As matter of fact, the native
activities develop, in contrast with random and capricious
exercise, through the uses to which they are put. And the office
of the social medium is, as we have seen, to direct growth
through putting powers to the best possible use. The instinctive
activities may be called, metaphorically, spontaneous, in the
sense that the organs give a strong bias for a certain sort of
operation, -- a bias so strong that we cannot go contrary to it,
though by trying to go contrary we may pervert, stunt, and
corrupt them. But the notion of a spontaneous normal development
of these activities is pure mythology. The natural, or native,
powers furnish the initiating and limiting forces in all
education; they do not furnish its ends or aims. There is no
learning except from a beginning in unlearned powers, but
learning is not a matter of the spontaneous overflow of the
unlearned powers. Rousseau's contrary opinion is doubtless due
to the fact that he identified God with Nature; to him the
original powers are wholly good, coming directly from a wise and
good creator. To paraphrase the old saying about the country and
the town, God made the original human organs and faculties, man
makes the uses to which they are put. Consequently the
development of the former furnishes the standard to which the
latter must be subordinated. When men attempt to determine the
uses to which the original activities shall be put, they
interfere with a divine plan.
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