82 The Concept of Method 



who are being trained for teaching than it is among those who 

 are training them. The young teacher comes too quickly upon 

 materials and methods which he has not time properly to organise 

 as parts of his own experience, and in his haste to get command 

 over these new materials and activities unconsciously asserts this 

 dualism by seeking to regulate his experience by precepts instead 

 of by principles. 



In these two attitudes to theory and practice — the first ignoring 

 any conscious theory, and the second making theory something 

 external to and imposed upon practice — we have two stages in the 

 genetic process which culminates in the realisation that theory 

 and practice are both aspects of the one process of experience, 

 though the emphasis placed upon either may be infinitely varied in 

 diverse times and places. Instead of having as theory what 

 someone else thinks and as practice that which you do ; or theory 

 something you think and practice that which you do, however un- 

 connected with that part of your experience which is thought — 

 instead of this, theory and practice are one ; they are experience ; 

 they are acting one upon the other in everything we do, in every 

 lesson we teach, in all we think, and say, and write. Our experi- 

 ence is an organic part of our personality, and our theory and 

 our practice are organic parts of our experience. They grow, 

 develop, change, modify in many ways and from various causes, 

 but they are always organically related to our experience and 

 always are interrelated, terminal aspects, so to speak, in con- 

 sciousness. 



The discovery of laws of nature and the formulation of prin- 

 ciples of human activity are two of the latest and highest achieve- 

 ments of thought. Both stand at the upper end of a long line 

 of development from beginnings so simple, crude, and unformed 

 that it is only a retrospective interpretation of thought that dis- 

 covers in the apparent simplicity of these genetic conditions the 

 " promise and potency " of later development. 



It is possible for the investigator to consider anything that 

 grows from simple beginnings and develops into a relatively 

 higher and more organised thing from two different and con- 

 trasted points of view. We shall find that, in every one of the 

 sciences and spheres of investigation which have to deal with 

 phenomena subject to the general process of evolution, these two 

 points of view are involved. Sometimes one is emphasised, some- 



