Consider the following instructions:
(a) Go straight on as far as you can, and then turn left. Go on to the traffic lights and then turn right. Then keep straight on.
(b) Your general direction is north. It may be necessary sometimes to deviate, but you must use your discretion about how to get back on your course.
(c) People say that your best direction is north. But this is not known with certainty. Better make inquiries all the time.
With instructions of the first type life would not always be easy, but our task would be plain. With instructions of the second type we should know where our destination was, but not precisely how to reach it. I believe that the third type represents more closely our actual situation, and that the task which confronts us includes that of discovering the ideal as well as of finding out how to reach it.
(Leonard J. Russell, "Ideals and Practice (I)," Philosophy 17 [April 1942]: 99-116, at 103)
