EDUCATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION OF NATURE 279 



one, is that of which we have just been speaking, and which we may 

 call suggestive variation. The world is moving with constantly acceler- 

 ated velocity, not merely because we have more information to-day 

 than yesterday, but because what we know means more to us, and this 

 alchemistic power of getting out of facts something not superficially 

 visible in them is mind's contribution to progress. Now education has 

 never appreciated the importance of variation in human society and 

 for that reason has never set itself to develop it. The very capacity 

 for variation, implying as it does a certain flexibility, facilitates ready 

 adaptation in the individual, and its suggestive influence on society 

 promotes adaptation in others. The means, of course, by which this 

 influence becomes effective is speaking and writing. The function 

 of education here is to develop a mental attitude that is friendly to 

 variation, and to train to rightly see and interpret relations. There 

 seems to be an impression that if we just give a child or a man informa- 

 tion enough he will at some time and in some way — though we are 

 never told just when or how — learn to apply it to the problems of life. 

 But the facts do not justify this view. The astonishing velocity with 

 which science and industry are moving to-day calls for correspondingly 

 rapid adjustment, and owing to defective principles of education we 

 are unable to meet the demand. This is the reason for the conflict 

 between labor and capital. Industry has advanced so fast that in- 

 stinctive society could not keep up with it. Xot educated to vary 

 flexibly we can not adjust ourselves in time to new conditions. We are 

 confused and baffled by them. The intellectual element enters into 

 human adaptations, and the more rapid the change the more conscious 

 and purposive must adjustment become. Fitting for this adjustment 

 belongs peculiarly to education. But here we fail. We have given 

 loo narrow an interpretation to education. Our narrow theory regards 

 it as a preparation to adapt ourselves to a certain set of conditions, 

 i. e., those found existing. The result is intellectual rigidity and 

 obstinate resistance to evolution. The mental processes, moulded in 

 certain mechanical forms of activity, find hardship in readjustment 

 when conditions change, and, as we have seen, change is the rule 

 to-day. Here, again, we are adhering too closely to the animal 

 method, where movement is slow and rapid adaptation is not expected. 

 Education should seek to develop a mental plasticity, a capacity for 

 understanding and getting control of new situations and for making 

 them. 



To-day the great changes are social. Evolutionary conditions are 

 pressing us toward a fundamental reconstruction of society. The 

 reconstruction is a profound social variation. Education — that is to 

 say, those who have the magnificent educational equipment of the 

 nation in charge — should have foreseen this and made the new genera- 

 tion of youths ready for it, should have prepared them to recognize 



