This
facility of apprehension and adaptation is what is lacking in
stupid workmen, and the growth of this facility is the end sought
in their education -- so far as their education aims to enhance
their industrial efficiency.
In so far as the individual's inherited aptitudes or his training
incline him to account for facts and sequences in other terms
than those of causation or matter-of-fact, they lower his
productive efficiency or industrial usefulness. This lowering of
efficiency through a penchant for animistic methods of
apprehending facts is especially apparent when taken in the
mass-when a given population with an animistic turn is viewed as
a whole. The economic drawbacks of animism are more patent and
its consequences are more far-reaching under the modern system of
large industry than under any other. In the modern industrial
communities, industry is, to a constantly increasing extent,
being organized in a comprehensive system of organs and functions
mutually conditioning one another; and therefore freedom from all
bias in the causal apprehension of phenomena grows constantly
more requisite to efficiency on the part of the men concerned in
industry. Under a system of handicraft an advantage in dexterity,
diligence, muscular force, or endurance may, in a very large
measure, offset such a bias in the habits of thought of the
workmen.
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