Usually a man’s ability to profit by his own personal experience depends upon the sincerity and the intelligence which he brings to his own particular occupation.  The rule is not universal, because some men are, of course, born with much higher intellectual gifts than others; and to such men may be given an insight which has little foundation in any genuine personal experience.  It remains true, none the less, for the great majority of men, that they gather an edifying understanding of men and things just in so far as they patiently and resolutely stick to the performance of some special and (for the most part) congenial task.  Their education in life must be grounded in the persistent attempt to realize in action some kind of a purpose—­a purpose usually connected with the occupation whereby they live.  In the pursuit of that purpose they will be continually making experiments—­opening up new lines of work, establishing new relations with other men, and taking more or less serious risks.  Each of these experiments offers them an opportunity both for personal discipline and for increasing personal insight.  If a man is capable of becoming wise, he will gradually be able to infer from this increasing mass of personal experience, the extent to which or the conditions under which he is capable of realizing his purpose; and his insight into the particular realities of his own life will bring with it some kind of a general philosophy—­some sort of a disposition and method of appraisal of men, their actions, and their surroundings.  Wherever a man reaches such a level of intelligence, he will be an educated man, even though his particular job has been that of a mechanic.  On the other hand, a man who fails to make his particular task in life the substantial support of a genuine experience remains essentially an unenlightened man.

National education in its deeper aspect does not differ from individual education.  Its efficiency ultimately depends upon the ability of the national consciousness to draw illuminating inferences from the course of the national experience; and its power to draw such inferences must depend upon the persistent and disinterested sincerity with which the attempt is made to realize the national purpose—­the democratic ideal of individual and social improvement.  So far as Americans are true to that purpose, all the different aspects of their national experience will assume meaning and momentum; while in so far as they are false thereto, no amount of “education” will ever be really edifying.  The fundamental process of American education consists and must continue to consist precisely in the risks and experiments which the American nation will make in the service of its national ideal.  If the American people balk at the sacrifices demanded by their experiments, or if they attach finality to any particular experiment in the distribution of political, economic, and social power, they will remain morally and intellectually at the bottom of a well, out of which they will never be “uplifted” by the most extravagant subsidizing of good intentions and noble words.