and elastic.
Consequently, the training is much more "general"; that is to say, it
covers a wider territory and includes more factors. Exactly the same
thing holds of special and general education of the mind.

A monotonously uniform exercise may by practice give great skill in one
special act; but the skill is limited to that act, be it bookkeeping or
calculations in logarithms or experiments in hydrocarbons. One may be
an authority in a particular field and yet of more than usually poor
judgment in matters not closely allied, unless the training in the
special field has been of a kind to ramify into the subject matter
of the other fields. (5) Consequently, such powers as observation,
recollection, judgment, esthetic taste, represent organized results of
the occupation of native active tendencies with certain subject matters.
A man does not observe closely and fully by pressing a button for
the observing faculty to get to work (in other words by "willing"
to observe); but if he has something to do which can be accomplished
successfully only through intensive and extensive use of eye and hand,
he naturally observes. Observation is an outcome, a consequence, of
the interaction of sense organ and subject matter. It will vary,
accordingly, with the subject matter employed.

It is consequently futile to set up even the ulterior development of
faculties of observation, memory, etc., unless we have first determined
what sort of subject matter we wish the pupil to become expert in
observing and recalling and for what purpose. And it is only repeating
in another form what has already been said, to declare that the
criterion here must be social. We want the person to note and recall and
judge those things which make him an effective competent member of the
group in which he is associated with others. Otherwise we might as well
set the pupil to observing carefully cracks on the wall and set him to
memorizing meaningless lists of words in an unknown tongue--which is
about what we do in fact when we give way to the doctrine of formal
discipline. If the observing habits of a botanist or chemist or engineer
are better habits than those which are thus formed, it is because
they deal with subject matter which is more significant in life. In
concluding this portion of the discussion, we note that the distinction
between special and general education has nothing to do with the
transferability of function or power. In the literal sense,