he attitude of another. Comparatively speaking, such modes of
influence may be regarded as personal. The physical medium is reduced to
a mere means of personal contact. In contrast with such direct modes of
mutual influence, stand associations in common pursuits involving the
use of things as means and as measures of results. Even if the mother
never told her daughter to help her, or never rebuked her for not
helping, the child would be subjected to direction in her activities
by the mere fact that she was engaged, along with the parent, in the
household life. Imitation, emulation, the need of working together,
enforce control.

If the mother hands the child something needed, the latter must reach
the thing in order to get it. Where there is giving there must be
taking. The way the child handles the thing after it is got, the use
to which it is put, is surely influenced by the fact that the child
has watched the mother. When the child sees the parent looking for
something, it is as natural for it also to look for the object and to
give it over when it finds it, as it was, under other circumstances, to
receive it. Multiply such an instance by the thousand details of daily
intercourse, and one has a picture of the most permanent and enduring
method of giving direction to the activities of the young.

In saying this, we are only repeating what was said previously
about participating in a joint activity as the chief way of forming
disposition. We have explicitly added, however, the recognition of the
part played in the joint activity by the use of things. The philosophy
of learning has been unduly dominated by a false psychology. It is
frequently stated that a person learns by merely having the qualities of
things impressed upon his mind through the gateway of the senses. Having
received a store of sensory impressions, association or some power of
mental synthesis is supposed to combine them into ideas--into things
with a meaning. An object, stone, orange, tree, chair, is supposed to
convey different impressions of color, shape, size, hardness, smell,
taste, etc., which aggregated together constitute the characteristic
meaning of each thing. But as matter of fact, it is the characteristic
use to which the thing is put, because of its specific qualities, which
supplies the meaning with which it is identified. A chair is a thing
which is put to one use; a table, a thing which is employed for another
purpose; an orange is a t