ESSAYS 47i 



young of other animals is an index of the degree to which his future behaviour and 

 capabilities are determined by his education. From the moment of birth onwards 

 the child is trying and testing the properties of his environment and of his powers 

 in relation to the environment, and the experiences so gained, appraised according 

 to the varying emotions either of pleasure or of pain which accompany them, are 

 the building stones of the mind and character of the adult man. The acquisition 

 and storing of sense experience in man is enormously enhanced by the power of 

 speech, i.e. by the ability to use words as symbols for sense experiences, so that 

 words can be dealt with like counters jn a game, without changing them at every 

 step into the currency of the complicated series of phenomena with which they 

 were originally connected. Moreover, the use of written and spoken language has 

 made it possible to utilise the whole of racial and human experience in guiding 

 the reactions of any individual. In a community all members have the advantage 

 of the experience, and can profit by the wisdom of the most highly gifted of their 

 race — a fact which greatly enhances the rate of progress in the acquisition of 

 knowledge and power by man throughout the civilised world. 



The use of symbols for facilitating and quickening thought has been extended 

 far beyond the mere employment of words. In mathematics symbols have 

 been invented in order to deal with quantities, and have been carried to such 

 an extent that a few letters arranged in the form of an equation may represent the 

 result of years of labour and millions of experiences by men under all manner of 

 conditions. Such shorthand expressions of past sequences of experience are 

 designated as natural laws, meaning by this that, since certain phenomena have 

 followed in orderly and known sequence in all past experience of man, the same 

 sequence will be observed in the future. Science is then nothing more than the 

 orderly presentment of human experiences. Its value lies in the fact that a man, 

 when he knows the normal sequence of sense experience, can foretell what will 

 happen as a result of a given set of conditions and can regulate his actions thereby. 

 He thus acquires foresight and wisdom by the experience of others imparted to 

 him in his education, and has not himself to undergo the hard and painful process 

 of gaining wisdom by the method of trial and error, a method to which, under the 

 designation of " muddling through," this country has been too often reduced by 

 the ignorance of its leaders. 



The object of the intellectual side of education is to place at the disposal of the 

 individual such parts of human experience as will be of value to him in raising his 

 efficiency and in guiding his behaviour within the limits of freedom allowed to him 

 by the social rule of his community. It is naturally impossible to endow any 

 individual with the whole of human experience ; but it is possible to give to every 

 one such a survey of human knowledge and such an attitude towards all knowledge 

 that he may appreciate its importance in all affairs of life, and may know that, 

 behind the little area with which he is acquainted, there is a great body of 

 experience called science which can be drawn upon for guidance in any new or 

 unexpected situation which may arise. 



In this country it has been customary to draw a sharp line of distinction 

 between the man of affairs and the expert, rather to the detriment of the latter. 

 People have failed to recognise that the man of affairs is generally an expert in 

 some very minute fraction of human activities, and that it is by specialising in 

 this one direction that he has succeeded in making money and acquiring a position 

 in society. The limitations of his experience and the paucity of his general 

 knowledge often render him the worst of guides in matters falling outside his 

 own little speciality. The striking advances made by German industry during 



