Foot - Note: Contd. at the individual to be educated, we may say with: Plato that the aim of education is “to develop in the body and in the soul all the beauty and all the perfection of which they are capable”, this leaves quite undecided the nature and form of that beauty and perfection, and on such points there has never been universal agreement at any one time, while successive ages have shown, marked differences of estimate. Individual beauty and perfection are: shown, and only shown, an actual life, and such life has to be lived under definite conditions of time, place, culture, religion, national aspirations and, mastery over material conditions. Perfection of life, then, in the Athens of the age of Plato would! show a very different form from that which it would. take in the London, Paris or New York of today. Hence, so far as any conception of education can give guidance to the actual process it must be relative in every way to the state of development of the society in which it is given Education and the Community. There is one respect in which the constitution and general outlook of a community are especially likely to affect the character of its education. Education aims at, conserving and perfecting the lie of the community, but that life is nothing other than the life of its. individual members. In an ideal community there should be complete identification between the interests of every unity and of the whole; but. history records no ideal communities. In practice there are always divergences, leading to exploitation here and sacrifice of development there. Societies. in different times and places differ from one another then, in their degree of success in reconcilling the interests of the whole with the claims of individual development, or in their willingness tosubordinate the latter to the former; and their
