Consider the following quotation: "When it first occurred to a reflecting mind that moving water had a property identical with human or brute force, namely, the property of setting other masses in motion, overcoming inertia and resistance,--when the sight of the stream suggested through this point of likeness the power of the animal,--a new addition was made to the class of prime movers, and when circumstances permitted, this power could become a substitute for the others. It may seem to the modern understanding, familiar with water wheels and drifting rafts, that the similarity here was an extremely obvious one. But if we put ourselves back into an early state of mind, when running water affected the mind _by its brilliancy, its roar and irregular devastation_, we may easily suppose that to identify this with animal muscular energy was by no means an obvious effort."[26] [26] Bain, _The Senses and Intellect_, third American ed., 1879, p. 492 (italics not in original). [Sidenote: Value of abstraction] If we add to these obvious sensory features the various social customs and expectations which fix the attitude of the individual, the evil of the subjection of free and fertile suggestion to empirical considerations becomes clear. A certain power of _abstraction_, of deliberate turning away from the habitual responses to a situation, was required before men could be emancipated to follow up suggestions that in the end are fruitful. [Sidenote: Experience as inclusive of thought] In short, the term _experience_ may be interpreted either with reference to the _empirical_ or the _experimental_ attitude of mind. Experience is not a rigid and closed thing; it is vital, and hence growing. When dominated by the past, by custom and routine, it is often opposed to the reasonable, the thoughtful. But experience also includes the reflection that sets us free from the limiting influence of sense, appetite, and tradition. Experience may welcome and assimilate all that the most exact and penetrating thought discovers. Indeed, the business of education might be defined as just such an emancipation and enlargement of experience. Education takes the individual while he is relatively plastic, before he has become so indurated by isolated experiences as to be rendered hopelessly empirical in his habit of mind. The attitude of childhood is naïve, wondering, experimental; the world of man and nature is new. Right methods of education preserve and perfect this attitude, and thereby short-circuit for the individual the slow progress of the race, eliminating the waste that comes from inert routine. PART THREE: THE TRAINING OF THOUGHT CHAPTER TWELVE ACTIVITY AND THE TRAINING OF THOUGHT