elf primarily consists of the active relations
subsisting between a human being and his natural and social
surroundings. In some cases, the initiative in activity is on the
side of the environment; the human being undergoes or suffers certain
checkings and deflections of endeavors. In other cases, the behavior of
surrounding things and persons carries to a successful issue the active
tendencies of the individual, so that in the end what the individual
undergoes are consequences which he has himself tried to produce.
In just the degree in which connections are established between what
happens to a person and what he does in response, and between what he
does to his environment and what it does in response to him, his acts
and the things about him acquire meaning. He learns to understand
both himself and the world of men and things. Purposive education or
schooling should present such an environment that this interaction will
effect acquisition of those meanings which are so important that they
become, in turn, instruments of further learnings. (ante, Ch. XI.) As
has been repeatedly pointed out, activity out of school is carried on
under conditions which have not been deliberately adapted to promoting
the function of understanding and formation of effective intellectual
dispositions. The results are vital and genuine as far as they go, but
they are limited by all kinds of circumstances. Some powers are left
quite undeveloped and undirected; others get only occasional and
whimsical stimulations; others are formed into habits of a routine skill
at the expense of aims and resourceful initiative and inventiveness. It
is not the business of the school to transport youth from an environment
of activity into one of cramped study of the records of other men's
learning; but to transport them from an environment of relatively chance
activities (accidental in the relation they bear to insight and thought)
into one of activities selected with reference to guidance of learning.
A slight inspection of the improved methods which have already shown
themselves effective in education will reveal that they have laid hold,
more or less consciously, upon the fact that "intellectual"
studies instead of being opposed to active pursuits represent an
intellectualizing of practical pursuits. It remains to grasp the
principle with greater firmness.

(ii) The changes which are taking place in the content of social life
tremendously facilitate select