There is no limit to the meaning
which an action may come to possess. It all depends upon the
context of perceived connections in which it is placed; the reach
of imagination in realizing connections is inexhaustible.
The advantage which the activity of man has in appropriating and
finding meanings makes his education something else than the
manufacture of a tool or the training of an animal. The latter
increase efficiency; they do not develop significance. The final
educational importance of such occupations in play and work as
were considered in the last chapter is that they afford the most
direct instrumentalities for such extension of meaning. Set
going under adequate conditions they are magnets for gathering
and retaining an indefinitely wide scope of intellectual
considerations. They provide vital centers for the reception and
assimilation of information. When information is purveyed in
chunks simply as information to be retained for its own sake, it
tends to stratify over vital experience. Entering as a factor
into an activity pursued for its own sake--whether as a means or
as a widening of the content of the aim--it is informing. The
insight directly gained fuses with what is told. Individual
experience is then capable of taking up and holding in solution
the net results of the experience of the group to which he
belongs--including the results of sufferings and trials over long
stretches of time.
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