the given objects of
sense by the lens of the telescope and microscope, and by all sorts of
experimental devices. To accomplish this in a way which would arouse
new ideas (hypotheses, theories) required even more general ideas (like
those of mathematics) than were at the command of ancient science. But
these general conceptions were no longer taken to give knowledge
in themselves. They were implements for instituting, conducting,
interpreting experimental inquiries and formulating their results.

The logical outcome is a new philosophy of experience and knowledge,
a philosophy which no longer puts experience in opposition to rational
knowledge and explanation. Experience is no longer a mere summarizing
of what has been done in a more or less chance way in the past; it is a
deliberate control of what is done with reference to making what happens
to us and what we do to things as fertile as possible of suggestions
(of suggested meanings) and a means for trying out the validity of the
suggestions. When trying, or experimenting, ceases to be blinded by
impulse or custom, when it is guided by an aim and conducted by measure
and method, it becomes reasonable--rational. When what we suffer from
things, what we undergo at their hands, ceases to be a matter of chance
circumstance, when it is transformed into a consequence of our own prior
purposive endeavors, it becomes rationally significant--enlightening
and instructive. The antithesis of empiricism and rationalism loses the
support of the human situation which once gave it meaning and relative
justification.

The bearing of this change upon the opposition of purely practical and
purely intellectual studies is self-evident. The distinction is not
intrinsic but is dependent upon conditions, and upon conditions which
can be regulated. Practical activities may be intellectually narrow and
trivial; they will be so in so far as they are routine, carried on
under the dictates of authority, and having in view merely some external
result. But childhood and youth, the period of schooling, is just the
time when it is possible to carry them on in a different spirit. It
is inexpedient to repeat the discussions of our previous chapters on
thinking and on the evolution of educative subject matter from childlike
work and play to logically organized subject matter. The discussions of
this chapter and the prior one should, however, give an added meaning to
those results.

(i) Experience its