Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/860

 844 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

person. The pupil himself changes visibly almost every day. The reality with which the pupil can have conscious contact is defined, therefore, by the pupil's own powers and opportunities. At each stage, however, himself on the one hand, and nature, men, institutions, on the other hand, are the subject and object of adjustment. A changing self has the task of adaptation to a surrounding frame of things which daily displays new mysteries and complexities. The teacher's task is to help the individual understand this environment, of which the pupil for a long time seems to himself to be the center. It is the teacher's business to help the pupil understand this whole environment as it is related to himself. Presently, if the pupil's perceptions grow more pen- etrating and comprehensive, his own personal interests cease to seem the pivot on which the world of experience turns. His personality becomes extended, and at the same time his egoism gets balanced with the personal equation of others whose interests appear. The child finds the complement of his egoism in the family, the school, the group of playmates, the commu- nity, and at last, if his education is complete, in society at large. Yet, at each varying diameter of comprehension, life, of which the child is at first to himself the center and circumference, and later life as a whole, of which to the last the individual is to himself in the final resort the most interesting part life, either individual or social, is the ever present reality which sum- marizes all that men can positively know. This central and inclusive reality varies, in re-presentation, from socially unrelated individual life to a conception of individual life enlarged by evolved social consciousness into a function of the more abiding reality social life. This human career, either as pursued for himself by the socially unconscious individual, or as a mingling of the individual with others associated by force of circumstances

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in pursuing purposes which none perfectly comprehend ; this life of men alike in nature, within conditions imposing common lim- itations upon nature, is the whole of man's range of positive experience and scientific observation. Sociology consequently demands of educators that they shall elaborate available aids