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wrought and put together to make the perfect structure which exists in the mind before the first step is taken. In this latter illustration every effort put forth from the beginning to the end is a direct conative act applied to a means. But the work as a whole is telic, the end being constantly in view. And such is the nature of the entire course of material progress achieved by man. It is by this that he is primarily distinguished from the rest of nature. The human intellect is the great source of telic activity. The works of man are the only ones with which we are acquainted that proceed in any consid- erable degree from final causes. But if there be any other source of final causes, the process must always be the same efficient causes applied to means.
It was observed at the outset that in the case of genetic phenomena, /. e., of efficient causes, the effect, if the impinging bodies are inert, is always exactly equal to the cause. This is also true of final causes, so far as their action upon the means is concerned, but the final effect, if it can be so called, is usually much greater than the cause or effort expended. Wherein consists this difference? How has the force exerted acquired this increased efficiency? The answer is easy. The final cause is the mind's knowledge of the rela- tions that subsist between the means and the end. But the chief of these relations, and the only practical one, is the action of other natural forces outside of the agent's will-power or muscular strength. What the mind sees is that such forces exist and are operating in certain directions. What the intelligent agent does is to place the thing he desires but lacks the power to move into the current of such a force which moves it for him. This is the type of ideological action. It is illustrated in its simplest form by the lumberman who puts his logs into the river and lets the current float them to their destination. But the most complicated cases may, by proper analysis, be reduced to this simple principle. Teleology is essentially the utilization of natural forces, causing them to do what the agent perceives to be useful and wills to be done. The applications of wind, water, steam, and electricity are this and nothing else. All machinery falls into the same class. Civiliza- tion in all its material aspects is but the expression of this truth.
I have dwelt thus at length upon the mind side of the gen- eral principle of telic progress because I consider it to be the most important principle in the whole domain of social science, almost entirely neglected hitherto, and because it is essentially a psychological principle which cannot be understood in its socio- logical aspects until its psychological aspects are firmly grasped.
It is here that the principles laid down in the eighth paper of this series on the Mechanics of Society 1 find their application.
AM. JOUR. OF SOCIOLOGY, Vol. II, No. 2, September 1896, pp. 249-251.
