extensive study of wild plants and have paid little attention to house
plants. Such subjects as physics, fine art, and biology cannot help
but impart much information that relates to man; but that relationship
has generally been the last part reached in the treatment of each
topic, and the part most neglected. Under the influence of these
general aims any useful purpose, whether involving service to the
individual or to society at large, has somehow been eschewed or
thought too sordid to be worthy of the scholar.

_The relation of specific purposes to those that are more
general_

Nevertheless, these two kinds of aims are not necessarily opposed to
each other. If a person can increase his mental power, or his love of
knowledge, or his culture, at the same time that he is accomplishing
specific purposes, why should he not do so? The gain is so much the
greater.

Not only are the two kinds not mutually opposed, but they are really
necessary to each other. General purposes when rightly conceived are
of the greatest importance as the _final_ goals to be reached by
study. But they are too remote of attainment to act as immediate
guides. Others more detailed must perform that office and mark off the
minor steps to be taken in the accomplishment of the larger purposes.
Thus the narrower purposes are related to the larger ones as means to
ends.

_Ways in which specific purposes are valuable
1. As a source of motive power_