A fundamental form of existence is beginning, middle, and end; or here, between, there. How a thing changes or becomes something else is a way. And in all change there is the thing changing, the how it changes, and what it’s changed to.

Two other words are related to way: process and means. Process accents the actions a thing goes through; means accents the matter or rest-things a thing uses.

Basic in the meaning of way is space-and-direction. The way to Philadelphia from Boston, in 1760, was a road, or a series of roads. The way was geographic. Land, and perhaps water, were considered as being in space, and going a certain direction. The meaning of way starts in direction.

However, if the road, or one of the roads, from Boston to Philadelphia was thought of as having good stone or smooth earth, the idea of way would take in something of means. And the coach or boat needed to go from Boston to Philadelphia would also be part of the way. If Joanna Peters in 1760 were asked—she being in Boston—how she intended to go to Philadelphia, the road she took, the vehicle she took, even the tavern she might stay in, and the money she would pay—could all be considered as part of the way she was going to Philadelphia. The way would be a unification of all the means and processes and directions that were between Joanna Peters in Boston and Joanna Peters in Philadelphia.

Way, organized, becomes method. Joined with desire, it becomes motive, or purpose.

Ways are always in thought. Way is the noun of how. And how is between a thing as it was and a thing as it is; or a thing as it is and a thing as it will be.

There is a way, for example, to learn French. All the things that have to be before a person can learn French are the way to learn French.

Every time we ask a question, we are either asking What? or How? We can ask what is cheese. The “what” leads to how cheese came to be. This is the same as the “way” cheese came to be from something which wasn’t cheese.

We can ask how the world came to be. If we think this question is sensible, we are asking what was the way from something which wasn’t a world, the world came to be. In the same fashion, we could ask how that cold came to be. This question means what was the way, from something which wasn’t a cold, a cold came to be.

In the use of “way,” there is something; something which changed this something; and the something that came to be. Consider the road from Hodginsville to Elyria. The road is the way from the first place to the second. It is between them. A person taking the road starts with something; he does something; he ends with something else. Even without a person, the road can be seen as a triple something. It begins with Hodginsville, is something between Hodginsville and Elyria, and then is more Elyria than Hodginsville. So when a person asks at Hodginsville, or any other point, what is the way to Elyria, he is asking how he can change to an Elyria person. And if he is told to take a bus, and he takes it (just as with the coach of Joanna Peters), the bus is the means, which is part of the way, to Elyria.

Way occupies the position of “by” in the three of “from,” “by,” and “to”; and of “neither-both” in the three of “this,” “neither-both,” “that.” The road, for example, which is the way between Hodginsville and Elyria is, “as the way,” “neither” of these two places, and “both.”

At this moment in America, people are asking:

1. What is the way to be happy?
2. What is the way to keep my job?
3. What is the way to know a girl I like?
4. What is the way to learn medicine?
5. What is the way to get rich?
6. What is the way to keep well?
7. What is the way to impress people?
8. What is the way to sleep without interruption?
9. What is the way to become an authority on medieval music?
10. What is the way to be oneself?
11. What is the way to deal with a child?
12. What is the way to the Hawaiian Islands?

Way, in every one of these questions, implies desire. It also implies process and means. And further, since every person wants to get to something, there is direction.

It should be noticed that some of these questions don’t take in the idea of change. One of these questions is, “What is the way to keep my job?” However, the present is seen here as different from a possible future. If a person sees himself as without a job, his having one now is different from what he fearfully sees; and the avoiding of something he fears so that he can have what he now has, implies that the present situation is an objective. The energy is to “here,” from a feared “there.” Desire not only takes in alteration, but persistence.

Wherever there is a feeling, or desire, there is a way. No feeling remains just as it is; and where it changes, there was a way it changed. And no feeling persists just as it is without a way it persists. If we, for example, stand with our feet on a certain spot of floor, and our intention is to remain there, the way we remain on that spot of floor (despite pressure to the contrary) is also part of a three, which can be described as: here; the way we remain here; and here. The force that makes a thing continue as it is, can also be seen as a “between” of two things different from it. Both, however, have this force in them.

This can be put in the following manner: Sam Ross is alive at 12:10 P.M. and he remains alive at 12:20 P.M. The force of life, then, can be seen as between the Sam Ross of 12:10 and the Sam Ross of 12:20. And if Sam Ross sits on a chair at 12:15 and is still on it at 12:25, what’s in between can be seen as the way, or how, Sam Ross remained on the chair. So if we continue having the same feeling, there is a way by which we continue to have the same feeling.

The whole causality of a thing is the way it came to be as it is. This way includes the notions of what, how, why. Why is the togetherness of what and how: what is a thing as “inside” and being; and how is a thing as “outside” and moving.

The universe can be looked on as the way of the universe. Way here takes in the “stuff” of the universe. The things the universe uses are part of the way. They are the “what” of the way. The universe is a what and a how, means and manner, or substance and form. Way is one word that shows what is seen as belonging to a thing is also the thing itself: that is, that form is substance.

The question we ask when we say, What is the way to do something?—is, What belongs to the thing we’re going after, which we must relate to ourselves before we can get to, or have that thing?