Every single action is strictly limited in its immediate consequences. If we want to reach correct conclusions, we must first of all look at these limitations. Human life is an unceasing sequence of single actions. But the single action is by no means isolated. It is a link in a chain of actions which together form an action on a higher level aiming at a more distant end.
Every action has two aspects.
It is on the other hand itself a whole with regard to the actions aimed at by the performance of its own parts. It depends upon the scope of the project on which acting man is intent at the instant whether the more far-reaching action or a partial action directed to a more immediate end only is thrown into relief. There is no need for praxeology to raise questions of the type of those raised by Gestaltpsychologie . The road to the performance of great things must always lead through the performance of partial tasks. A cathedral is something other than a heap of stones joined together.