can, and the main effect of
education, the achieving of a life of rich significance, drops by the
wayside. Meantime mind-wandering and wayward fancy are nothing but the
unsuppressible imagination cut loose from concern with what is done.

An adequate recognition of the play of imagination as the medium of
realization of every kind of thing which lies beyond the scope of direct
physical response is the sole way of escape from mechanical methods in
teaching. The emphasis put in this book, in accord with many tendencies
in contemporary education, upon activity, will be misleading if it is
not recognized that the imagination is as much a normal and integral
part of human activity as is muscular movement. The educative value
of manual activities and of laboratory exercises, as well as of play,
depends upon the extent in which they aid in bringing about a sensing
of the meaning of what is going on. In effect, if not in name, they are
dramatizations. Their utilitarian value in forming habits of skill to be
used for tangible results is important, but not when isolated from the
appreciative side. Were it not for the accompanying play of imagination,
there would be no road from a direct activity to representative
knowledge; for it is by imagination that symbols are translated over
into a direct meaning and integrated with a narrower activity so as to
expand and enrich it. When the representative creative imagination is
made merely literary and mythological, symbols are rendered mere means
of directing physical reactions of the organs of speech.

3. In the account previously given nothing was explicitly said about
the place of literature and the fine arts in the course of study. The
omission at that point was intentional. At the outset, there is no sharp
demarcation of useful, or industrial, arts and fine arts. The activities
mentioned in Chapter XV contain within themselves the factors later
discriminated into fine and useful arts. As engaging the emotions and
the imagination, they have the qualities which give the fine arts
their quality. As demanding method or skill, the adaptation of tools
to materials with constantly increasing perfection, they involve the
element of technique indispensable to artistic production. From the
standpoint of product, or the work of art, they are naturally defective,
though even in this respect when they comprise genuine appreciation
they often have a rudimentary charm. As experiences they have bo