are political parties with differing aims, social sets,

cliques, gangs, corporations, partnerships, groups

bound closely together by ties of blood, and so on

in endless variety. In many modern states and in

some ancient, there is great diversity of

populations, of varying languages, religions,

moral codes, and traditions. From this standpoint,

many a minor political unit, one of our large cities,

for example, is a congeries of loosely associated

societies, rather than an inclusive and permeating

community of action and thought. (See ante, p. 20.)

The terms society, community, are thus

ambiguous. They have both a eulogistic or

normative sense, and a descriptive sense; a

meaning de jure and a meaning de facto. In social

philosophy, the former connotation is almost

always uppermost. Society is conceived as one by

its very nature. The qualities which accompany

this unity, praiseworthy community of purpose

and welfare, loyalty to public ends, mutuality of

sympathy, are emphasized. But when we look at

the facts which the term denotes instead of

confining our attention to its intrinsic connotation,

we find not unity, but a plurality of societies, good

and bad. Men banded together in a criminal

conspiracy, business aggregations that prey upon

the public while serving it, political machines held

together by the interest of plunder, are included. If

interests as a factor in social control. The second

means not only freer interaction between social

groups (once isolated so far as intention could

keep up a separation) but change in social habit-

its continuous readjustment through meeting the

new situations produced by varied intercourse.

And these two traits are precisely what

characterize the democratically constituted

society.

Upon the educational side, we note first that the

realization of a form of social life in which

interests are mutually interpenetrating, and

where progress, or readjustment, is an important

consideration, makes a democratic community

more interested than other communities have

cause to be in deliberate and systematic education.

The devotion of democracy to education is a

familiar fact. The superficial explanation is that a

government resting upon popular suffrage cannot

be successful unless those who elect and who

obey their governors are educated. Since a

democratic society repudiates the principle of

external authority, it must find a substitute in

voluntary disposition and interest; these can be

created only by education. But there is a deeper

explanation. A democracy is more than a form of

government; it is primarily a mode of associated

living, of conjoint communicated experience. The

following nature was a political dogma. It meant a

rebellion against existing social institutions,

customs, and ideals (See ante, p. 91). Rousseau's

statement that everything is good as it comes

from the hands of the Creator has its signification

only in its contrast with the concuding part of the

same sentence: "Everything degenerates in the

hands of man." And again he says: "Natural man

has an absolute value; he is a numerical unit, a

complete integer and has no relation save to

himself and to his fellow man. Civilized man is

only a relative unit, the numerator of a fraction

whose value depends upon its dominator, its

relation to the integral body of society. Good

political institutions are those which make a man

unnatural." It is upon this conception of the

artificial and harmful character of organized

social life as it now exists 2 that he rested the

notion that nature not merely furnishes prime

forces which initiate growth but also its plan and

goal. That evil institutions and customs work

almost automatically to give a wrong education

which the most careful schooling cannot offset is

true enough; but the concusion is not to

education apart from the environment, but to

provide an environment in which native powers

will be put to better uses.

2. Social Efficiency as Aim. A conception which

made nature supply the end of a true education

and society the end of an evil one, could hardly

intellectual opportunities are accessible to all on

equable and easy terms. A society marked off into

classes need he specially attentive only to the

education of its ruling elements. A society which is

mobile, which is full of channels for the

distribution of a change occurring anywhere,

must see to it that its members are educated to

personal initiative and adaptability. Otherwise,

they will be overwhelmed by the changes in

which they are caught and whose significance or

connections they do not perceive. The result will

be a confusion in which a few will appropriate to

themselves the results of the blind and externally

directed activities of others.

3. The Platonic

Philosophy.

Educational

Subsequent chapters will be devoted to making

explicit the implications of the democratic ideas in

education. In the remaining portions of this

chapter, we shall consider the educational

theories which have been evolved in three epochs

when the social import of education was

especially conspicuous. The first one to be

considered is that of Plato. No one could better

express than did he the fact that a society is stably

organized when each individual is doing that for

which he has aptitude by nature in sucha way as

to be useful to others (or to contribute to the

whole to which he belongs); and that it is the

business of education to discover these aptitudes

and progressively to train them for social use.

assimilation of new presentations, their character

is all important. The effect of new presentations is

to reinforce groupings previously formed. The

business of the educator is, first, to select the

proper material in order to fix the nature of the

original reactions, and, secondly, to arrange the

sequence of subsequent presentations on the

basis of the store of ideas secured by prior

transactions. The control is from behind, from the

past, instead of, as in the unfolding conception, in

the ultimate goal.

(3) Certain formal steps of all method in

teaching may be laid down. Presentation of new

subject matter is obviously the central thing, but

since knowing consists in the way in which this

interacts with the contents already submerged

below consciousness, the first thing is the step of

"preparation," that is, calling into special activity

and getting above the floor of consciousness those

older presentations which are to assimilate the

new one. Then after the presentation, follow the

processes of interaction of new and old; then

comes the application of the newly formed

content to the performance of some task.

Everything must go through this course;

consequently there is a perfectly uniform method

in instruction in all subjects for all pupils of all

ages.

Herbart's great service lay in taking the work of

teaching out of the region of routine and accident.

control. To say that one knows what he is about,

or can intend certain consequences, is to say, of

course, that he can better anticipate what is going

to happen; that he can, therefore, get ready or

prepare in advance so as to secure beneficial

consequences and avert undesirable ones. A

genuinely educative experience, then, one in

which instruction is conveyed and ability

increased, is contradistinguished from a routine

activity on one hand, and a capricious activity on

the other. (a) In the latter one "does not care what

happens"; one just lets himself go and avoids

connecting the consequences of one's act (the

evidences of its connections with other things)

with the act. It is customary to frown upon such

aimless random activity, treating it as willful

mischief or carelessness or lawlessness. But there

is a tendency to seek the cause of such aimless

activities in the youth's own disposition, isolated

from everything else. But in fact such activity is

explosive, and due to maladjustment with

surroundings. Individuals act capriciously

whenever they act under external dictation, or

from being told, without having a purpose of their

own or perceiving the bearing of the deed upon

other acts. One may learn by doing something

which he does not understand; even in the most

intelligent action, we do much which we do not

mean, because the largest portion of the

connections of the act we consciously intend are

not perceived or anticipated. But we learn only

Now tor that of discipline. Where an activity takes

time, where many means and obstacles lie

between its initiation and completion,

deliberation and persistence are required. It is

obvious that a very large part of the everyday

meaning of will is precisely the deliberate or

conscious disposition to persist and endure in a

planned course of action in spite of difficulties and

Contrary solicitations. A man of strong will, in the

popular usage of the words, is a man who is

neither fickle nor half-hearted in achieving

chosen ends. His ability is executive; that is, he

persistently and energetically strives to execute or

carry out his aims. A weak will is unstable as

water.

Clearly there are two factors in will. One has to

do with the foresight of results, the other with the

depth of hold the foreseen outcome has upon the

person.

() Obstinacy is persistence but it is not strength

of volition. Obstinacy may be mere animal inertia

and insensitiveness. A man keeps on doinga thing

just because he has got started, not because of

any clearly thought-out purpose. In fact, the

obstinate man generally declines (although he

may not be quite aware of his refusal) to make

clear to himself what his proposed end is; he has a

feeling that if he allowed himself to get a clear and

full idea of it, it might not be worth while.

Stubbornness shows itself even more in

external; they are shifting things about. No ideal

reward, no enrichment of emotion and intellect,

accompanies them. Others contribute to the

maintenance of life, and to its external adornment

and display. Many of our existing social activities,

industrial and political, fall in these two classes.

Neither the people who engage in them, nor those

who are directly affected by them, are capable of

full and free interest in their work. Because of the

lack of any purpose in the work for the one doing

it, or because of the restricted character of its aim,

intelligence is not adequately engaged. The same

conditions force many people back upon

themselves. They take refuge in an inner play of

sentiment and fancies. They are aesthetic but not

artistic, since their feelings and ideas are turned

upon themselves, instead of being methods in acts

which modify conditions. Their mental life is

sentimental; an enjoyment of an inner landscape.

Even the pursuit of science may become an

asylum of refuge from the hard conditions of life-

not a temporary retreat for the sake of

recuperation and clarification in future dealings

with the world. The very word art may become

associated not with specific transformation of

things, making them more significant for mind,

but with stimulations of eccentric fancy and with

emotional indulgences. The separation and

mutual contempt of the "practical" man and the

man of theory or culture, the divorce of fine and

industrial arts, are indications of this situation.

only get rid of the artificial man-imposed coercive

restrictions.

Education in accord with nature was thought to

be the first step in insuring this more social society.

It was plainly seen that economic and political

limitations were ultimately dependent upon

limitations of thought and feeling. The first step in

freeing men from external chains was to

emancipate them from the internal chains of false

beliefs and ideals. What was called social life,

existing institutions, were too false and corrupt to

be intrusted with this work How could it be

expected to undertake it when the undertaking

meant its own destruction? "Nature" must then be

the power to which the enterprise was to be left.

Even the extreme sensationalistic theory of

knowledge which was current derived itself from

this conception. To insist that mind is originally

passive and empty was one way of glorifying the

possibilities of education. If the mind was a wax

tablet to be written upon by objects, there were no

limits to the possibility of education by means of

the natural environment. And since the natural

world of objects is a scene of harmonious "truth,"

this education would infallibly produce minds

filled with the truth.

5. Education as National and as Social. As soon

as the first enthusiasm for freedom waned, the

weakness of the theory upon the constructive side

became obvious. Merely to leave everything to

ground that life and instinct are a kind of

miraculous thing anyway. Thus we fail to note

what the essential characteristic of the event is;

namely, the significance of the temporal place and

order of each element; the way each prior event

leads into its successor while the successor takes

up what is furnished and utilizes it for some other

stage, until we arrive at the end, which, as it were,

summarizes and finishes off the process. Since

aims relate always to results, the first thing to

look to when it is a question of aims, is whether

the work assigned possesses intrinsic continuity.

Or is it a mere serial aggregate of acts, first doing

one thing and then another? To talk about an

educational aim when approximately each act of

a pupil is dictated by the teacher, when the only

order in the sequence of his acts is that which

comes from the assignment of lessons and the

giving of directions by another, is to talk nonsense.

It is equally fatal to an aim to permit capricious or

discontinuous action in the name of spontaneous

selfexpression. An aim implies an orderly and

ordered activity, one in which the order consists

in the progressive completing of a process. Given

an activity having a time span and cumulative

growth within the time succession, an aim means

foresight in advance of the end or possible

termination. If bees anticipated the consequences

of their activity, if they perceived their end in

imaginative foresight, they would have the

primary element in an aim. Hence it is nonsense

thoroughgoing "disciplinary" subordination to

existing institutions. The extent of the

transformation of educational philosophy which

occurred in Germany in the generation occupied

by the struggle against Napoleon for national

independence, may be gathered from Kant, who

expresses the earlier individual-

well

cosmopolitan ideal. In his treatise on Pedagogics,

consisting of lectures given in the later years of

the eighteenth century, he defines education as

the process by which man becomes man.

Mankind begins its history submerged in nature-

not as Man who is a creature of reason, while

nature furnishes only instinct and appetite.

Nature offers simply the germs which education

is to develop and perfect. The peculiarity of truly

human life is that man has to create himself by

his own voluntary efforts; he has to make himself

a truly moral, rational, and free being. This

creative effort is carried on by the educational

activities of slow generations. Its acceleration

depends upon men consciously striving to educate

their successors not for the existing state of

affairs but so as to make possible a future better

humanity. But there is the great difficulty. Each

generation is inclined to educate its young so as to

get along in the present world instead of with a

view to the proper end of education: the

promotion of the best possible realization of

humanity as humanity. Parents educate their

children so that they may get on: princes educate

reluctance to criticize ends which present

themselves than it does in persistence and energy

in use of means to achieve the end. The really

executive man is a man who ponders his ends,

who makes his ideas of the results of his actions

as clear and full as possible. The people we called

weak-willed or self-indulgent always deceive

themselves as to the consequences of their acts.

They pick out some feature which is agreeable

and neglect all attendant circumstances. When

they begin to act, the disagreeable results they

ignored begin to show themselves. They are

discouraged, or complain of being thwarted in

their good purpose by a hard fate, and shift to

some other line of action. That the primary

difference between strong and feeble volition is

intellectual, consisting in the degree of persistent

firmness and fullness with which consequences

are thought out, cannot be over-emphasized.

(ii) There is, of course, such a thing as a

speculative tracing out of results. Ends are then

foreseen, but they do not lay deep hold of a

person. They are something to look at and for

curiosity to play with rather than something to

achieve. There is no such thing as over-

intellectuality, but there is such a thing as a one-

sided intellectuality. A person "takes it out" as we

say in considering the consequences of proposed

lines of action. A certain flabbiness of fiber

prevents the contemplated object from gripping

him and engaging him in action. And most

situation of human intercourse. On the one hand,

science, commerce, and art transcend national

boundaries. They are largely international in

quality and method. They involve

interdependencies and cooperation among the

peoples inhabiting different countries. At the

same time, the idea of national sovereignty has

never been as accentuated in politics as it is at the

present time. Each nation lives in a state of

suppressed hostility and incipient war with its

neighbors. Each is supposed to be the supreme

judge of its own interests, and it is assumed as

matter of course that each has interests which are

exclusively its own. To question this is to question

the very idea of national sovereignty which is

assumed to be basic to political practice and

political science. This contradiction (for it is

nothing less) between the wider sphere of

associated and mutually helpful social life and the

narrower sphere of exclusive and hence

potentially hostile pursuits and purposes, exacts

of educational theory a clearer conception of the

meaning of "social" as a function and test of

education than has yet been attained. Is it possible

for an educational system to be conducted by a

national state and yet the full social ends of the

educative process not be restricted, constrained,

and corrupted? Internally, the question has to

face the tendencies, due to present economic

conditions, which split society into classes some of

which are made merely tools for the higher

indifferently and miscellaneously to any and

every detail. It is centered upon whatever has a

bearing upon the effective pursuit of your

occupation. Your look is ahead, and you are

concerned to note the existing facts because and

in so far as they are factors in the achievement of

the result intended. You have to find out what

your resources are, what conditions are at

command, and what the difficulties and obstacles

are. This foresight and this survey with reference

to what is foreseen constitute mind. Action that

does not involve such a forecast of results and

such an examination of means and hindrances is

either a matter of habit or else it is blind. In

neither case is it intelligent. To be vague and

uncertain as to what is intended and careless in

observation of conditions of its realization is to be,

in that degree, stupid or partially intelligent.

If we recur to the case where mind is not

concerned with the physical manipulation of the

instruments but with what one intends to write,

the case is the same. There is an activity in

process; one is taken up with the development of

a theme. Unless one writes as a phonograph talks,

this means intelligence; namely, alertness in

foreseeing the various concdusions to which

present data and considerations are tending,

together with continually renewed observation

and recollection to get hold of the subject matter

which bears upon the conclusions to be reached.

The account of education given in our earlier

chapters virtually anticipated the results reached

in a discussion of the purport of education in a

democratic community. For it assumed that the

aim of education is to enable individuals to

continue their education-or that the object and

reward of learning is continued capacity for

growth. Now this idea cannot be applied to all the

members of a society except where intercourse of

man with man is mutual, and except where there

is adequate provision for the reconstruction of

social habits and institutions by means of wide

stimulation arising from equitably distributed

interests. And this means a democratic society. In

our search for aims in education, we are not

concerned, therefore, with finding an end outside

of the educative process to which education is

subordinate. Our whole conception forbids. We

are rather concerned with the contrast which

exists when aims belong within the process in

which they operate and when they are set up

from without. And the latter state of affairs must

obtain when social relationships are not equitably

balanced. For in that case, some portions of the

whole social group will find their aims

determined by an external dictation; their aims

will not arise from the free growth of their own

experience, and their nominal aims will be means

to more ulterior ends of others rather than truly

their own.

combination of the two. Subject matter is then

regarded as something complete in itself; it is just

something to be learned or known, either by the

voluntary application of mind to it or through the

impressions it makes on mind.

The facts of interest show that these

conceptions are mythical. Mind appears in

experience as ability to respond to present stimuli

on the basis of anticipation of future posible

consequences, and with a view to controlling the

kind of consequences that are to take place. The

things, the subject matter known, consist of

whatever is recognized as having a bearing upon

the anticipated course of events, whether

assisting or retarding it. These statements are to0

formal to be very intelligible. An illustration may

clear up their significance. You are engaged in a

certain occupation, say writing with a typewriter.

If you are an expert, your formed habits take care

of the hysical movements and leave your

thoughts free to consider your topic. Suppose,

however, you are not skilled, or that, even if you

are, the machine does not work well. You then

have to use intelligence. You do not wish to strike

the keys at random and let the consequences be

what they may: you wish to record certain words

in a given order so as to make sense. You attend to

the keys, to what you have written, to your

movements, to the ribbon or the mechanism of

the machine. Your attention is not distributed

because after the act is performed we note results

which we had not noted before. But much work in

school consists in setting up rules by which pupils

are to act of such a sort that even after pupils

have acted, they are not led to see the connection

between the result say the answer and the

method pursued. So far as they are concerned, the

whole thing is a trick and a kind of miracle. Such

action is essentially capricious, and leads to

capricious habits. b) Routine action, action which

is automatic, may increase skill to do a particular

thing. In so far, it might be said to have an

educative effect. But it does not lead to new

perceptions of bearings and connections; it limits

rather than widens the meaning-horizon. And

since the environment changes and our way of

acting has to be modified in order successfully to

keep a balanced connection with things, an

isolated uniform way of acting becomes

disastrous at some critical moment. The vaunted

"skill" turns out gross ineptitude.

The essential contrast of the idea of education

as continuous reconstruction with the other one-

sided conceptions which have been criticized in

this and the previous chapter is that it identifies

the end (the result) and the process. This is

verbally self-contradictory, but only verbally. It

means that experience as an active process

occupies time and that its later period completes

its earlier portion; it brings to light connections

But the idea which underlies it is that education is

essentially retrospective; that it looks primarily to

the past and especially to the literary products of

the past, and that mind is adequately formed in

the degree in which it is patterned upon the

spiritual heritage of the past. This idea has had

such immense influence upon higher instruction

especially, that it is worth examination in its

extreme formulation.

In the first place, its biological basis is fallacious.

Embyronic growth of the human infant preserves,

without doubt, some of the traits of lower forms

of life. But in no respect is it a strict traversing of

past stages. If there were any strict "law" of

repetition, evolutionary development would

clearly not have taken place. Each new

generation would simply have repeated its

predecessors' existence. Development, in short,

has taken place by the entrance of shortcuts and

alterations in the prior scheme of growth. And

this suggests that the aim of education is to

facilitate such short-circuited growth. The great

advantage of immaturity, educationally speaking,

is that it enables us to emancipate the young from

the need of dwelling in an outgrown past. The

business of education is rather to liberate the

young from reviving and retraversing the past

than to lead them to a recapitulation of it. The

social environment of the young is constituted by

the presence and action of the habits of thinking

there is a disposition to take considerations which

are dear to the hearts of adults and set them up as

ends irrespective of the capacities of those

educated. There is also an inclination to propound

aims which are so uniform as to neglect the

specific powers and requirements of an individual,

forgetting that all learning is something which

happens to an individual at a given time and place.

The larger range of perception of the adult is of

great value in observing the abilities and

weaknesses of the young, in deciding what they

may amount to. Thus the artistic capacities of the

adult exhibit what certain tendencies of the child

are capable of; if we did not have the adult

achievements we should be without assurance as

to the significance of the drawing, reproducing.

modeling, coloring activities of childhood. So if it

were not for adult language, we should not be

able to see the import of the babbling impulses of

infancy. But it is one thing to use adult

accomplishments as a context in which to place

and survey the doings of childhood and youth; it

is quite another to set them up as a fixed aim

without regard to the concrete activities of those

educated.

(2) An aim must be capable of translation into a

method of cooperating with the activities of those

undergoing instruction. It must suggest the kind

of environment needed to liberate and to organize

their capacities. Unless it lends itself to the

And it is well to remind ourselves that

education as such has no aims. Only persons,

parents, and teachers, etc., have aims, not an

abstract idea like education. And consequently

their purposes are indefinitely varied, differing

with different children, changing as children grow

and with the growth of experience on the part of

the one who teaches. Even the mnost valid aims

which can be put in words will, as words, do more

harm than good unless one recognizes that they

are not aims, but rather suggestions to educators

as to how to observe, how to look ahead, and how

to choose in liberating and directing the energies

of the concrete situations in which they find

themselves. As a recent writer has said: "To lead

this boy to read Scott's novels instead of old

Sleuth's stories; to teach this girl to sew; to root

out the habit of bullying from John's make-up; to

prepare this class to study medicine,these are

samples of the millions of aims we have actually

before us in the concrete work of education."

Bearing these qualifications in mind, we shall

proceed to state some of the characteristics found

in all good educational aims. (1) An educational

aim must be founded upon the intrinsic activities

and needs (incuding original instincts and

acquired habits) of the given individual to be

educated. The tendency of such an aim as

preparation is, as we have seen, to omit existing

powers, and find the aim in some remote

accomplishment or responsibility. In general,

adequate interplay of experiences the more

action tends to become routine on the part of the

class at a disadvantage, and capricious, aimless,

and explosive on the part of the class having the

materially fortunate position. Plato defined a

slave as one who accepts from another the

purposes which control his conduct. This

condition obtains even where there is no slavery

in the legal sense. It is found wherever men are

engaged in activity which is socially serviceable,

but whose service they do not understand and

have no personal interest in. Much is said about

scientific management of work. It is a narrow

view which restricts the science which secures

efficiency of operation to movements of the

muscles. The chief opportunity for science is the

discovery of the relations of a man to his work-

including his relations to others who take part-

which will enlist his intelligent interest in what he

is doing. Efficiency in production often demands

division of labor. But it is reduced to a mechanical

routine unless workers see the technical,

intellectual, and social relationships involved in

what they do, and engage in their work because

of the motivation furnished by such perceptions.

The tendency to reduce such things as efficiency

of activity and scientific management to purely

technical externals is evidence of the one-sided

stimulation of thought given to those in control of

industry those who supply its aims. Because of

their lack of all-round and well-balanced social

perfunctory and superficial where there is no

interest. Parents and teachers often complain-

and correctly- that children "do not want to hear.,

or want to understand." Their minds are not upon

the subject precisely because it does not touch

them; it does not enter into their concerns. This is

a state of things that needs to be remedied, but the

remedy is not in the use of methods which

increase indifference and aversion. Even

punishing a child for inattention is one way of

trying to make him realize that the matter is not a

thing of complete unconcern; it is one way of

arousing "interest," or bringing about a sense of

connection. In the long run, its value is measured

by whether it supplies a mere physical excitation

to act in the way desired by the adult or whether

it leads the child "to think" that is, to reflect upon

his acts and impregnate them with aims.

(i) That interest is requisite for executive

persistence is even more obvious. Employers do

not advertise for workmen who are not interested

in what they are doing. If one were engaging a

lawyer or a doctor, it would never occur to one to

reason that the person engaged would stick to his

work more conscientiously if it was so

uncongenial to him that he did it merely from a

sense of obligation. Interest measures-or rather

is the depth of the grip which the foreseen end

has upon one, moving one to act for its realization.

2. The Importance of the Idea of Interest in

to it laden with the spoils of the past. A mind that

is adequately sensitive to the needs and occasions

of the present actuality will have the liveliest of

motives for interest in the background of the

present, and will never have to hunt for a way

back because it will never have lost connection.

3. Education as Reconstruction. In its contrast

with the ideas both of unfolding of latent powers

from within, and of the formation from without,

whether by physical nature or by the cultural

products of the past, the ideal of growth results in

the conception that education is a constant

reorganizing or reconstructing of experience. It

has all the time an immediate end, and so far as

activity is educative, it reaches that end the

direct transformation of the quality of experience.

Infancy. youth, adult life, all stand on the same

educative level in the sense that what is really

learned at any and every stage of experience

constitutes the value of that experience, and in

the sense that it is the chief business of life at

every point to make living thus contribute to an

enrichment of its own perceptible meaning.

We thus reach a technical definition of

education: It is that reconstruction

reorganization of experience which adds to the

meaning of experience, and which increases

ability to direct the course of subsequent

experience. (1) The increment of meaning

corresponds to the increased perception of the

Much which has been said so far is borrowed

from what Plato first consciously taught the

world. But conditions which he could not

intellectually control led him to restrict these

ideas in their application. He never got any

conception of the indefinite plurality of activities

which may characterize an individual and a

social group, and consequently limited his view to

a limited number of classes of capacities and of

social arrangements. Plato's starting point is that

the organization of society depends ultimately

upon knowledge of the end of existence. If we do

not know its end, we shall be at the mercy of

accident and caprice. Unless we know the end, the

good, we shall have no criterion for rationally

deciding what the possibilities are which should

be promoted, nor how social arrangements are to

be ordered. We shall have no conception of the

proper limits and distribution of activities what

he called justice-as a trait of both individual and

social organization. But how is the knowledge of

the final and permanent good to be achieved? In

dealing with this question we come upon the

seemingly insuperable obstacle that such

knowledge is not possible save in a just and

harmonious social order. Everywhere else the

mind is istracted and misled by false valuations

and false perspectives. A disorganized and

factional society sets up a number of different

models and standards. Under such conditions it is

impossible for the individual to attain consistency

importance of what has been taught consists in its

availability for further teaching, reflects the

pedagogue's view of life. The philosophy is

eloquent about the duty of the teacher in

instructing pupils; it is almost silent regarding his

privilege of learning. It emphasizes the influence

of intellectual environment upon the mind; it

slurs over the fact that the environment involves

a personal sharing in common experiences. It

exaggerates beyond reason the possibilities of

consciously formulated and used methods, and

underestimates the role of vital, unconscious,

attitudes. It insists upon the old, the past, and

passes lightly over the operation of the genuinely

novel and unforeseeable. It takes, in brief,

everything educational into account save its

essence, vital energy seeking opportunity for

effective exercise. All education forms character,

mental and moral, but formation consists in the

selection and coordination of native activities so

that they may utilize the subject matter of the

social environment. Moreover, the formation is

not only a formation of native activities, but it

takes place through them. It is a process of

reconstruction, reorganization.

2. Education as Recapitulation and

Retrospection. A peculiar combination of the ideas

of development and formation from without has

given rise to the recapitulation theory of

education, biological and cultural. The individual