"Compartmentalization of occupations and interests brings about separation of that mode of activity commonly called "practice" from insight, of imagination from executive doing, of significant purpose from work, of emotion from thought and doing. Each of these has, too, its own place in which it must abide. Those who write the anatomy of experience then suppose that these divisions inhere in the very constitution of human nature" (Dewey, 301).
Dewey poses a few questions before his assertion on the compartmentalization of art, namely, why is the attempt to connect the higher and ideal things of experience with basic vital roots so often regarded as betrayal of their nature and denial of their virtue? Why is there repulsion when the high achievements of fine art are brought into connection with common life?
Dewey states that the institution of mankind is a very disorganized; hence, stratifying social classes, and institutions for every group of ideas or endeavors. Other ideas that have been compartmentalized are often regarded as good, and bad, or high, and low. These include, materialistic and ideal, profane and spiritual, ect. Dewey suggests that in our efforts to organize an incredibly disorganized world, we assign "correct" interpretations to everything, and eventually, these preordained compartments ensure the second-handness of our experiences. Ethics, politics, business, religion, and art as well, in their private realms, shed the light of what they think is good and bad, valuable, and the opposite.
"Of much of our experience as it is actually lived under present economic and legal institutional conditions, it is only true that these separations hold. Only occasionally in the lives of many are the senses fraught with the sentiment that comes from deep realization...we undergo sensations...without having a sense of the reality that is in them and behind them...we see without feeling; we hear, but only a second-hand report, second hand because not reenforced by vision" (Dewey, 301).
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