In goal-directed activity, a goal is to be accomplished by whatever means are necessary. The goal is primary and the activity is secondary and variable. And if the goal is met, activity is no longer valuable.

In intrinsically valuable activity, such as play, there may be multiple possible outcomes, and there may be no goal at all. The activity is primary, and the goal is secondary, variable, and possibly even non-existent.

In consummational activity, means and ends are bound together so that the end and means are inseparable. The value of the means consists in its being the pursuit of the consummating end, and the value of the end consists in its being the consummation of the means.

With consummational activities, questions of the primacy of means versus ends, often posed as theoretical — “What if we have to chose one?” — are attempts to reduce the consummational relationship to the terms of means versus ends. The proper answer is “It is both, or neither.” This answer is factually true, and it is also practically and morally true.

Practical truth: once one assigns primacy to means or to ends one begins to think in terms of satisfying one at the expense of the other within the current way of seeing the problem rather than looking for new perspective on the problem where both can be satisfied as a whole.

Moral truth: the consummational relationship is what separates moral action from the merely functional. In morality, ends do not justify means, but just as much means do not justify ends. To pursue an end one considers morally “good” by immoral does not justify the means. It desecrates the end. But also, to act according to moral precepts even when the action clearly leads to disaster — this is usually presented as showing courage, integrity and faith — but in fact, it only shows intellectual and ethical sloth — a preference for exertion of body over recognizing the finitude of the human mind, even in its ability to codify principles or interpret scripture. To believe one possesses godlike knowledge of the moral absolute is arrogant, and to apply that knowledge as if it were a technique is a cowardly avoidance of dread in the face of the infinite.

To achieve moral ends by moral means in the infinite flux of concrete situation requires constant, dreadful, excruciating effort to deepen our understanding of ourselves and our world. It is this tension that straightens the potentially closed circularity of human-animal existence into a forward-thrusting outspiral toward human-divinity.