328. Here the pupil’s capacity for education, as well as the limits of that capacity, are brought home to the teacher. As boys approach manhood, they let birth and external circumstances designate for them that class of society to which they will belong. The class defined, they seek to acquire its form of life, and to get into its main current. On the way thither they accept and take along so much of higher motives, of knowledge and insight, as, on the one hand, instruction offers and training favors, and as, on the other hand, the individuality of each one, which the earliest impressions have further determined, is ready to assimilate. Those are rare exceptions who, through the development of an absorbing interest of some kind, in religion, or science, or art, have become less susceptible to the attractive force of their social class. Their course has been marked out by the instruction which induced the absorption; henceforth they are self-actively engaged in the pursuit of whatever accords with the end in view, and accept only a small part of what is presented to them. 329. Specific forms of a pupil’s attitude toward society, especially the relative prominence in his mind of state or family relations, will have to receive due consideration in marshalling motives to counteract particular faults. Indeed, the same is true of the appeal to those motives through which it is sought to establish a preponderance of worthier endeavor over moral imperfection in general. SECTION III REMARKS ON THE ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION CHAPTER I =Home Education= 330. On discovering that his own efforts encounter impediments, the individual teacher might easily come to think that society could do everything, if it only would, and if it possessed the necessary insight. Further reflection, however, reveals the existence of difficulties peculiar both to state and family. 331. The state needs soldiers, farmers, mechanics, officials, etc., and is concerned with their efficiency. Its attitude toward a large number of persons, whose existence as individuals has significance only in a narrow sphere, is, in general, far more that of supervision designed to prevent the harm they might do, than one of direct helpfulness. He who is able to render competent service receives preferment; the weaker has to give way to the stronger; the shortcomings of one are made good by another. 332. The state applies its tests to what can be tested, to the outward side of conduct and of knowledge. It does not penetrate to the inner life. Teachers in public schools cannot penetrate much farther; they, too, are more concerned with the sum total of knowledge imparted by them, than with the individual and the way in which he relates his knowledge to himself.