a definite achievement
Imagine we had to arrange the books of a library. When we begin the books lie higgledy-piggledy on the floor. Now there would be ways of sorting them and putting them in their places. One would be to take the books one by one and put each on the shelf in its right place. On the other hand we might take up several books from the floor and put them in a row on a shelf, merely in order to indicate that these books ought to go together in this order. In the course of arranging the library this whole row of books will have to change its place. But it would be wrong to say that therefore putting them together on a shelf was no step towards the final result. In this case, in fact, it is pretty obvious that having put together books which belong together is a definite achievement, even though the whole row of them had to be shifted.