'EDUCATION
that will supplement the scientifico-historical frame of refer-
ence at present used by intellectuals, that will help, perhaps,
to transform them from mere spectators of the human scene
into intelligent participants.
What should be the nature of this new principle of
integration? The answer seems clear enough, at any rate
in its main outlines: it should be psychological and ethical.
Within the new frame of reference, co-ordination of know-
ledge and experience would be made in human terms; the
network of significant relations would be, not material,
but psychological; not indifferent to values, but moral;
not merely cognitive, but also affective and conative.
A concrete example will make my meaning clear. Here
is a young man in process of being trained in engineering
and practical mechanics. Under the existing dispensation,
the chances are that he will come out into the world pro-
foundly ignorant of everything but his speciality. His
education will have failed to equip him with any principle
by means of which he can integrate his future experiences
and accessions of knowledge. Educationists trained up
in the existing academic schools believe that it will be
possiMe to liberalize his education by somehow leading
him from the practical and the particular to general scientific
theory. Give him, they say, a mastery of general scientific
theory, and he will have a principle by means of which he
will be able to integrate all his knowledge and experience.
In the abstract this scheme seems good enough; but in
practice it just doesn't work. For the probability is that
the young man will not be interested in general scientific
theory, that he will have neither the wish nor the ability
to integrate his experience and his knowledge in terms of
the laws of the material universe. As a matter of brute
historical fact, the great advances in scientific theory have
very seldom been made by skilled artisans. The practical
man who knows his fob is interested in the job and perhaps
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