ndamental. While the distinction is often thought to be intrinsic and
absolute, it is really historical and social. It originated, so far as
conscious formulation is concerned, in Greece, and was based upon the
fact that the truly human life was lived only by a few who subsisted
upon the results of the labor of others. This fact affected the
psychological doctrine of the relation of intelligence and desire,
theory and practice. It was embodied in a political theory of a
permanent division of human beings into those capable of a life of
reason and hence having their own ends, and those capable only of desire
and work, and needing to have their ends provided by others. The two
distinctions, psychological and political, translated into educational
terms, effected a division between a liberal education, having to do
with the self-sufficing life of leisure devoted to knowing for its
own sake, and a useful, practical training for mechanical occupations,
devoid of intellectual and aesthetic content. While the present
situation is radically diverse in theory and much changed in fact, the
factors of the older historic situation still persist sufficiently to
maintain the educational distinction, along with compromises which
often reduce the efficacy of the educational measures. The problem of
education in a democratic society is to do away with the dualism and
to construct a course of studies which makes thought a guide of
free practice for all and which makes leisure a reward of accepting
responsibility for service, rather than a state of exemption from it.

1 Aristotle does not hold that the class of actual slaves and of natural
slaves necessarily coincide.

Chapter Twenty: Intellectual and Practical Studies

1. The Opposition of Experience and True Knowledge. As livelihood
and leisure are opposed, so are theory and practice, intelligence
and execution, knowledge and activity. The latter set of oppositions
doubtless springs from the same social conditions which produce the
former conflict; but certain definite problems of education connected
with them make it desirable to discuss explicitly the matter of the
relationship and alleged separation of knowing and doing.

The notion that knowledge is derived from a higher source than is
practical activity, and possesses a higher and more spiritual worth, has
a long history. The history so far as conscious statement is concerned
takes us back to the conceptions of experience