ollen 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. 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. Hence it is nonsense to talk
about the aim of education--or any other undertaking--where conditions
do not permit of foresight of results, and do not stimulate a person to
look ahead to see what the outcome of a given activity is to be. In the
next place the aim as a foreseen end gives direction to the activity; it
is not an idle view of a mere spectator, but influences the steps taken
to reach the end. The foresight functions in three ways. In the first
place, it involves careful observation of the given conditions to see
what are the means available for reaching