Human nature exists and operates in an environment. And it is not 'in' that environment as coins are in a box, but as a plant is in the sunlight and soil.

Of what use, educationally speaking, is it to be able to see the end in the beginning?

Men have gone on to build up vast intellectual schemes, philosophies, and theologies, to prove that ideals are not real as ideals but as antecedently existing actualities. They have failed to see that in converting moral realities into matters of intellectual assent they have evinced lack of moral faith.

In England, philosophers are honoured, respected; they rise to public offices, they are buried with the kings... In France warrants are issued against them, they are persecuted, pelted with pastoral letters: Do we see that England is any the worse for it?

Independent self-reliant people would be a counterproductive anachronism in the collective society of the future where people will be defined by their associations.

It is the office of the school environment to balance the various elements in the social environment, and to see to it that each individual gets an opportunity to escape from the limitations of the social group in which he was born, and to come into living contact with a broader environment.

Intellectually religious emotions are not creative but conservative. They attach themselves readily to the current view of the world and consecrate it.