beyond the end of one's nose or as to cut off the limb upon which one is sitting. The question is one of limits, of degrees and adjustments, rather than one of absolute separation. Truly practical men give their minds free play about a subject without asking too closely at every point for the advantage to be gained; exclusive preoccupation with matters of use and application so narrows the horizon as in the long run to defeat itself. It does not pay to tether one's thoughts to the post of use with too short a rope. Power in action requires some largeness and imaginativeness of vision. Men must at least have enough interest in thinking for the sake of thinking to escape the limits of routine and custom. Interest in knowledge for the sake of knowledge, in thinking for the sake of the free play of thought, is necessary then to the emancipation of practical life—to make it rich and progressive.
We may now recur to the pedagogic maxim of going from the concrete to the abstract.
Begin with the concrete means begin with practical manipulations 1. Since the concrete denotes thinking applied to activities for the sake of dealing effectively with the difficulties that present themselves practically, "beginning with the concrete" signifies that we should at the outset make much of doing; especially, make much in occupations that are not of a routine and mechanical kind and hence require intelligent selection and adaptation of means and materials. We do not "follow the order of nature" when we multiply mere sensations or accumulate physical objects. Instruction in number is not concrete merely because splints or beans or dots are employed, while whenever the use and bearing of number relations are clearly perceived, the number idea is concrete even if figures alone are used. Just what sort of
