be able to
tell what the study is good for.

In the first place, as long as any topic makes an immediate appeal, it
is not necessary to ask what it is good for. This is a question which
can be asked only about instrumental values. Some goods are not good for
anything; they are just goods. Any other notion leads to an absurdity.
For we cannot stop asking the question about an instrumental good, one
whose value lies in its being good for something, unless there is at
some point something intrinsically good, good for itself. To a hungry,
healthy child, food is a good of the situation; we do not have to bring
him to consciousness of the ends subserved by food in order to supply a
motive to eat. The food in connection with his appetite is a motive. The
same thing holds of mentally eager pupils with respect to many topics.
Neither they nor the teacher could possibly foretell with any exactness
the purposes learning is to accomplish in the future; nor as long as the
eagerness continues is it advisable to try to specify particular goods
which are to come of it. The proof of a good is found in the fact that
the pupil responds; his response is use. His response to the material
shows that the subject functions in his life. It is unsound to urge
that, say, Latin has a value per se in the abstract, just as a study, as
a sufficient justification for teaching it. But it is equally absurd
to argue that unless teacher or pupil can point out some definite
assignable future use to which it is to be put, it lacks justifying
value. When pupils are genuinely concerned in learning Latin, that is of
itself proof that it possesses value. The most which one is entitled to
ask in such cases is whether in view of the shortness of time, there
are not other things of intrinsic value which in addition have greater
instrumental value.

This brings us to the matter of instrumental values--topics studied
because of some end beyond themselves. If a child is ill and his
appetite does not lead him to eat when food is presented, or if his
appetite is perverted so that he prefers candy to meat and vegetables,
conscious reference to results is indicated. He needs to be made
conscious of consequences as a justification of the positive or negative
value of certain objects. Or the state of things may be normal enough,
and yet an individual not be moved by some matter because he does not
grasp how his attainment of some intrinsic good depends upon active
concer