ividual
opportunities in serving their country. In aiding the accomplishment of
the collective purpose by means of increasingly constructive
experiments, they will be increasing the scope and power of their own
individual action. The opportunities, which during the past few years
the reformers have enjoyed to make their personal lives more
interesting, would be nothing compared to the opportunities for all
sorts of stirring and responsible work, which would be demanded of
individuals under the proposed plan of political and economic
reorganization. The American nation would be more disinterestedly and
sincerely fulfilling its collective purpose, partly because its more
distinguished individuals had been called upon to place at the service
of their country a higher degree of energy, ability, and unselfish
devotion. If a nation, that is, is recreant to its deeper purpose,
individuals, so far as they are well educated, are educated away from
the prevailing national habits and traditions; whereas when a nation is
sincerely attempting to meet its collective responsibility, the better
individuals are inevitably educated into active participation in the
collective task.

The reader may now be prepared to understand why the American faith in
education has the appearance of being credulous and superstitious. The
good average American usually wishes to accomplish exclusively by
individual education a result which must be partly accomplished by
national education. The nation, like the individual, must go to school;
and the national school is not a lecture hall or a library. Its
schooling consists chiefly in experimental collective action aimed at
the realization of the collective purpose. If the action is not aimed at
the collective purpose, a nation will learn little even from its
successes. If its action is aimed at the collective purpose, it may
learn much even from its mistakes. No process of merely individual
education can accomplish the work of collective education, because the
nation is so much more than a group of individuals. Individuals can be
"uplifted" without "uplifting" the nation, because the nation has an
individuality of its own, which cannot be increased without the
consciousness of collective responsibilities and the collective official
attempt to redeem them. The processes of national and individual
education should, of course, parallel and supplement each other. The
individual can do much to aid national educ