64 The Concept of Method 



What goes on in the macrocosm of the universe is paralleled 

 in the process of development of : 



(a) TJie Individual 



First, there is the passive stage of mere existence, in which 

 the child, scarcely yet an individual, is played upon by the active 

 forces in his environment. Then, in the second place, he begins 

 to realise his powers and potentialities and certain more or less 

 obvious qualities and potentialities in the objects he is grow- 

 ing to know. Finally, he realises that there is some connection 

 between himself and things, and that these objective powers and 

 his own personal capacities can be made to work together, and 

 through a process of interaction to develop one another to a 

 level that otherwise could not be attained through isolated 

 activity. 



(b) Society 



In the first stage there is an undifferentiated level of mere 

 existence, when social functions are not apparent or are present 

 only in embryonic form. In the second place, there is differen- 

 tiation of function and the growing consciousness of certain fun- 

 damental types of activity or potentialities of corporate experi- 

 ence. In the third stage these potentialities are raised to the 

 level of an idea and have a twofold function : ( i ) they give 

 social form and control to individual experience; (2) they give 

 wider content to the narrower individual course of development. 

 Hence, in this third stage, we have the individual's activity and 

 the social idea in synthesis through functional interaction. 



The prevalent tendency on the part of teachers to be imposed 

 upon by the external factors in experience amounts almost to 

 a fallacy of the material, and leads us to ask ourselves, in a re- 

 actionary mood, "What do zve do when ive think?" It is a 

 question that teachers need to ask themselves, and the more one 

 considers its possible answer the more convinced does one be- 

 come not only of the practical necessity of such an interrogation 

 of experience, but also of its numerous and fundamental implica- 

 tions in any philosophical education. There are perhaps two 

 great reasons v^^hy we should consider the problem that is sug- 

 gested by the question, "What do we do when we think?" In 

 the first place, we are apt to over-emphasise the significance and 



