tivity 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 someone'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
others but transmit that agent's impulse; on him we put responsibility;
we name him when one asks us 'Who's to blame?'

But the most previous agents ascertainable, instead of being of longer
span, are often of much shorter span than the activity in view.
Brain-cells are our best