INTRODUCTION. THE task which this essay undertakes is one of organization, rather than of investigation, the putting together in relations of interdependence, or mutual reinforcement, of ideas which have been worked out in connection with several more or less isolated pursuits. In terms of a proposition to be presented in Chapter I., the attempt belongs to that synthetic movement which is one of the factors in the progress of both the social and the individual mind. An effort is made to bring conceptions from social philosophy to bear upon the problem of education, with the hope that there may result both clarification of ideas and greater definiteness of purpose. The thought of social philosophy which sees in the development of society the growth of a vast psychic organism, to which individuals are intrinsically related, in which alone they find self-realization, is of the highest significance for the teacher, to whom it suggests both aim and method. While this undertaking is, in general, synthetic, its scope is so vast that emphasis will be laid chiefly, if not exclusively, upon the cognitive function of society and of the individual. Such one-sidedness of treatment is adopted deliberately, and not from any failure to recognize the organic unity of the mind. A complete view of the subject would include all the intimately interdependent aspects of both social and individual consciousness. Again, the view is confined to social life, as the sphere of man's activity, and as affording the immediate material of his |