Thus we fail to note what the
essential characteristic of the event is; namely, the
significance of the temporal place and order of each element; the
way each prior event leads into its successor while the successor
takes up what is furnished and utilizes it for some other stage,
until we arrive at the end, which, as it were, summarizes and
finishes off the process. Since aims relate always to results,
the first thing to look to when it is a question of aims, is
whether the work assigned possesses intrinsic continuity. Or is
it a mere serial aggregate of acts, first doing one thing and
then another? To talk about an educational aim when approximately
each act of a pupil is dictated by the teacher, when the only
order in the sequence of his acts is that which comes from the
assignment of lessons and the giving of directions by another, is
to talk nonsense. It is equally fatal to an aim to permit
capricious or discontinuous action in the name of spontaneous
self- expression. An aim implies an orderly and ordered
activity, one in which the order consists in the progressive
completing of a process. Given an activity having a time span
and cumulative growth within the time succession, an aim means
foresight in advance of the end or possible termination. If bees
anticipated the consequences of their activity, if they perceived
their end in imaginative foresight, they would have the primary
element in an aim.
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