n the will
_enables_ it to act thus? And these trains of experience themselves,
in which activities appear, what makes them _go_ at all? Does the
activity in one bit of experience bring the next bit into being? As an
empiricist you cannot say so, for you have just declared activity
to be only a kind of synthetic object, or conjunctive relation
experienced between bits of experience already made. But what made
them at all? What propels experience _ueberhaupt_ into being? _There_
is the activity that _operates_; the activity _felt_ is only its
superficial sign.'

To the metaphysical question, popped upon us in this way, I must pay
serious attention ere I end my remarks, but, before doing so, let me
show that without leaving the immediate reticulations of experience,
or asking what makes activity itself act, we still find the
distinction between less real and more real activities forced upon us,
and are driven to much soul-searching on the purely phenomenal plane.

We must not forget, namely, in talking of the ultimate character of
our activity-experiences, that each of them is but a portion of a
wider world, one link in the vast chain of processes of experience
out of which history is made. Each partial process, to him who lives
through it, defines itself by its origin and its goal; but to an
observer with a wider mind-span who should live outside of it,
that goal would appear but as a provisional halting-place, and the
subjectively felt activity would be seen to continue into objective
activities that led far beyond. We thus acquire a habit, in discussing
activity-experiences, of defining them by their relation to something
more. If an experience be one of narrow span, it will be mistaken as
to what activity it is and whose. You think that _you_ are acting
while you are only obeying some one's push. You think you are doing
_this_, but you are doing something of which you do not dream. For
instance, you think you are but drinking this glass; but you are
really creating the liver-cirrhosis that will end your days. You think
you are just driving this bargain, but, as Stevenson says somewhere,
you are laying down a link in the policy of mankind.

Generally speaking, the onlooker, with his wider field of vision,
regards the _ultimate outcome_ of an activity as what it is more
really doing; and _the most previous agent_ ascertainable, being the
first source of action, he regards as the most real agent in the
field. The oth