itself, as it doubtless does and as it must
do, it simply continues a process with which it has always been familiar,
but without control, or under its own control. Of all the things that we
learn, control is the most vital. What we are is the sum of those things
that we do not repress. We begin without self-repression and have to be
controlled by others. When we learn to exercise control ourselves, it is
right that even our education should revert wholly to what it has long
been in greater part--a voluntary process.

This does not mean that at this time the pupil abandons guidance. It means
that he is free to choose his own guides and the place and method of using
them. Some rely wholly on experience; others are wise enough to see that
life is too short and too narrow to acquire all that we need, and they set
about to make use also of that acquired by others. Some of these wiser
ones use only their companions and acquaintances; others read books. The
wisest are opportunists; they make use of all these methods as they have
occasion. Their reading does not make them avoid the exchange of ideas by
conversation, nor does the acquirement of ideas in either way preclude
learning daily by experience, or make reflection useless or unnecessary.

He who lives a full life acquires ideas as he may, causes them to combine,
change and generate in his own mind, and then translates them into action
of some kind. He who omits any of these things cannot be said to have
really lived. He cannot, it is true, fail to acquire ideas unless he is an
idiot; but he may fail to acquire them broadly, and may even make the
mistake of thinking that he can create them in his own mind.

He may, however, acquire fully and then merely store without change or
combination; that is, he may turn his brain into a warehouse instead of
using it as a factory.

And the man who has acquired broadly and worked over his raw material into
a product of his own, may still stop there and never do anything. Our
whole organism is subsidiary to action and he who stops short of it has
surely failed to live.

Our educative processes, so far, have dwelt heavily on acquirement,
somewhat lightly on mental assimilation and digestion, and have left
action almost untouched. In these two latter respects, especially, is the
community self-educated.

The fact that I am saying this here, and to you, is a sufficient guaranty
that I am to lay some emphasis on the part played by bo