Education as World Building

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Starting with the general statement that the aim of education must be to enable the human being to construct a world capable of yielding the highest and most varied satisfaction, Thomas Davidson in this stimulating essay develops three specific ideas: first, that the aim of all education, as of all life, is the evolution of the social individual in knowledge, sympathy, and will; second, that the evolution of the individual is the evolution of an ordered world in his consciousness; third, that ethical life depends upon the completeness and harmony of the world evolved in the individual consciousness. After demonstrating these three theses, he goes farther and shows how an inner world conditioning a moral life may be built up. The Introduction gives interesting biographical details regarding Davidson, whom the London Spectator once spoke of as one of the twelve most learned men on the planet.