ans of its own further existence.
If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least
in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing.

As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its
own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To
say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own
conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus
turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the
return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this
sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and
controls for its own continued activity the energies that would
otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon
the environment. Continuity of life means continual readaptation of the
environment to the needs of living organisms.

We have been speaking of life in its lowest terms--as a physical thing.
But we use the word "life" to denote the whole range of experience,
individual and racial. When we see a book called the _Life of Lincoln_
we do not expect to find within its covers a treatise on physiology. We
look for an account of social antecedents; a description of early
surroundings, of the conditions and occupation of the family; of the
chief episodes in the development of character; of signal struggles and
achievements; of the individual's hopes, tastes, joys, and sufferings.
In precisely similar fashion we speak of the life of a savage tribe, of
the Athenian people, of the American nation. "Life" covers customs,
institutions, beliefs, victories and defeats, recreations and
occupations.

We employ the word "experience" in the same pregnant sense. And to it,
as well as to life in the bare physiological sense, the principle of
continuity through renewal applies. With the renewal of physical
existence goes, in the case of human beings, the re-creation of beliefs,
ideals, hopes, happiness, misery, and practices. The continuity of any
experience, through renewing of the social group, is a literal fact.
Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this social continuity
of life. Every one of the constituent elements of a social group, in a
modern city as in a savage tribe, is born immature, helpless, without
language, beliefs, ideas, or social standards. Each individual, each
unit who is the carrier of the life-experience of his g