Chapter XX 

 THE INFLUENCE OF EDUCATION 



John Dewey 



PROBABLY man's pidest tradition about himself is 

 that he is different in kind from all other animals, so 

 different that according to the version current in the 

 Christian world he and he alone is made in the divine image. 

 That this tradition is deep-seated and supremely cherished is 

 made evident in the bitter opposition aroused by the theory 

 of his animal descent. This theory is a challenge to behef in 

 his unique status among creatures on earth. The conception 

 was not arbitrary in its origin. There is a mass of facts 

 which taken at their face value support the behef that a 

 great gulf divides man from the animals. He alone is ca- 

 pable of morals, religion and science, invents tools, devel- 

 ops arts, employs language, transmits culture and envelops 

 himself in institutions. His possession of ideals and of the 

 sense of right and wrong, his consciousness of laws, are alone 

 enough to give rise to the notion that his kinship to other 

 animals is at most physical. Realization that these differ- 

 ences are due to the fact that man alone is an educable being 

 in a pre-eminent sense of the word is the most extraordinary 

 and complete proof of the significance of education. Of 

 all the various definitions that can be given of man, that he 

 is the educable being is that which goes deepest. 



Man is not only educable but he educates. He has not 

 only potentialities for the extraordinay modifications which 

 seem to put him in a class far above other animals, but he has 

 the constant desire to transmit all accomplished transforma- 

 tions to others. He is a propagandizing (to use the word 

 for once in a good sense) animal as well as a propagating 

 one. His zeal in social and moral reproduction matches that 

 in physical reproduction. The course of culture has been 

 slow and tortuous, exposed to accident and destruction. 

 But it would have been still more so if man had remained 

 merely a being capable of education but without the energetic 



468 



