bout life.

[Sidenote: The Practical Knowledge of Means.]

Sect. 3. Let anyone inspect the last moment in his life, and in all
probability he will find that his mind was employed to discover the
means to some end. He was already bent upon some definite achievement,
and was thoughtful for the sake of selecting the economical and
effectual way. His theory made his practice skilful. So through life his
knowledge shows him how to work his will. Example, experience, and books
have taught him the uses of nature and society, and in his thoughtful
living he is enabled to reach the goal he has set for the next hour,
day, or year of his activity. The long periods of human life are spent
in elaborating the means to some unquestioned end. Here one meets the
curious truth that we wake up in the middle of life, already making
headway, and under the guidance of some invisible steersman. When first
we take the business of life seriously, there is a considerable stock in
trade in the shape of habits, and inclinations to all sorts of things
that we never consciously elected to pursue. Since we do not begin at
the beginning, our first problem is to accommodate ourselves to
ourselves, and our first deliberate acts are in fulfilment of plans
outlined by some predecessor that has already spoken for us. The same
thing is true of the race of men. At a certain stage in their
development men found themselves engaged in all manner of ritual and
custom, and burdened with concerns that were not of their own choosing.
They were burning incense, keeping festivals, and naming names, all of
which they must now proceed to justify with myth and legend, in order to
render intelligible to themselves the deliberate and self-conscious
repetition of them. Even so much justification was left to the few, and
the great majority continued to seek that good which social usage
countenanced and individual predisposition confirmed. So every man of us
acts from day to day for love's sake, or wealth's sake, or power's
sake, or for the sake of some near and tangible object; reflecting only
for the greater efficiency of his endeavor.

[Sidenote: The Practical Knowledge of the End or Purpose.]

Sect. 4. But if this be the common manner of thinking about life, it
does not represent the whole of such thought. Nor does it follow that
because it occupies us so much, it is therefore correspondingly
fundamental. Like the myth makers of old, we all want more or less to
know