Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER X REALITY AND SYMBOL AS MEANS OP EDUCATION 84. The Divine In our discussion of ap- Method of .. , Educating the perception and of self-ao- Race tivity we caught a glimpse of some practical applications of a principle, already formulated in Chapter VI, concerning the superior educational value of concrete realities and actual experiences as compared with that of words or other symbols. This principle now demands specific attention. If we ask ourselves by what method the divine education of the race from savagery to civilisation has proceeded, we shall be struck at once with the fact that God seems to have hidden himself behind the visible and tangible environment of human life. The race has escaped from savagery through its own self-activity, namely, through the wrestlings of men with nature and with one another. Thus concrete things and visible persons have been the primary instruments of man's training. Out of the tussle with wild beasts, with the rigors of winter, with hostile tribes, with all the conditions ofphysical existence, came quickened faculties, useful customs and instincts, and a stock of experience that was destined to unfold into science, literature, art, and politics. This is the case with morals and religion as well as with the other elements of civilisation. In neither of these spheres was the race started into life equipped with ready-made ideas or formulas, or with any short-cut method of acquiring them. Moral and religious ideas and feelings gradually unfolded themselves through what seems, from our point of view, like a haphazard, rough and tumble, and very unspi ritual struggle to live. Yet the education of the race was actually beginning. Its method was, first the sensible, then the rational; first the concrete, then the abstrac... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.