A person may move in bed; he isn’t thought of as going in bed; although, of course, it may be said that he goes to bed.
Going also has within it the meaning of moving from, in the sense that a here is being moved from. “Coming” has the to meaning with a there moved from. A man comes from there to here; and a man goes from here to there. Here to there, or there to here is the basic direction. Here is in; there is out.
In the phrase “things are going on,” motion with direction has come to mean “happening.” The word going is one of the basic words in mind. It is change and motion given shape. Motion can be considered general, blurry, the same, or undifferentiated. The idea of going makes out of motion a straight line. The idea of going implies a beginning and end. Motion by itself doesn’t.
A person is an arrangement of coming and going, which imply being. Also, a person has things coming to him or going from him. Everything that happens in the body is a matter of coming and going.
In terms of purpose and purpose in time, going also means “from.” When we say, “A thing is going to be,” the idea of a future is present; the moment with us is seen as having something issue from it, to make the future. When we say, “A thing is coming to be,” we are thinking in terms of time, of there as to here.
Existence can be seen as completely indefinite, completely unparticularized, wholly the same. This indefiniteness and sameness is related to nothing. In terms of existence as moving, motion in the widest sense would correspond to sameness and nothing. For motion with nowhere to go, no direction, might as well not be motion. There is no beginning and no end, and so a thing other than nothing can hardly be distinguished.
When a thing other than everything-as-one—which is equivalent to nothing, for everything without any division at all, or partness, would be imperceptible and therefore have no effect, and therefore be equivalent to nothing which also has no effect—is thought of as having things in it, there is motion. Nothing has gone towards thingness. The whole thought of as also being parts, means that there has been motion with direction. The whole has gone towards manyness. And when there is manyness, the part can be seen as going towards the whole.
So even now, going implies purpose. “What are we going towards?” is the same question as “What is our purpose?” “What are we coming to?” is also a question of purpose, only the purpose is asked for in terms of the past towards the present.
Purpose and plain direction meet in the uses of the word going. “He is going to be a lawyer” means he wants to be a lawyer. Said differently, of course, it means also he will be a lawyer. But it is interesting that in language, purpose can be expressed by a word of strict futurity. We saw this earlier in the two meanings of the sentence, “He should be there,” meaning, One, that it would be a good purpose on his part to be there; and Two, that all facts point to his being there. The word going is, perhaps, the chief word showing the deep oneness between the idea of motion-with-direction and the idea of purpose.
Going forward is related to going to; and where there is going to, there is a going from. Going forward has come to mean reaching a new good, getting to a new purpose or aspect of purpose. Strictly speaking, going itself has come to mean something good. A phrase like “going along,” as in the sentence “Matters are going along,” has the meaning of “some good things are happening.” It should be noted that “matters are coming along” also is a sentence with a meaning of good. Deep in language and mind, motion made definite is akin to goodness, desirable purpose. Words akin to “going” are likewise evidence of the oneness of definite motion and goodness. “Matters are proceeding” means, or can mean, “matters are going well.” The word advance, which is related to go may imply good being reached. Progress, meaning going forward, is also related to the word go.
It is not customary to find ethics in geometry and goodness in physics and worthwhileness in chemistry and the good life in astronomy; but they can be found there. Ethics does begin in geometry, in physics, and the like. The fact that things are and that they move, and further that they can move with definiteness, is the prime ethical fact. There is no separation, truly, between the physical sciences and the social or “moral” sciences. That things are is that things are good. If the good is found in how things are not, then we are saying, really, that good is not in things at all.
The word going is between the meaninglessness of motion without form or direction, and the clear notion of purpose. Physics is the intervention between sameness without goal and ethics. Ethics is the completion of physics.
The change from indifference as sameness, unparticularized nothing, to thingness, motion with direction, is the great ethical happening in existence. Out of difference came discrimination or choice or selection. In difference, then, which is what wholeness went towards, we find going; and in going we find the beginning of purpose, ethics, goodness, meaning, and a good time.