Page:The Teacher's Practical Philosophy.djvu/17

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INTRODUCTORY
5

society. In the sense in which I shall employ the word, only man, and not the lower animals, can be educated. Training is the more appropriate term for the lower animals. And we may stick by this important distinction, whatever views we feel inclined to espouse with respect to the very difficult problem: How far do the most highly, so-called "educated" animals, such as certain dogs or man-like apes, really have, or develop, powers closely resembling the higher faculties of man?

From this most general conception it follows as a matter of course, in the first place, that in man's case all education is a species of conduct. But conduct is distinguished from mere action in several highly important ways. For one thing: conduct involves a more intelligent apprehension and mastery of the means available for attaining any desired end. It also involves a more intelligent and comprehensive conception of the end which is desired. But above all, it suggests a larger self-control, or self-chosen and self-directed use of select means toward reaching the desired end. It would take me much too far astray into some of the most obscure and difficult fields of the psychology implicated in the discussion, if I were to try to show you how some degree of the ability to form abstract conceptions of Time, Space, Self, and a certain emotional capacity for moral, artistic, and religious ideals, is evolved in the capacity of human