the changes which are taking place. My progress
would be impossible without the aid of the ground upon which I tread.
Nor can I accuse the tile of being the sole cause of my demolition. Had
I not been what I was and where I was, the tile would have fallen in
vain. I must be regarded as a concurrent cause of my own disaster, and
my unhappy state is attributable to me as truly as it is to the tile.

Why, then, am I in the one case regarded as active and in the other as
passive? In each case I am a cause of the result. How does it happen
that, in the first instance, I seem to most men to be _the_ cause, and in
the second to be not a cause at all? The rapidity of my motion in the
first instance cannot account for this judgment. He who rides in the
police van and he who is thrown from the car of a balloon may move with
great rapidity and yet be regarded as passive.

Men speak as they do because they are not content to point out the
physical antecedents of this and that occurrence and stop with that.
They recognize that, between my advance up the street and my fall to the
ground there is one very important difference. In the first case what is
happening _may be referred to an idea in my mind_. Were the idea not
there, I should not do what I am doing. In the second case, what has
happened _cannot be referred to an idea in my mind_.

Here we have come to the recognition that there are such things as
_purposes_ and _ends_; that an idea and some change in the external world
may be related as _plan_ and _accomplishment_. In other words, we have
been brought face to face with what has been given the somewhat
misleading name of _final cause_. In so far as that in the bringing
about of which I have had a share is my _end_, I am _active_; in so far
as it is not my end, but comes upon me as something not planned, I am
_passive_. The enormous importance of the distinction may readily be
seen; it is only in so far as I am a creature who can have purposes, that
_desire_ and _will_, _foresight_ and _prudence_, _right_ and _wrong_, can
have a significance for me.

I have dwelt upon the meaning of the words "activity" and "passivity,"
and have been at pains to distinguish them from cause and effect, because
the two pairs of terms have often been confounded with each other, and
this confusion has given rise to a peculiarly unfortunate error. It is
this error that lies at the foundation of the objection referred to at
the beg