Not second in importance to the act of choosing is the content of the choice. If conduct must have a social outcome, all the activities of the school will focus at this point. In order to have rational choice there must be first of all social intelligence. This it is the function of instruction to develop. According to a well-known doctrine of Herbart, it is the chief duty of instruction to make a progressive revelation to the pupil of the ethical world, in order that his puny will may gradually be reinforced by race experience. The instruments for this revelation are the studies on the one hand, and the conduct of the school according to social principles on the other. In the second place, that the ethical choice may truly express the pupil’s inward state, rather than his outward constraint, it must grow out of his insight as suffused by his social responsiveness to ethical ideas. In other words, his disposition should confirm his intellectual perception of the right line of conduct. This raises the whole matter of interest as related to will.[17] Here again natural, spontaneous, almost unconscious attitude is vastly superior to morbid introspection, no matter how ‘good’ the pupil’s disposition may prove to be. A boy should not have to ‘reflect’ as to whether he will rob a bird’s nest or not. [17] See Dr. John Dewey, “Interest as Related to Will,” National Herbart Society, reprint for 1899. 168. Pleasure and pain arise so largely out of social relations that the pupil must grow up amidst a social environment in order to become somewhat acquainted with his natural place among men. This requirement gives rise accordingly to solicitous precautions against a bad example and rudeness. On the other hand, a boy’s companions should not be chosen with such anxious care as if the intention were to spare him the feeling of pressure which in all human society is generated by the efforts and counter-efforts of men. Too great complaisance on the part of playmates causes delusions as to the actual conditions of life. Again, society and seclusion must alternate. The social current is not to carry everything else along with it, and to become more powerful than education. Even the boy, and much more the youth, must learn to be alone, and to fill up his time profitably.