n become restless and unruly; the
more quiescent, so-called conscientious ones spend what energy they have
in the negative task of keeping their instincts and active tendencies
suppressed, instead of in a positive one of constructive planning
and execution; they are thus educated not into responsibility for the
significant and graceful use of bodily powers, but into an enforced duty
not to give them free play. It may be seriously asserted that a chief
cause for the remarkable achievements of Greek education was that it was
never misled by false notions into an attempted separation of mind and
body.

(b) Even, however, with respect to the lessons which have to be learned
by the application of "mind," some bodily activities have to be used.
The senses--especially the eye and ear--have to be employed to take in
what the book, the map, the blackboard, and the teacher say. The lips
and vocal organs, and the hands, have to be used to reproduce in speech
and writing what has been stowed away. The senses are then regarded as
a kind of mysterious conduit through which information is conducted from
the external world into the mind; they are spoken of as gateways and
avenues of knowledge. To keep the eyes on the book and the ears open
to the teacher's words is a mysterious source of intellectual grace.
Moreover, reading, writing, and figuring--important school arts--demand
muscular or motor training. The muscles of eye, hand, and vocal organs
accordingly have to be trained to act as pipes for carrying knowledge
back out of the mind into external action. For it happens that using the
muscles repeatedly in the same way fixes in them an automatic tendency
to repeat.

The obvious result is a mechanical use of the bodily activities which
(in spite of the generally obtrusive and interfering character of the
body in mental action) have to be employed more or less. For the
senses and muscles are used not as organic participants in having an
instructive experience, but as external inlets and outlets of mind.
Before the child goes to school, he learns with his hand, eye, and ear,
because they are organs of the process of doing something from which
meaning results. The boy flying a kite has to keep his eye on the kite,
and has to note the various pressures of the string on his hand. His
senses are avenues of knowledge not because external facts are somehow
"conveyed" to the brain, but because they are used in doing something
with a purpose