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and material. That is, the movement may be looked at on either of two sides; as *proceeds*, the net outcome, and as *process*. We have *what* is done or effected, and also *how* it is done. The what, the *proceeds*, is the function side; the how, the *process*, is the material side of a movement.

I. The *function* is the office performed in a unified act, the service rendered; the contribution made.

The idea of function evidently comes in when we consider the reference of a given centred movement to other similar unities, or to a wider movement into which all enter. While the hearing of a bell is itself an end, or object, it may also be a factor in a larger movement—the operation of a factory. So considered, it is functional. (a.) The inclusive whole is the *standard* which measures the included unity. (b.) The contribution of the included movement, as measured by the larger whole, is the *value*. Function, value, standard are correlative categories.

*Note:* 'Category' is a term used to denote any typical aspect or distinction of reality.

II. We may drop out of attention, for a time, the unity (the end or *proceeds*) of a given movement, and consider the elements entering into the movement as such. These elements are the material of the unity. The material is the *diverse* or *manifold* side of action, as the function is the *unity* side.

We may carry the abstraction further. 1. A given unity of action, as the movement of the eye, may in time largely lose its independent character, and become almost entirely a factor of a more inclusive end or object. This end or object may vary from time to time, and yet the special action (the eye movement) remain *pretty much* identical with what it was before. Thus we get to thinking of the movement, apart from any special function, simply as material at large for some function or other. Thus reduced in meaning, the material constitutes what we call *possibility* or *potentiality*. 2. We may now restore the function by thinking of the potential in some concrete movement, and then we get the category of *actuality—force*. The actual is thus, the material taken in specific operation; the possible is the material taken without reference to its specific operation.

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Ann Arbor, Mich., May 10/93.

My dear James:-

I was very much interested in what you wrote me of
men and things over there, and I want to thank you for taking the
time and trouble to remember me. It would seem comparatively, as
if we ought to do something in philosophy in this country before
very long. We certainly have the interest; we have a union of
conservatism and radicalism which seems, from this distance at
least, to be rather rare over there. So there would not seem to
be anything further required than a mastery of the tools. Go-
ing over what I know of German philosophy for the last gener-
ation there is very little of it which seems to do a direct off-
shoot from philosophic interest proper. A large part of it, I judge,
is simply a part of the wonderful mastery of philological
methods reached by the Germans and the rest a product, indirectly,
of their scientific laboratories. I doubt if we will ever know equal
to the Germans on the philological side, or whether it would be
good economy to try to do so; division of labor would
seem to indicate otherwise. What we can do, perhaps, on the his-
 torical side is to interpret the history of thought more the an-
thropological and political standpoint-- as a social phenomenon.
This idea is perhaps unduly urgent in my mind just at presen
to account of a piece of work I have been engaged upon-- an attempt
to interpret Plato less as a philosopher at large and
more as an expression of and reflection back upon Athenian social
life. I think that even the 'Ideas' have yielded and turned out
not 'metaphysical' but aesthetic-political products. I shall want

2

to show it you when you get back. On the scientific side, we ought
soon to rival the Germans if not in quite the same way. There
must as good laboratories here now as there. In fact, Lloyd who was
at Harvard in the spring recess, and saw Munsterberg says that the
latter says the Harvard one does not have its equal. M., so Lloyd
reports is very enthusiastic; he likes the American methods of going
at things and says there isn't so well organized and arranged dept
in Germany as the Harvard one. L. himself took his doctor's de-
gree there in the vacation.

Your father has been kind enough to help me keep track of your
methods somewhat, and now reports you as at Halle working for your doc-
torate. I hope you will find things to your mind there. What will you
work on for your thesis? the ethical critique of which you wrote?
He has kept somewhat informed of the progress of your academical op-
portunities, and I rejoice to know that there is no danger of your
not having a good place at once.

You have me at an advantage in material to write about, for I
don't doubt that you have been kept so well so posted regarding doings
here both in college and town that you know as much as I do of them.

We have been working along slowly trying to build up gradu-
ate work somewhat, but, of course, it is slow work with the means at
our command. The graduate clubs of Harvard, Johns Hopkins and Cor-
nell are uniting in getting out a hard-book of graduate work in this
country, trying to summarize what is done everywhere in our universi-
ties. Part of their object is, as I understand it, to further the mi-
gratory spirit which pervail in German work somewhat, so that a man

3

shall go to two or three universities in search of men and ideas.
Lloyd made his degree on what seems to me a very suggestive thesis-
the title is freedom, but might better be called perhaps 'environment'
The idea is to show that from the standpoints both of the best phil-
osophy and of modern physiological psychology the self cannot be
conceived as limited by environment, precisely because of the self is
environment generalized or set free. The laboratory is beginning to
get in shape. Among other things next year, Mead and I are going to
try to experiment on mental images, with a view to getting some
results on attention and on rhythm. Mead is also trying to work out
something on sensation on the biological side. All of us recognize,
that XXXX sensation, especially its qualitative features, hAXXX has
been the sticking point to a successful statement of idealism. He is
trying to see if one could get back of the present qualities and show
the sensation as a condensation or precipitation of past organic ac-
tivities, so that everything which is aesthetic now was once practical
or teleological. I do not as this brief statement conveys the thought,
but it seems to me one of the most important working hypotheses turned
up lately. As for myself, I am working on ethics mostly. Next year I
expect to introduce a new course on anthropological ethics, by which I
mean a statement of the social and psychological conditions of prim-
itive man which seem to have been influential in determining his mor-
al customs and ideas. Is anything of the kind given over there so far
as you know? I shall get a new and completely rewritten edition of my
ethics within the next year or fifteen months, - when Hodder, if his in-
terest hasn't died out, will be able if not to satisfy himself, at XXX

4

least to dissatisfy himself. The special problem I have set myself for
it is to interpret the idea of self-realization in a working, practi-
cal sense, not in a metaphysical sense. The negative aspect of it you
will find indicated in an article in the Phil. Review on Green's ethic
al motive. I am going to try to show how all the ethical categories,
ideal and real, obligation, law, virtue and vice &c spring from the
self as activity, and that when the self is conceived there is nothing
more transcendental' about such an ethic than there is about a hedonis-
tic ethic. While I continue to get more and more out of Hegel, I get
less and less out of the Hegelians so-called. They seem to be to be
largely repeating phrases when they ought to be analyzing the subject
matter. Metaphysics has had its day, and if the truths which Hegel saw
cannot be stated as direct, practical truths, they are not true. The
statement you gave Hodder was correct, i should judge.

Let me hear again, if you have time. Sincerely yours,