is the relation of instruction, of knowledge, to virtue?
This last question led to opening the problem of the relation of reason
to action, of theory to practice, since virtue clearly dwelt in action.
Was not knowing, the activity of reason, the noblest attribute of man?
And consequently was not purely intellectual activity itself the highest
of all excellences, compared with which the virtues of neighborliness
and the citizen's life were secondary? Or, on the other hand, was
the vaunted intellectual knowledge more than empty and vain pretense,
demoralizing to character and destructive of the social ties that bound
men together in their community life? Was not the only true, because the
only moral, life gained through obedient habituation to the customary
practices of the community? And was not the new education an enemy to
good citizenship, because it set up a rival standard to the established
traditions of the community?

In the course of two or three generations such questions were cut loose
from their original practical bearing upon education and were
discussed on their own account; that is, as matters of philosophy as an
independent branch of inquiry. But the fact that the stream of European
philosophical thought arose as a theory of educational procedure
remains an eloquent witness to the intimate connection of philosophy and
education. "Philosophy of education" is not an external application of
ready-made ideas to a system of practice having a radically different
origin and purpose: it is only an explicit formulation of the problems
of the formation of right mental and moral habitudes in respect to
the difficulties of contemporary social life. The most penetrating
definition of philosophy which can be given is, then, that it is the
theory of education in its most general phases.

The reconstruction of philosophy, of education, and of social ideals and
methods thus go hand in hand. If there is especial need of educational
reconstruction at the present time, if this need makes urgent a
reconsideration of the basic ideas of traditional philosophic systems,
it is because of the thoroughgoing change in social life accompanying
the advance of science, the industrial revolution, and the development
of democracy. Such practical changes cannot take place without demanding
an educational reformation to meet them, and without leading men to ask
what ideas and ideals are implicit in these social changes, and what
revisions