fication only in
its contrast with the concluding part of the same sentence: "Everything
degenerates in the hands of man." And again he says: "Natural man has
an absolute value; he is a numerical unit, a complete integer and has no
relation save to himself and to his fellow man. Civilized man is only a
relative unit, the numerator of a fraction whose value depends upon its
dominator, its relation to the integral body of society. Good political
institutions are those which make a man unnatural." It is upon this
conception of the artificial and harmful character of organized social
life as it now exists 2 that he rested the notion that nature not merely
furnishes prime forces which initiate growth but also its plan and goal.
That evil institutions and customs work almost automatically to give a
wrong education which the most careful schooling cannot offset is
true enough; but the conclusion is not to education apart from the
environment, but to provide an environment in which native powers will
be put to better uses.

2. Social Efficiency as Aim. A conception which made nature supply the
end of a true education and society the end of an evil one, could hardly
fail to call out a protest. The opposing emphasis took the form of a
doctrine that the business of education is to supply precisely what
nature fails to secure; namely, habituation of an individual to social
control; subordination of natural powers to social rules. It is not
surprising to find that the value in the idea of social efficiency
resides largely in its protest against the points at which the doctrine
of natural development went astray; while its misuse comes when it is
employed to slur over the truth in that conception. It is a fact that we
must look to the activities and achievements of associated life to find
what the development of power--that is to say, efficiency--means. The
error is in implying that we must adopt measures of subordination rather
than of utilization to secure efficiency. The doctrine is rendered
adequate when we recognize that social efficiency is attained not by
negative constraint but by positive use of native individual capacities
in occupations having a social meaning. (1) Translated into specific
aims, social efficiency indicates the importance of industrial
competency. Persons cannot live without means of subsistence; the ways
in which these means are employed and consumed have a profound influence
upon all the relationships of