1. Mind as Purely Individual. We have been concerned with the influences
which have effected a division between work and leisure, knowing and
doing, man and nature. These influences have resulted in splitting up
the subject matter of education into separate studies. They have also
found formulation in various philosophies which have opposed to each
other body and mind, theoretical knowledge and practice, physical
mechanism and ideal purpose. Upon the philosophical side, these various
dualisms culminate in a sharp demarcation of individual minds from
the world, and hence from one another. While the connection of this
philosophical position with educational procedure is not so obvious as
is that of the points considered in the last three chapters, there are
certain educational considerations which correspond to it; such as the
antithesis supposed to exist between subject matter (the counterpart of
the world) and method (the counterpart of mind); such as the tendency to
treat interest as something purely private, without intrinsic connection
with the material studied. Aside from incidental educational bearings,
it will be shown in this chapter that the dualistic philosophy of
mind and the world implies an erroneous conception of the relationship
between knowledge and social interests, and between individuality or
freedom, and social control and authority. The identification of the
mind with the individual self and of the latter with a private psychic
consciousness is comparatively modern. In both the Greek and medieval
periods, the rule was to regard the individual as a channel through
which a universal and divine intelligence operated. The individual was
in no true sense the knower; the knower was the "Reason" which operated
through him. The individual interfered at his peril, and only to the
detriment of the truth. In the degree in which the individual rather
than reason "knew," conceit, error, and opinion were substituted for
true knowledge. In Greek life, observation was acute and alert; and
thinking was free almost to the point of irresponsible speculations.
Accordingly the consequences of the theory were only such as were
consequent upon the lack of an experimental method. Without such a
method individuals could not engage in knowing, and be checked up by the
results of the inquiries of others. Without such liability to test
by others, the minds of men could not be intellectually responsible;
results were to be accepted because of their aesthetic consistency,
agreeable quality, or the prestige of their authors. In the barbarian
period, individuals were in a still more humble attitude to truth;
important knowledge was supposed to be divinely revealed, and nothing
remained for the minds of individuals except to work it over after
it had been received on authority. Aside from the more consciously
philosophic aspects of these movements, it never occurs to any one to
identify mind and the personal self wherever beliefs are transmitted by
custom.
In the medieval period there was a religious individualism. The deepest
concern of life was the salvation of the individual soul. In the later
Middle Ages, this latent individualism found conscious formulation in
the nominalistic philosophies, which treated the structure of knowledge
as something built up within the individual through his own acts, and
mental states. With the rise of economic and political individualism
after the sixteenth century, and with the development of Protestantism,
the times were ripe for an emphasis upon the rights and duties of the
individual in achieving knowledge for himself. This led to the view that
knowledge is won wholly through personal and private experiences. As a
consequence, mind, the source and possessor of knowledge, was thought
of as wholly individual. Thus upon the educational side, we find
educational reformers, like Montaigne, Bacon, Locke, henceforth
vehemently denouncing all learning which is acquired on hearsay, and
asserting that even if beliefs happen to be true, they do not constitute
knowledge unless they have grown up in and been tested by personal
experience. The reaction against authority in all spheres of life, and
the intensity of the struggle, against great odds, for freedom of action
and inquiry, led to such an emphasis upon personal observations and
ideas as in effect to isolate mind, and set it apart from the world to
be known.
This isolation is reflected in the great development of that branch
of philosophy known as epistemology--the theory of knowledge. The
identification of mind with the self, and the setting up of the self as
something independent and self-sufficient, created such a gulf between
the knowing mind and the world that it became a question how knowledge
was possible at all. Given a subject--the knower--and an object--the
thing to be known--wholly separate from one another, it is necessary to
frame a theory to explain how they get into connection with each other
so that valid knowledge may result. This problem, with the allied one
of the possibility of the world acting upon the mind and the mind acting
upon the world, became almost the exclusive preoccupation of philosophic
thought.
The theories that we cannot know the world as it really is but only the
impressions made upon the mind, or that there is no world beyond the
individual mind, or that knowledge is only a certain association of
the mind's own states, were products of this preoccupation. We are not
directly concerned with their truth; but the fact that such desperate
solutions were widely accepted is evidence of the extent to which mind
had been set over the world of realities. The increasing use of the term
"consciousness" as an equivalent for mind, in the supposition that there
is an inner world of conscious states and processes, independent of
any relationship to nature and society, an inner world more truly and
immediately known than anything else, is evidence of the same fact.
In short, practical individualism, or struggle for greater freedom of
thought in action, was translated into philosophic subjectivism.
2. Individual Mind as the Agent of Reorganization. It should be obvious
that this philosophic movement misconceived the significance of
the practical movement. Instead of being its transcript, it was a
perversion. Men were not actually engaged in the absurdity of striving
to be free from connection with nature and one another. They were
striving for greater freedom in nature and society. They wanted greater
power to initiate changes in the world of things and fellow beings;
greater scope of movement and consequently greater freedom in
observations and ideas implied in movement. They wanted not isolation
from the world, but a more intimate connection with it. They wanted to
form their beliefs about it at first hand, instead of through tradition.
They wanted closer union with their fellows so that they might influence
one another more effectively and might combine their respective actions
for mutual aims.
So far as their beliefs were concerned, they felt that a great deal
which passed for knowledge was merely the accumulated opinions of the
past, much of it absurd and its correct portions not understood when
accepted on authority. Men must observe for themselves, and form their
own theories and personally test them. Such a method was the only
alternative to the imposition of dogma as truth, a procedure which
reduced mind to the formal act of acquiescing in truth. Such is the
meaning of what is sometimes called the substitution of inductive
experimental methods of knowing for deductive. In some sense, men
had always used an inductive method in dealing with their immediate
practical concerns. Architecture, agriculture, manufacture, etc., had
to be based upon observation of the activities of natural objects, and
ideas about such affairs had to be checked, to some extent, by results.
But even in such things there was an undue reliance upon mere
custom, followed blindly rather than understandingly. And this
observational-experimental method was restricted to these "practical"
matters, and a sharp distinction maintained between practice and
theoretical knowledge or truth. (See Ch. XX.) The rise of free cities,
the development of travel, exploration, and commerce, the evolution
of new methods of producing commodities and doing business, threw men
definitely upon their own resources. The reformers of science like
Galileo, Descartes, and their successors, carried analogous methods into
ascertaining the facts about nature. An interest in discovery took the
place of an interest in systematizing and "proving" received beliefs.
A just philosophic interpretation of these movements would, indeed, have
emphasized the rights and responsibilities of the individual in gaining
knowledge and personally testing beliefs, no matter by what authorities
they were vouched for. But it would not have isolated the individual
from the world, and consequently isolated individuals--in theory--from
one another. It would have perceived that such disconnection, such
rupture of continuity, denied in advance the possibility of success in
their endeavors. As matter of fact every individual has grown up, and
always must grow up, in a social medium. His responses grow intelligent,
or gain meaning, simply because he lives and acts in a medium of
accepted meanings and values. (See ante, p. 30.) Through social
intercourse, through sharing in the activities embodying beliefs, he
gradually acquires a mind of his own. The conception of mind as a purely
isolated possession of the self is at the very antipodes of the truth.
The self achieves mind in the degree in which knowledge of things
is incarnate in the life about him; the self is not a separate mind
building up knowledge anew on its own account.
Yet there is a valid distinction between knowledge which is objective
and impersonal, and thinking which is subjective and personal. In one
sense, knowledge is that which we take for granted. It is that which is
settled, disposed of, established, under control. What we fully know,
we do not need to think about. In common phrase, it is certain, assured.
And this does not mean a mere feeling of certainty. It denotes not a
sentiment, but a practical attitude, a readiness to act without
reserve or quibble. Of course we may be mistaken. What is taken for
knowledge--for fact and truth--at a given time may not be such. But
everything which is assumed without question, which is taken for granted
in our intercourse with one another and nature is what, at the given
time, is called knowledge. Thinking on the contrary, starts, as we
have seen, from doubt or uncertainty. It marks an inquiring, hunting,
searching attitude, instead of one of mastery and possession. Through
its critical process true knowledge is revised and extended, and our
convictions as to the state of things reorganized. Clearly the last few
centuries have been typically a period of revision and reorganization
of beliefs. Men did not really throw away all transmitted beliefs
concerning the realities of existence, and start afresh upon the basis
of their private, exclusive sensations and ideas. They could not have
done so if they had wished to, and if it had been possible general
imbecility would have been the only outcome. Men set out from what had
passed as knowledge, and critically investigated the grounds upon which
it rested; they noted exceptions; they used new mechanical appliances to
bring to light data inconsistent with what had been believed; they used
their imaginations to conceive a world different from that in which
their forefathers had put their trust. The work was a piecemeal, a
retail, business. One problem was tackled at a time. The net results
of all the revisions amounted, however, to a revolution of prior
conceptions of the world. What occurred was a reorganization of prior
intellectual habitudes, infinitely more efficient than a cutting loose
from all connections would have been.
This state of affairs suggests a definition of the role of the
individual, or the self, in knowledge; namely, the redirection, or
reconstruction of accepted beliefs. Every new idea, every conception of
things differing from that authorized by current belief, must have its
origin in an individual. New ideas are doubtless always sprouting, but a
society governed by custom does not encourage their development. On the
contrary, it tends to suppress them, just because they are deviations
from what is current. The man who looks at things differently from
others is in such a community a suspect character; for him to persist
is generally fatal. Even when social censorship of beliefs is not so
strict, social conditions may fail to provide the appliances which are
requisite if new ideas are to be adequately elaborated; or they may fail
to provide any material support and reward to those who entertain them.
Hence they remain mere fancies, romantic castles in the air, or aimless
speculations. The freedom of observation and imagination involved in
the modern scientific revolution were not easily secured; they had to be
fought for; many suffered for their intellectual independence. But, upon
the whole, modern European society first permitted, and then, in some
fields at least, deliberately encouraged the individual reactions which
deviate from what custom prescribes. Discovery, research, inquiry in new
lines, inventions, finally came to be either the social fashion, or in
some degree tolerable. However, as we have already noted, philosophic
theories of knowledge were not content to conceive mind in the
individual as the pivot upon which reconstruction of beliefs turned,
thus maintaining the continuity of the individual with the world of
nature and fellow men. They regarded the individual mind as a separate
entity, complete in each person, and isolated from nature and hence from
other minds. Thus a legitimate intellectual individualism, the attitude
of critical revision of former beliefs which is indispensable to
progress, was explicitly formulated as a moral and social individualism.
When the activities of mind set out from customary beliefs and strive
to effect transformations of them which will in turn win general
conviction, there is no opposition between the individual and the
social. The intellectual variations of the individual in observation,
imagination, judgment, and invention are simply the agencies of
social progress, just as conformity to habit is the agency of social
conservation. But when knowledge is regarded as originating and
developing within an individual, the ties which bind the mental life of
one to that of his fellows are ignored and denied.
When the social quality of individualized mental operations is denied,
it becomes a problem to find connections which will unite an individual
with his fellows. Moral individualism is set up by the conscious
separation of different centers of life. It has its roots in the notion
that the consciousness of each person is wholly private, a self-inclosed
continent, intrinsically independent of the ideas, wishes, purposes of
everybody else. But when men act, they act in a common and public world.
This is the problem to which the theory of isolated and independent
conscious minds gave rise: Given feelings, ideas, desires, which have
nothing to do with one another, how can actions proceeding from them
be controlled in a social or public interest? Given an egoistic
consciousness, how can action which has regard for others take place?
Moral philosophies which have started from such premises have developed
four typical ways of dealing with the question. (i) One method
represents the survival of the older authoritative position, with
such concessions and compromises as the progress of events has made
absolutely inevitable. The deviations and departures characterizing an
individual are still looked upon with suspicion; in principle they are
evidences of the disturbances, revolts, and corruptions inhering in
an individual apart from external authoritative guidance. In fact, as
distinct from principle, intellectual individualism is tolerated in
certain technical regions--in subjects like mathematics and physics and
astronomy, and in the technical inventions resulting therefrom. But
the applicability of a similar method to morals, social, legal, and
political matters, is denied. In such matters, dogma is still to be
supreme; certain eternal truths made known by revelation, intuition,
or the wisdom of our forefathers set unpassable limits to individual
observation and speculation. The evils from which society suffers are
set down to the efforts of misguided individuals to transgress
these boundaries. Between the physical and the moral sciences, lie
intermediate sciences of life, where the territory is only grudgingly
yielded to freedom of inquiry under the pressure of accomplished fact.
Although past history has demonstrated that the possibilities of human
good are widened and made more secure by trusting to a responsibility
built up within the very process of inquiry, the "authority" theory sets
apart a sacred domain of truth which must be protected from the inroads
of variation of beliefs. Educationally, emphasis may not be put on
eternal truth, but it is put on the authority of book and teacher, and
individual variation is discouraged.
(ii) Another method is sometimes termed rationalism or abstract
intellectualism. A formal logical faculty is set up in distinction from
tradition and history and all concrete subject matter. This faculty of
reason is endowed with power to influence conduct directly. Since it
deals wholly with general and impersonal forms, when different persons
act in accord with logical findings, their activities will be externally
consistent. There is no doubt of the services rendered by this
philosophy. It was a powerful factor in the negative and dissolving
criticism of doctrines having nothing but tradition and class interest
behind them; it accustomed men to freedom of discussion and to the
notion that beliefs had to be submitted to criteria of reasonableness.
It undermined the power of prejudice, superstition, and brute force, by
habituating men to reliance upon argument, discussion, and persuasion.
It made for clarity and order of exposition. But its influence was
greater in destruction of old falsities than in the construction of new
ties and associations among men. Its formal and empty nature, due to
conceiving reason as something complete in itself apart from subject
matter, its hostile attitude toward historical institutions, its
disregard of the influence of habit, instinct, and emotion, as operative
factors in life, left it impotent in the suggestion of specific aims
and methods. Bare logic, however important in arranging and criticizing
existing subject matter, cannot spin new subject matter out of itself.
In education, the correlative is trust in general ready-made rules and
principles to secure agreement, irrespective of seeing to it that the
pupil's ideas really agree with one another.
(iii) While this rationalistic philosophy was developing in France,
English thought appealed to the intelligent self-interest of individuals
in order to secure outer unity in the acts which issued from isolated
streams of consciousness. Legal arrangements, especially penal
administration, and governmental regulations, were to be such as to
prevent the acts which proceeded from regard for one's own private
sensations from interfering with the feelings of others. Education was
to instill in individuals a sense that non-interference with others
and some degree of positive regard for their welfare were necessary for
security in the pursuit of one's own happiness. Chief emphasis was
put, however, upon trade as a means of bringing the conduct of one into
harmony with that of others. In commerce, each aims at the satisfaction
of his own wants, but can gain his own profit only by furnishing some
commodity or service to another. Thus in aiming at the increase of his
own private pleasurable states of consciousness, he contributes to
the consciousness of others. Again there is no doubt that this view
expressed and furthered a heightened perception of the values of
conscious life, and a recognition that institutional arrangements
are ultimately to be judged by the contributions which they make to
intensifying and enlarging the scope of conscious experience. It also
did much to rescue work, industry, and mechanical devices from the
contempt in which they had been held in communities founded upon the
control of a leisure class. In both ways, this philosophy promoted a
wider and more democratic social concern. But it was tainted by
the narrowness of its fundamental premise: the doctrine that every
individual acts only from regard for his own pleasures and pains, and
that so-called generous and sympathetic acts are only indirect ways
of procuring and assuring one's own comfort. In other words, it made
explicit the consequences inhering in any doctrine which makes mental
life a self-inclosed thing, instead of an attempt to redirect and
readapt common concerns. It made union among men a matter of calculation
of externals. It lent itself to the contemptuous assertions of Carlyle
that it was a doctrine of anarchy plus a constable, and recognized only
a "cash nexus" among men. The educational equivalents of this doctrine
in the uses made of pleasurable rewards and painful penalties are only
too obvious. (iv) Typical German philosophy followed another path.
It started from what was essentially the rationalistic philosophy of
Descartes and his French successors. But while French thought upon
the whole developed the idea of reason in opposition to the religious
conception of a divine mind residing in individuals, German thought (as
in Hegel) made a synthesis of the two. Reason is absolute. Nature is
incarnate reason. History is reason in its progressive unfolding in
man. An individual becomes rational only as he absorbs into himself
the content of rationality in nature and in social institutions. For an
absolute reason is not, like the reason of rationalism, purely formal
and empty; as absolute it must include all content within itself. Thus
the real problem is not that of controlling individual freedom so that
some measure of social order and concord may result, but of achieving
individual freedom through developing individual convictions in accord
with the universal law found in the organization of the state as
objective Reason. While this philosophy is usually termed absolute or
objective idealism, it might better be termed, for educational purposes
at least, institutional idealism. (See ante, p. 59.) It idealized
historical institutions by conceiving them as incarnations of an
immanent absolute mind. There can be no doubt that this philosophy was
a powerful influence in rescuing philosophy in the beginning of the
nineteenth century from the isolated individualism into which it had
fallen in France and England. It served also to make the organization of
the state more constructively interested in matters of public concern.
It left less to chance, less to mere individual logical conviction, less
to the workings of private self-interest. It brought intelligence to
bear upon the conduct of affairs; it accentuated the need of nationally
organized education in the interests of the corporate state. It
sanctioned and promoted freedom of inquiry in all technical details of
natural and historical phenomena. But in all ultimate moral matters, it
tended to reinstate the principle of authority. It made for efficiency
of organization more than did any of the types of philosophy previously
mentioned, but it made no provision for free experimental modification
of this organization. Political democracy, with its belief in the right
of individual desire and purpose to take part in readapting even the
fundamental constitution of society, was foreign to it.
3. Educational Equivalents. It is not necessary to consider in detail
the educational counterparts of the various defects found in these
various types of philosophy. It suffices to say that in general the
school has been the institution which exhibited with greatest clearness
the assumed antithesis between purely individualistic methods of
learning and social action, and between freedom and social control. The
antithesis is reflected in the absence of a social atmosphere and motive
for learning, and the consequent separation, in the conduct of the
school, between method of instruction and methods of government; and in
the slight opportunity afforded individual variations. When learning
is a phase of active undertakings which involve mutual exchange, social
control enters into the very process of learning. When the social factor
is absent, learning becomes a carrying over of some presented material
into a purely individual consciousness, and there is no inherent reason
why it should give a more socialized direction to mental and emotional
disposition. There is tendency on the part of both the upholders and
the opponents of freedom in school to identify it with absence of social
direction, or, sometimes, with merely physical unconstraint of movement.
But the essence of the demand for freedom is the need of conditions
which will enable an individual to make his own special contribution
to a group interest, and to partake of its activities in such ways that
social guidance shall be a matter of his own mental attitude, and not a
mere authoritative dictation of his acts. Because what is often called
discipline and "government" has to do with the external side of conduct
alone, a similar meaning is attached, by reaction, to freedom. But when
it is perceived that each idea signifies the quality of mind expressed
in action, the supposed opposition between them falls away. Freedom
means essentially the part played by thinking--which is personal--in
learning:--it means intellectual initiative, independence in
observation, judicious invention, foresight of consequences, and
ingenuity of adaptation to them.
But because these are the mental phase of behavior, the needed play of
individuality--or freedom--cannot be separated from opportunity for
free play of physical movements. Enforced physical quietude may be
unfavorable to realization of a problem, to undertaking the observations
needed to define it, and to performance of the experiments which
test the ideas suggested. Much has been said about the importance of
"self-activity" in education, but the conception has too frequently been
restricted to something merely internal--something excluding the free
use of sensory and motor organs. Those who are at the stage of learning
from symbols, or who are engaged in elaborating the implications of a
problem or idea preliminary to more carefully thought-out activity,
may need little perceptible overt activity. But the whole cycle
of self-activity demands an opportunity for investigation and
experimentation, for trying out one's ideas upon things, discovering
what can be done with materials and appliances. And this is incompatible
with closely restricted physical activity. Individual activity has
sometimes been taken as meaning leaving a pupil to work by himself or
alone. Relief from need of attending to what any one else is doing is
truly required to secure calm and concentration. Children, like grown
persons, require a judicious amount of being let alone. But the time,
place, and amount of such separate work is a matter of detail, not of
principle. There is no inherent opposition between working with others
and working as an individual. On the contrary, certain capacities of an
individual are not brought out except under the stimulus of associating
with others. That a child must work alone and not engage in group
activities in order to be free and let his individuality develop, is
a notion which measures individuality by spatial distance and makes a
physical thing of it.
Individuality as a factor to be respected in education has a double
meaning. In the first place, one is mentally an individual only as he
has his own purpose and problem, and does his own thinking. The phrase
"think for one's self" is a pleonasm. Unless one does it for one's self,
it isn't thinking. Only by a pupil's own observations, reflections,
framing and testing of suggestions can what he already knows be
amplified and rectified. Thinking is as much an individual matter as
is the digestion of food. In the second place, there are variations of
point of view, of appeal of objects, and of mode of attack, from person
to person. When these variations are suppressed in the alleged interests
of uniformity, and an attempt is made to have a single mold of method
of study and recitation, mental confusion and artificiality inevitably
result. Originality is gradually destroyed, confidence in one's own
quality of mental operation is undermined, and a docile subjection to
the opinion of others is inculcated, or else ideas run wild. The harm
is greater now than when the whole community was governed by customary
beliefs, because the contrast between methods of learning in school and
those relied upon outside the school is greater. That systematic advance
in scientific discovery began when individuals were allowed, and then
encouraged, to utilize their own peculiarities of response to subject
matter, no one will deny. If it is said in objection, that pupils
in school are not capable of any such originality, and hence must be
confined to appropriating and reproducing things already known by
the better informed, the reply is twofold. (i) We are concerned with
originality of attitude which is equivalent to the unforced response of
one's own individuality, not with originality as measured by product.
No one expects the young to make original discoveries of just the same
facts and principles as are embodied in the sciences of nature and man.
But it is not unreasonable to expect that learning may take place under
such conditions that from the standpoint of the learner there is genuine
discovery. While immature students will not make discoveries from
the standpoint of advanced students, they make them from their own
standpoint, whenever there is genuine learning. (ii) In the normal
process of becoming acquainted with subject matter already known to
others, even young pupils react in unexpected ways. There is something
fresh, something not capable of being fully anticipated by even the
most experienced teacher, in the ways they go at the topic, and in
the particular ways in which things strike them. Too often all this is
brushed aside as irrelevant; pupils are deliberately held to rehearsing
material in the exact form in which the older person conceives it. The
result is that what is instinctively original in individuality, that
which marks off one from another, goes unused and undirected. Teaching
then ceases to be an educative process for the teacher. At most he
learns simply to improve his existing technique; he does not get new
points of view; he fails to experience any intellectual companionship.
Hence both teaching and learning tend to become conventional and
mechanical with all the nervous strain on both sides therein implied.
As maturity increases and as the student has a greater background of
familiarity upon which a new topic is projected, the scope of more or
less random physical experimentation is reduced. Activity is defined or
specialized in certain channels. To the eyes of others, the student may
be in a position of complete physical quietude, because his energies are
confined to nerve channels and to the connected apparatus of the eyes
and vocal organs. But because this attitude is evidence of intense
mental concentration on the part of the trained person, it does not
follow that it should be set up as a model for students who still have
to find their intellectual way about. And even with the adult, it does
not cover the whole circuit of mental energy. It marks an intermediate
period, capable of being lengthened with increased mastery of a
subject, but always coming between an earlier period of more general and
conspicuous organic action and a later time of putting to use what has
been apprehended.
When, however, education takes cognizance of the union of mind and body
in acquiring knowledge, we are not obliged to insist upon the need of
obvious, or external, freedom. It is enough to identify the freedom
which is involved in teaching and studying with the thinking by which
what a person already knows and believes is enlarged and refined. If
attention is centered upon the conditions which have to be met in order
to secure a situation favorable to effective thinking, freedom will take
care of itself. The individual who has a question which being really a
question to him instigates his curiosity, which feeds his eagerness for
information that will help him cope with it, and who has at command
an equipment which will permit these interests to take effect, is
intellectually free. Whatever initiative and imaginative vision he
possesses will be called into play and control his impulses and habits.
His own purposes will direct his actions. Otherwise, his seeming
attention, his docility, his memorizings and reproductions, will partake
of intellectual servility. Such a condition of intellectual subjection
is needed for fitting the masses into a society where the many are not
expected to have aims or ideas of their own, but to take orders from the
few set in authority. It is not adapted to a society which intends to be
democratic.
Summary. True individualism is a product of the relaxation of the grip
of the authority of custom and traditions as standards of belief. Aside
from sporadic instances, like the height of Greek thought, it is a
comparatively modern manifestation. Not but that there have always been
individual diversities, but that a society dominated by conservative
custom represses them or at least does not utilize them and promote
them. For various reasons, however, the new individualism was
interpreted philosophically not as meaning development of agencies
for revising and transforming previously accepted beliefs, but as an
assertion that each individual's mind was complete in isolation from
everything else. In the theoretical phase of philosophy, this produced
the epistemological problem: the question as to the possibility of any
cognitive relationship of the individual to the world. In its practical
phase, it generated the problem of the possibility of a purely
individual consciousness acting on behalf of general or social
interests,--the problem of social direction. While the philosophies
which have been elaborated to deal with these questions have not
affected education directly, the assumptions underlying them have
found expression in the separation frequently made between study and
government and between freedom of individuality and control by others.
Regarding freedom, the important thing to bear in mind is that it
designates a mental attitude rather than external unconstraint of
movements, but that this quality of mind cannot develop without a fair
leeway of movements in exploration, experimentation, application, etc. A
society based on custom will utilize individual variations only up to
a limit of conformity with usage; uniformity is the chief ideal within
each class. A progressive society counts individual variations as
precious since it finds in them the means of its own growth. Hence
a democratic society must, in consistency with its ideal, allow for
intellectual freedom and the play of diverse gifts and interests in its
educational measures.