life of
collective humanity in its past or in its future. The most direct
road for elementary students into civics and economics is found in
consideration of the place and office of industrial occupations in
social life. Even for older students, the social sciences would be less
abstract and formal if they were dealt with less as sciences (less as
formulated bodies of knowledge) and more in their direct subject-matter
as that is found in the daily life of the social groups in which the
student shares.

Connection of occupations with the method of science is at least as
close as with its subject matter. The ages when scientific progress was
slow were the ages when learned men had contempt for the material and
processes of everyday life, especially for those concerned with manual
pursuits. Consequently they strove to develop knowledge out of general
principles--almost out of their heads--by logical reasons. It seems
as absurd that learning should come from action on and with physical
things, like dropping acid on a stone to see what would happen, as that
it should come from sticking an awl with waxed thread through a piece of
leather. But the rise of experimental methods proved that, given control
of conditions, the latter operation is more typical of the right way of
knowledge than isolated logical reasonings. Experiment developed in the
seventeenth and succeeding centuries and became the authorized way of
knowing when men's interests were centered in the question of control
of nature for human uses. The active occupations in which appliances
are brought to bear upon physical things with the intention of effecting
useful changes is the most vital introduction to the experimental
method.

3. Work and Play. What has been termed active occupation includes both
play and work. In their intrinsic meaning, play and industry are by
no means so antithetical to one another as is often assumed, any sharp
contrast being due to undesirable social conditions. Both involve ends
consciously entertained and the selection and adaptations of materials
and processes designed to effect the desired ends. The difference
between them is largely one of time-span, influencing the directness
of the connection of means and ends. In play, the interest is more
direct--a fact frequently indicated by saying that in play the activity
is its own end, instead of its having an ulterior result. The statement
is correct, but it is falsely taken, if suppose