The first thing

The most illustrious distinction between living and lifeless things is that the former maintain them by restitution. A stone when struck resist. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into lesser bits. Never does the stone effort to react in such a way that it may uphold itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a causal ,g to its own sustained action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to rotate the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggle to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses beam, air, damp, and the fabric of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own protection. As long as it is rising, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than salaried for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing procedure through action upon the surroundings.

Second step

In all the higher forms this development cannot be kept up for an indefinite period. After a while they succumb; they die. The creature is not equal to the task of indefinite self-renewal. But continuity of the life process is not needy upon the prolongation of the existence of any one person. Reproduction of other forms of life goes on in incessant sequence. And though, as the geological record shows, not merely individuals but also species die out, the life process continues in increasingly complex forms. As some species die out, forms better adapted to utilize the obstacles against which they struggled in vain come into being. Continuity of life means continual re adaptation of the surroundings to the needs of living organisms. We have been language of life in its lowest terms -- as a physical thing. But we use the word "Life" to denote the whole range of knowledge, individual and racial. When we see a book called the Life of Lincoln we do not be expecting to find within its covers a treatise on physiology. We look for an account of social antecedents; a account of early surroundings, of the conditions and occupation of the family; of the chief episodes in the development of character; of signal struggles and achievements; of the individual's hopes, tastes, joys and sufferings. In exactly alike fashion we speak of the life of a savage tribe, of the Athenian people, of the American nation. "Life" covers customs, institution, beliefs, victories and defeats, recreations and occupation. We employ the word "experience" in the same pregnant sense. And to it, as well as to life in the bare physiological sense, the principle of continuity through renewal applies.

In the third

With the regeneration of physical existence goes, in the case of human beings, the hobby of beliefs, ideals, hopes, happiness, unhappiness, and practices. The continuity of any experience, through renewing of the social group, is a literal fact. Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this social continuity of life. Every one of the constituent elements of a social group, in a modern city as in a savage tribe, is born immature, unable to help, without language, beliefs, ideas, or social standards. Each individual, each unit who is the carrier of the life-experience of his group, in time passes away. Yet the life of the group goes on. The primary ineluctable facts of the birth and death of each one of the ingredient members in a social group determine the necessity of education. On one hand, there is the contrast between the immaturity of the new-born members of the group  its future sole representatives -- and the maturity of the adult members who possess the knowledge and customs of the group. On the other hand, there is the requirement that these immature members be not merely physically preserved in adequate numbers, but that they be initiated into the interests, purposes, information, skill, and practices of the mature members: otherwise the group will cease its characteristic life. Even in a savage tribe, the achievements of adults are far beyond what the immature members would be capable of if left to themselves. With the growth of civilization, the gap between the innovative capacities of the immature and the standards and customs of the elders increases. Mere physical growing up, mere mastery of the bare necessities of survival will not suffice to reproduce the life of the group. Deliberate effort and the taking of thoughtful pains are required. Beings who are born not only unaware of, but quite indifferent to, the aims and habits of the social group have to be rendered cognizant of them and actively interested. Education, and education alone, spans the gap.

At four step

Civilization exists from side to side a process of broadcast quite as much as biological life. This transmission occurs by means of communication of habits of doing, thinking, and feeling from the older to the younger. Without this communication of ideals, hopes, expectations, standards, opinions, from those members of society who are transitory out of the group life to those who are pending into it, social life could not survive. If the members who compose a society lived on continuously, they might educate the new-born members, but it would be a job directed by personal interest rather than social need. Now it is a work of necessity. If a plague carried off the members of a society all at once, it is obvious that the group would be permanently done for. Yet the death of each of its ingredient members is as certain as if an epidemic took them all at once. But the graded difference in age, the fact that some are born as some die, makes likely through transmission of ideas and practices the constant reweaving of the communal fabric. Yet this renewal is not automatic. Unless pains are taken to see that genuine and thorough transmission takes place, the most civilized group will relapse into barbarism and then into savagery. In fact, the human young are so immature that if they were left to themselves without the guidance and succor of others, they could not acquire the rudimentary abilities necessary for physical existence. The young of human beings compare so poorly in unique efficiency with the young of many of the lower animals that even the powers needed for physical substantiation have to be acquired under tuition. How much more, then, is this the case with respect to all the technological, artistic, scientific, and moral achievements of humanity! Education and Communication. So obvious, indeed, is the necessity of teaching and learning for the continued existence of a society that we may seem to be dwelling unduly on a axiom. But justification is found in the fact that such emphasis is a means of getting us away from an unduly scholastic and formal notion of education. Schools are, indeed, one important method of the transmission which forms the dispositions of the immature; but it is only one means, and, compared with other agencies, a relatively superficial means.

At last step

Only as we have grasp the necessity of more basic and persistent modes of tuition can we make sure of insertion the scholastic methods in their true context. Society not only continues to exist by transmission, by communication, but it may fairly be said to exist in transmission, in message. There is more than a verbal tie between the words common, community, and communication. Men live in a community in virtue of the things which they have in ordinary; and communication is the way in which they come to possess things in common. What they must have in ordinary in order to form a community or society are aims, beliefs, aspirations, knowledge--a common understanding -- like-mindedness as the sociologists say. Such things cannot be passed physically from one to another, like bricks; they cannot be shared as persons would share a pie by dividing it into physical pieces. The communication which insures participation in a common understanding is one which secures similar emotional and intellectual dispositions -- like ways of responding to expectations and requirements. Persons do not become a society by living in physical proximity, any more than a man ceases to be socially influenced by being so many feet or miles removed from others. A book or a letter may institute a more intimate association between human beings separated thousands of miles from each other than exists between dwellers under the same roof. Individuals do not even compose a social group because they all work for a common end.feet,institute,