the way,--or, if it is really a mind
to do the thing and not a vague aspiration--it is to have a plan which
takes account of resources and difficulties. Mind is capacity to refer
present conditions to future results, and future consequences to present
conditions. And these traits are just what is meant by having an aim
or a purpose. A man is stupid or blind or unintelligent--lacking in
mind--just in the degree in which in any activity he does not know what
he is about, namely, the probable consequences of his acts. A man is
imperfectly intelligent when he contents himself with looser guesses
about the outcome than is needful, just taking a chance with his luck,
or when he forms plans apart from study of the actual conditions,
including his own capacities. Such relative absence of mind means to
make our feelings the measure of what is to happen. To be intelligent we
must "stop, look, listen" in making the plan of an activity.

To identify acting with an aim and intelligent activity is enough to
show its value--its function in experience. We are only too given to
making an entity out of the abstract noun "consciousness." We forget
that it comes from the adjective "conscious." To be conscious is to
be aware of what we are about; conscious signifies the deliberate,
observant, planning traits of activity. Consciousness is nothing
which we have which gazes idly on the scene around one or which has
impressions made upon it by physical things; it is a name for the
purposeful quality of an activity, for the fact that it is directed by
an aim. Put the other way about, to have an aim is to act with meaning,
not like an automatic machine; it is to mean to do something and to
perceive the meaning of things in the light of that intent.

2. The Criteria of Good Aims. We may apply the results of our discussion
to a consideration of the criteria involved in a correct establishing of
aims. (1) The aim set up must be an outgrowth of existing conditions. It
must be based upon a consideration of what is already going on; upon the
resources and difficulties of the situation. Theories about the proper
end of our activities--educational and moral theories--often violate
this principle. They assume ends lying outside our activities; ends
foreign to the concrete makeup of the situation; ends which issue from
some outside source. Then the problem is to bring our activities to
bear upon the realization of these externally supplied ends. They are