ans not applicability to what is past and gone--that is out
of the question by the nature of the case; it means applicability to
what is still going on, what is still unsettled, in the moving scene in
which we are implicated. The very fact that we so easily overlook
this trait, and regard statements of what is past and out of reach as
knowledge is because we assume the continuity of past and future. We
cannot entertain the conception of a world in which knowledge of its
past would not be helpful in forecasting and giving meaning to its
future. We ignore the prospective reference just because it is so
irretrievably implied.

Yet many of the philosophic schools of method which have been mentioned
transform the ignoring into a virtual denial. They regard knowledge as
something complete in itself irrespective of its availability in dealing
with what is yet to be. And it is this omission which vitiates them
and which makes them stand as sponsors for educational methods which an
adequate conception of knowledge condemns. For one has only to call to
mind what is sometimes treated in schools as acquisition of knowledge
to realize how lacking it is in any fruitful connection with the ongoing
experience of the students--how largely it seems to be believed that the
mere appropriation of subject matter which happens to be stored in books
constitutes knowledge. No matter how true what is learned to those who
found it out and in whose experience it functioned, there is nothing
which makes it knowledge to the pupils. It might as well be something
about Mars or about some fanciful country unless it fructifies in the
individual's own life.

At the time when scholastic method developed, it had relevancy to social
conditions. It was a method for systematizing and lending rational
sanction to material accepted on authority. This subject matter meant
so much that it vitalized the defining and systematizing brought to
bear upon it. Under present conditions the scholastic method, for most
persons, means a form of knowing which has no especial connection
with any particular subject matter. It includes making distinctions,
definitions, divisions, and classifications for the mere sake of making
them--with no objective in experience. The view of thought as a purely
physical activity having its own forms, which are applied to any
material as a seal may be stamped on any plastic stuff, the view which
underlies what is termed formal logic is essent