Each of these experiments offers them an opportunity both
for personal discipline and for increasing personal insight. If a man is
capable of becoming wise, he will gradually be able to infer from this
increasing mass of personal experience, the extent to which or the
conditions under which he is capable of realizing his purpose; and his
insight into the particular realities of his own life will bring with
it some kind of a general philosophy--some sort of a disposition and
method of appraisal of men, their actions, and their surroundings.
Wherever a man reaches such a level of intelligence, he will be an
educated man, even though his particular job has been that of a
mechanic. On the other hand, a man who fails to make his particular task
in life the substantial support of a genuine experience remains
essentially an unenlightened man.
National education in its deeper aspect does not differ from individual
education. Its efficiency ultimately depends upon the ability of the
national consciousness to draw illuminating inferences from the course
of the national experience; and its power to draw such inferences must
depend upon the persistent and disinterested sincerity with which the
attempt is made to realize the national purpose--the democratic ideal of
individual and social improvement.
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