earlier state of
affairs as a beginning, a later as an end, and to consider what
intervenes as a process of transformation and realization.
Consider for example the activities of bees in contrast with the
changes in the sands when the wind blows them about. The results
of the bees' actions may be called ends not because they are
designed or consciously intended, but because they are true
terminations or completions of what has preceded. When the bees
gather pollen and make wax and build cells, each step prepares
the way for the next. When cells are built, the queen lays eggs
in them; when eggs are laid, they are sealed and bees brood them
and keep them at a temperature required to hatch them. When they
are hatched, bees feed the young till they can take care of
themselves. Now we are so familiar with such facts, that we are
apt to dismiss them on the ground that life and instinct are a
kind of miraculous thing anyway.
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