Identified their experience with rigid adherence to past customs.

On such a basis it is wholly logical to

fear intercourse with others, for such contact might dissolve custom. It would certainly occasion
reconstruction. It is a commonplace that an alert and expanding mental life depends upon an
enlarging range of contact with the physical environment. But the principle applies even more
significantly to the field where we are apt to ignore it—the sphere of social contacts. Every expansive
era in the history of mankind has coincided with the operation of factors which have tended to
eliminate distance between peoples and classes previously hemmed off from one another. Even the
alleged benefits of war, so

far as more than alleged, spring from the fact that conflict of peoples at least enforces intercourse
between them and thus accidentally enables them to learn from one another, and thereby to expand
their horizons. Travel, economic and commercial tendencies, have at present gone far to break down
external barriers; to bring peoples and classes into closer and more perceptible connection with one
another. It remains for the most part to secure the intellectual and emotional significance of this
physical annihilation of space.

2. The Democratic Ideal. The two elements in our criterion both point to democracy. The first signifies
not only more numerous and more varied points of shared common interest, but involved, but
hitherto unperceived. The later outcome thus reveals the meaning of the earlier, while the experience
as a whole establishes a bent or disposition toward the things possessing this meaning. Every such
continuous experience or activity is educative, and all education resides in having such experiences.

It remains only to point out (what will receive ampler attention later) that the reconstruction
of experience may be social as well as personal. For purposes of simplification we have spoken in the
earlier chapters somewhat as if the education of the immature which fills them with the spirit of the
social group to which they belong, were a sort of catching up of the child with the aptitudes and
resources of the adult group. In static societies, societies which make the maintenance of established
custom their measure of value, this conception applies in the main. But not in progressive
communities. They endeavor to shape the experiences of the young so that instead of reproducing
current habits, better habits shall be formed, and thus the future adult society be an improvement on
their own. Men have long had some intimation of the extent to which education may be consciously
used to eliminate obvious social evils through starting the young on paths which shall not produce
these ills, and some idea of the extent in which education may be made an instrument of realizing the
construction of specific procedures, and unless these procedures test, correct, and amplify the aim,
the latter is worthless. Instead of helping the specific task of teaching, it prevents the use of ordinary
judgment in observing and sizing up the situation.

It operates to exclude recognition of everything except what squares up with the fixed end in view.
Every rigid aim just because it is rigidly given seems to render it unnecessary to give careful attention
to concrete conditions. Since it must apply anyhow, what is the use of noting details which do not
count? The vice of externally imposed ends has deep roots. Teachers receive them from superior
authorities; these authorities accept them from what is current in the community. The teachers
impose them upon children. As a first consequence, the intelligence of the teacher is not free; it is
confined to receiving the aims laid down from above. Too rarely is the individual teacher so free from
the dictation of authoritative supervisor, textbook on methods, prescribed course of study, etc., that
he can let his mind come to close quarters with the pupil's mind and the subject matter. This distrust
of the teacher's experience is then reflected in lack of confidence in the responses of pupils. The latter
receive their aims through a double or treble external imposition, and are constantly confused by the
conflict between the aims which are natural to their own culture of others. Externally, the question is
concerned with the reconciliation of national loyalty, of patriotism, with superior devotion to the
things which unite men in common ends, irrespective of national political boundaries. Neither phase
of the problem can be worked out by merely negative means. It is not enough to see to it that
education is not actively used as an instrument to make easier the exploitation of one class by
another. School facilities must be secured of such amplitude and efficiency as will in fact and not
simply in name discount the effects of economic inequalities, and secure to all the wards of the nation
equality of equipment for their future careers. Accomplishment of this end demands not only
adequate administrative provision of school facilities, and such supplementation of family resources
as will enable youth to take advantage of them, but also such modification of traditional ideals of
culture, traditional subjects of study and traditional methods of teaching and discipline as will retain
all the youth under educational influences until they are equipped to be masters of their own
economic and social careers. The ideal may seem remote of execution, but the democratic ideal of
education is a farcical yet tragic delusion except as the ideal more and more dominates our public
system of education. The same principle has application on the side of the considerations which
concern the relations of one nation to experiences of life. If he is not trained in the right use of the
products of industry, there is grave danger that he may deprave himself and injure others in his
possession of wealth. No scheme of education can afford to neglect such basic considerations. Yet in
the name of higher and more spiritual ideals, the arrangements for higher education have often not
only neglected them, but looked at them with scorn as beneath the level of educative concern. With
the change from an oligarchical to a democratic society, it is natural that the significance of an
education which should have as a result ability to make one's way economically in the world, and to
manage economic resources usefully instead of for mere display and luxury, should receive emphasis.

There is, however, grave danger that in insisting upon this end, existing economic conditions
and standards will be accepted as final. A democratic criterion requires us to develop capacity to the
point of competency to choose and make its own career. This principle is violated when the attempt is
made to fit individuals in advance for definite industrial callings, selected not on the basis of trained
original capacities, but on that of the wealth or social status of parents. As a matter of fact, industry at
the present time undergoes rapid and abrupt changes through the evolution of new inventions. New
industries spring up, and old ones are revolutionized and feeling of civilized men. To ignore the
directive influence of this present environment upon the young is simply to abdicate the educational
function. A biologist has said: "The history of development in different animals…offers to us ... a series
of ingenious, determined, varied but more or less unsuccessful efforts to escape from the necessity of
recapitulating, and to substitute for the ancestral method a more direct method." Surely it would be
foolish if education did not deliberately attempt to facilitate similar efforts in conscious experience so
that they become increasingly successful.

The two factors of truth in the conception may easily be disentangled from association with
the false context which perverts them. On the biological side we have simply the fact that any infant
starts with precisely the assortment of impulsive activities with which he does start, they being blind,
and many of them conflicting with one another, casual, sporadic, and unadapted to their immediate
environment. The other point is that it is a part of wisdom to utilize the products of past history so far
as they are of help for the future. Since they represent the results of prior experience, their value for
future experience may, of course, be indefinitely great. Literatures produced in the past are, so far as
men are now in possession and use of them, a part of the present environment of individuals; but
there is an connections and continuities of the activities in which we are engaged. The activity begins
in an impulsive form; that is, it is blind. It does not know what it is about; that is to say, what are its
interactions with other activities. An activity which brings education or instruction with it makes one
aware of some of the connections which had been imperceptible. To recur to our simple example, a
child who reaches for a bright light gets burned. Henceforth he knows that a certain act of touching in
connection with a certain act of vision (and vice-versa) means heat and pain; or, a certain light means
a source of heat. The acts by which a scientific man in his laboratory learns more about flame differ no
whit in principle. By doing certain things, he makes perceptible certain connections of heat with other
things, which had been previously ignored. Thus his acts in relation to these things get more meaning;
he knows better what he is doing or "isabout" when he has to do with them; he can intend
consequences instead of just letting them happen—all synonymous ways of saying the same thing. At
the same stroke, the flame has gained in meaning; all that is known about combustion, oxidation,
about light and temperature, may become an intrinsic part of its intellectual content.

(2) The other side of an educative experience is an added power of subsequent direction or
greater reliance upon the recognition of mutual 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 extension in space of the number of individuals 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 when it marks off the future direction of the
activity in which we are engaged; means when it marks off the present direction. Every divorce of end
from means diminishes by that much the significance of the activity and tends to reduce it to a
drudgery from which one would escape if he could. A farmer has to use plants and animals to carry on
his farming activities. It certainly makes a great difference to his life whether he is fond of them, or
whether he regards them merely as means which he has to employ to get something else in which
alone he is interested. In the former case, his entire course of activity is significant; each phase of it
has its own value. He has the experience of realizing his end at every stage; the postponed aim, or end
in view, being merely a sight ahead by which to keep his activity going fully and freely. For if he does
not look ahead, he is more likely to find himself blocked. The aim is as definitely a means of action as
is any other portion of an activity.

3. Applications in Education. There is nothing peculiar about educational aims. They are just
like aims in any directed occupation. The educator, like the farmer, has certain things to do, certain
resources with which to do, and certain obstacles with which to contend. The conditions with which
the farmer deals, whether as obstacles or resources, have their own structure and operation
independently of any purpose of his 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 individuals and
their original powers into a few sharply marked-off classes; it has taught us that original capacities are
indefinitely numerous and variable. It is but the other side of this fact to say that in the degree in
which society has become democratic, social organization means utilization of the specific and variable
qualities of individuals, not stratification by classes. Although his educational philosophy was
revolutionary, it was none the less in bondage to static ideals. He thought that change or alteration
was evidence of lawless flux; that true reality was unchangeable. Hence while he would radically
change the existing state of society, his aim was to construct a state in which change would
subsequently have no place. The final end of life is fixed; given a state framed with this end in view,
not even minor details are to be altered. Though they might not be inherently important, yet if
permitted they would insure the minds of men to the idea of change, and hence be dissolving and
anarchic. The breakdown of his philosophy is made apparent in the fact that he could not trust to
gradual improvements in education to bring about a better society which should then improve
education, and so on indefinitely. Correct education could not come into existence until an ideal state
existed, and after that education would be devoted simply to its conservation. For the existence of this
state he was obliged to trust to some happy accident by which philosophic wisdom should happen to
because they do not meet the ideal requirements of the notion of society, the answer, in part, is that
the conception of society is then made so "ideal" as to be of no use, having no reference to facts; and
in part, that each of these organizations, no matter how opposed to the interests of other groups, has
something of the praiseworthy qualities of "Society" which hold it together. There is honor among
thieves, and a band of robbers has a common interest as respects its members. Gangs are marked by
fraternal feeling, and narrow cliques by intense loyalty to their own codes. Family life may be marked
by exclusiveness, suspicion, and jealousy as to those without, and yet be a model of amity and mutual
aid within. Any education given by a group tends to socialize its members, but the quality and value of
the socialization depends upon the habits and aims of the group. Hence, once more, the need of a
measure for the worth of any given mode of social life. In seeking this measure, we have to avoid two
extremes. We cannot set up, out of our heads, something we regard as an ideal society. We must base
our conception upon societies which actually exist, in order to have any assurance that our ideal is a
practicable one. But, as we have just seen, the ideal cannot simply repeat the traits which are actually
found. The problem is to extract the desirable traits of forms of community life which actually exist,
and employ them to criticize undesirable features and nature was, after all, but to negate the very
idea of education; it was to trust to the accidents of circumstance. Not only was some method
required but also some positive organ, some administrative agency for carrying on the process of
instruction. The "complete and harmonious development of all powers," having as its social
counterpart an enlightened and progressive humanity, required definite organization for its
realization. Private individuals here and there could proclaim the gospel; they could not execute the
work. A Pestalozzi could try experiments and exhort philanthropically inclined persons having wealth
and power to follow his example. But even Pestalozzi saw that any effective pursuit of the new
educational ideal required the support of the state. The realization of the new education destined to
produce a new society was, after all, dependent upon the activities of existing states. The movement
for the democratic idea inevitably became a movement for publicly conducted and administered
schools.

So far as Europe was concerned, the historic situation identified the movement for a state-
supported education with the nationalistic movement in political life—a fact of incalculable
significance for subsequent movements. Under the influence of German thought in particular,
education became a civic function and the civic function was identified with the realization of the
personality with social discipline and political subordination. It made the national state an
intermediary between the realization of private personality on one side and of humanity on the other.
Consequently, it is equally possible to state its animating principle with equal truth either in the classic
terms of "harmonious development of all the powers of personality" or in the more recent
terminology of "social efficiency." All this reinforces the statement which opens this chapter: The
conception of education as a social process and function has no definite meaning until we define the
kind of society we have in mind. These considerations pave the way for our second conclusion. One of
the fundamental problems of education in and for a democratic society is set by the conflict of a
nationalistic and a wider social aim. The earlier cosmopolitan and "humanitarian" conception suffered
both from vagueness and from lack of definite organs of execution and agencies of administration. In
Europe, in the Continental states particularly, the new idea of the importance of education for human
welfare and progress was captured by national interests and harnessed to do a work whose social aim
was definitely narrow and exclusive. The social aim of education and its national aim were identified,
and the result was a marked obscuring of the meaning of a social aim.
 This confusion corresponds to the existing connected with one another. We can definitely
foresee results only as we make careful scrutiny of present conditions, and the importance of the
outcome supplies the motive for observations. The more adequate our observations, the more varied
is the scene of conditions and obstructions that presents itself, and the more numerous are the
alternatives between which choice may be made. In turn, the more numerous the recognized
possibilities of the situation, or alternatives of action, the more meaning does the chosen activity
possess, and the more flexibly controllable is it. Where only a single outcome has been thought of, the
mind has nothing else to think of; the meaning attaching to the act is limited. One only steams ahead
toward the mark. Sometimes such a narrow course may be effective. But if unexpected difficulties
offer themselves, one has not as many resources at command as if he had chosen the same line of
action after a broader survey of the possibilities of the field. He cannot make needed readjustments
readily.

The net conclusion is that acting with an aim is all one with acting intelligently. To foresee a
terminus of an act is to have a basis upon which to observe, to select, and to order objects and our
own capacities. To do these things means to have a mind—for mind is precisely intentional purposeful
activity controlled by perception of facts and their relationships to one another. To that opportunity
for development of distinctive capacities be afforded all. The separation of the two aims in education
is fatal to democracy; the adoption of the narrower meaning of efficiency deprives it of its essential
justification.

The aim of efficiency (like any educational aim) must be included within the process of
experience. When it is measured by tangible external products, and not by the achieving of a
distinctively valuable experience, it becomes materialistic. Results in the way of commodities which
may be the outgrowth of an efficient personality are, in the strictest sense, by-products of education:
by-products which are inevitable and important, but nevertheless by-products. To set up an external
aim strengthens by reaction the false conception of culture which identifies it with something purely
"inner." And the idea of perfecting an "inner" personality is a sure sign of social divisions. What is
called inner is simply that which does not connect with others—which is not capable of free and full
communication. What is termed spiritual culture has usually been futile, with something rotten about
it, just because it has been conceived as a thing which a man might have internally—and therefore
exclusively. What one is as a person is what one is as associated with others, in a free give and take of
intercourse. This transcends both the efficiency which consists in supplying products to others and the
culture against the prevalent notion of the total depravity of innate human nature, and has had a
powerful influence in modifying the attitude towards children's interests. But it is hardly necessary to
say that primitive impulses are of themselves neither good nor evil, but become one or the other
according to the objects for which they are employed. That neglect, suppression, and premature
forcing of some instincts at the expense of others, are responsible for many avoidable ills, there can be
no doubt. But the moral is not to leave them alone to follow their own "spontaneous development,"
but to provide an environment which shall organize them.

Returning to the elements of truth contained in Rousseau's statements, we find that natural
development, as an aim, enables him to point the means of correcting many evils in current practices,
and to indicate a number of desirable specific aims. (1) Natural development as an aim fixes attention
upon the bodily organs and the need of health and vigor. The aim of natural development says to
parents and teachers: Make health an aim; normal development cannot be had without regard to the
vigor of the body—an obvious enough fact and yet one whose due recognition in practice would
almost automatically revolutionize many of our educational practices. "Nature" is indeed a vague and
metaphorical term, but one thing that 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 distracted 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
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.

(ii) 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 talk about the aim of education—or any other
undertaking—where conditions do not permit of foresight of results, and do not stimulate a person to
look ahead to see what the outcome of a given activity is to be. In the next place the aim as a foreseen
end gives direction to the activity; it is not an idle view of a mere spectator, but influences the steps
taken to reach the end. The foresight functions in three ways. In the first place, it involves careful
observation of the given conditions to see what are the means available for reaching the end, and to
discover the hindrances in the way. In the second place, it suggests the proper order or sequence in
the use of means. It facilitates an economical selection and arrangement. In the third place, it makes
choice of alternatives possible. If we can predict the outcome of acting this way or that, we can then
compare the value of the two courses of action; we can pass judgment upon their relative desirability.
If we know that stagnant water breeds mosquitoes and that they are likely to carry disease, we can,
disliking that anticipated result, take steps to avert it. Since we do not anticipate results as mere
intellectual onlookers, but as persons concerned in the outcome, we are partakers in the process
which produces the result. We intervene to bring about this result or that.

Of course these three points are closely instinctive activities may be called, metaphorically,
spontaneous, in the sense that the organs give a strong bias for a certain sort of operation, —a bias so
strong that we cannot go contrary to it, though by trying to go contrary we may pervert, stunt, and
corrupt them. But the notion of a spontaneous normal development of these activities is pure
mythology. The natural, or native, powers furnish the initiating and limiting forces in all education;
they do not furnish its ends or aims. There is no learning except from a beginning in unlearned powers,
but learning is not a matter of the spontaneous overflow of the unlearned powers. Rousseau's
contrary opinion is doubtless due to the fact that he identified God with Nature; to him the original
powers are wholly good, coming directly from a wise and good creator. To paraphrase the old saying
about the country and the town, God made the original human organs and faculties, man makes the
uses to which they are put. Consequently, the development of the former furnishes the standard to
which the latter must be subordinated. When men attempt to determine the uses to which the
original activities shall be put, they interfere with a divine plan. The interference by social
arrangements with Nature, God's work, is the primary source of corruption in individuals.

Rousseau's passionate assertion of the intrinsic goodness of all natural tendencies was a
reaction persons are naturally diverted from a proposed course of action by unusual, unforeseen
obstacles, or by presentation of inducements to an action that is directly more agreeable.

A person who is trained to consider his actions, to undertake them deliberately, is in so far
forth disciplined. Add to this ability a power to endure in an intelligently chosen course in face of
distraction, confusion, and difficulty, and you have the essence of discipline. Discipline means power
at command; mastery of the resources available for carrying through the action undertaken. To know
what one is to do and to move to do it promptly and by use of the requisite means is to be disciplined,
whether we are thinking of an army or a mind. Discipline is positive. To cow the spirit, to subdue
inclination, to compel obedience, to mortify the flesh, to make a subordinate perform an uncongenial
task— these things are or are not disciplinary according as they do or do not tend to the development
of power to recognize what one is about and to persistence in accomplishment.

It is hardly necessary to press the point that interest and discipline are connected, not opposed.

(i) Even the more purely intellectual phase of trained power—apprehension of what one is doing as
exhibited in consequences—is not possible without interest. Deliberation will be 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 most valid aim 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 educator
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
(including 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, in some individuals, appetites naturally dominate; they are assigned to the laboring
and trading class, which expresses and supplies human wants. Others reveal, upon education, that
over and above appetites, they have a generous, outgoing, assertively courageous disposition. They
become the citizen-subjects of the state; its defenders in war; its internal guardians in peace. But their
limit is fixed by their lack of reason, which is a capacity to grasp the universal. Those who possess this
are capable of the highest kind of education, and become in time the legislators of the state—for laws
are the universals which control the particulars of experience. Thus it is not true that in intent, Plato
subordinated the individual to the social whole. But it is true that lacking the perception of the
uniqueness of every individual, his incommensurability with others, and consequently not recognizing
that a society might change and yet be stable, his doctrine of limited powers and classes came in net
effect to the idea of the subordination of individuality. We cannot better Plato's conviction that an
individual is happy and society well organized when each individual engages in those activities for
which he has a natural equipment, nor his conviction that it is the primary office of education to
discover this equipment to its possessor and train him for its effective use. But progress in knowledge
has made us aware of the superficiality of Plato's lumping of