terests, this would not--barring
the fact of socially divided classes--lead to neglect of the kind of
education which trains men for the useful pursuits. It would rather lead
to scrupulous care for them, so that men were trained to be efficient in
them and yet to keep them in their place; education would see to it
that we avoided the evil results which flow from their being allowed to
flourish in obscure purlieus of neglect. Only when a division of these
interests coincides with a division of an inferior and a superior social
class will preparation for useful work be looked down upon with contempt
as an unworthy thing: a fact which prepares one for the conclusion that
the rigid identification of work with material interests, and leisure
with ideal interests is itself a social product. The educational
formulations of the social situation made over two thousand years ago
have been so influential and give such a clear and logical recognition
of the implications of the division into laboring and leisure classes,
that they deserve especial note. According to them, man occupies the
highest place in the scheme of animate existence. In part, he shares
the constitution and functions of plants and animals--nutritive,
reproductive, motor or practical. The distinctively human function is
reason existing for the sake of beholding the spectacle of the universe.
Hence the truly human end is the fullest possible of this distinctive
human prerogative. The life of observation, meditation, cogitation, and
speculation pursued as an end in itself is the proper life of man. From
reason moreover proceeds the proper control of the lower elements
of human nature--the appetites and the active, motor, impulses. In
themselves greedy, insubordinate, lovers of excess, aiming only at their
own satiety, they observe moderation--the law of the mean--and serve
desirable ends as they are subjected to the rule of reason.

Such is the situation as an affair of theoretical psychology and as most
adequately stated by Aristotle. But this state of things is reflected
in the constitution of classes of men and hence in the organization of
society. Only in a comparatively small number is the function of reason
capable of operating as a law of life. In the mass of people, vegetative
and animal functions dominate. Their energy of intelligence is so feeble
and inconstant that it is constantly overpowered by bodily appetite and
passion. Such persons are not truly ends