ially the scholastic
method generalized. The doctrine of formal discipline in education is
the natural counterpart of the scholastic method.

The contrasting theories of the method of knowledge which go by the name
of sensationalism and rationalism correspond to an exclusive emphasis
upon the particular and the general respectively--or upon bare facts on
one side and bare relations on the other. In real knowledge, there is a
particularizing and a generalizing function working together. So far as
a situation is confused, it has to be cleared up; it has to be resolved
into details, as sharply defined as possible. Specified facts and
qualities constitute the elements of the problem to be dealt with, and
it is through our sense organs that they are specified. As setting
forth the problem, they may well be termed particulars, for they are
fragmentary. Since our task is to discover their connections and to
recombine them, for us at the time they are partial. They are to be
given meaning; hence, just as they stand, they lack it. Anything which
is to be known, whose meaning has still to be made out, offers itself as
particular. But what is already known, if it has been worked over with
a view to making it applicable to intellectually mastering new
particulars, is general in function. Its function of introducing
connection into what is otherwise unconnected constitutes its
generality. Any fact is general if we use it to give meaning to the
elements of a new experience. "Reason" is just the ability to bring the
subject matter of prior experience to bear to perceive the significance
of the subject matter of a new experience. A person is reasonable in
the degree in which he is habitually open to seeing an event which
immediately strikes his senses not as an isolated thing but in its
connection with the common experience of mankind.

Without the particulars as they are discriminated by the active
responses of sense organs, there is no material for knowing and no
intellectual growth. Without placing these particulars in the context of
the meanings wrought out in the larger experience of the past--without
the use of reason or thought--particulars are mere excitations or
irritations. The mistake alike of the sensational and the rationalistic
schools is that each fails to see that the function of sensory
stimulation and thought is relative to reorganizing experience in
applying the old to the new, thereby maintaining the continuity or