nd is at the time confronted. Our ideas,
therefore, naturally organize themselves into new experiences, or
knowledge, to enable us to gain some desired end. It was in order to
effect the recovery of the lost coin, for example, that conscious effort
was put forth by the lad to create a mental plan which should solve the
problem. Primarily, therefore, man is a doer and his ideas, or
knowledge, is meant to be practical, or to be applied in directing
action. It is this fact, indeed, which gives meaning and purpose to the
conscious states of man. Hour by hour new problems arise demanding
adjustment; the mind grasps the import of the situation, selects ways
and means, organizes these into an intelligent plan, and directs their
execution, thus enabling us:

Not without aim to go round
In an eddy of purposeless dust.

=Its Theoretic or Intellectual Value.=--But owing to the value which
thus attaches to any experience, a new experience may be viewed as
desirable apart from its immediate application to conduct. Although, for
instance, there is no immediate physical need that one should learn how
to resuscitate a drowning person, he is nevertheless prepared to make of
it a problem, because he feels that such knowledge regarding his
environment may enter into the solution of future difficulties. Thus the
value of new experience, or knowledge, is often remote and intellectual,
rather than immediate and physical, and looks to the acquisition of
further experience quite as much as to the directing of present physical
movement. Beyond the value they may possess in relation to the removal
of present physical difficulty, therefore, experiences may be said to
possess a secondary value in that they may at any time enter into the
construction of new experiences.

=Its Growth: A. Learning by Direct Experience.=--The ability to recall
and use former experience in the upbuilding of an intelligent new
experience is further valuable, in that it enables a person to secure
much experience in an indirect rather than in a direct way, and thus
avoid the direct experience when such would be undesirable. Under direct
experience we include the lessons which may come to us at first hand
from our surroundings, as when the child by placing his hand upon a
thistle learns that it has sharp prickles, or by tasting quinine learns
that it is bitter. In this manner direct experience is a teacher,
continually adjusting man to his environment; and it is