§ 121. But Industry has also two other extremes: seeming-laziness and seeming-industry. Seeming-laziness is the neglecting of the usual activity in one department because a man is so much more active in another. The mind possessed with the liveliest interest in one subject buries itself in it, and, because of this, cannot give itself up to another which before had engrossed the attention. Thus it appears more idle than it is, or rather it appears to be idle just because it is more industrious. This is especially the case in passing from one subject of instruction to another. The pupil should acquire such a flexibility in his intellectual powers that the rapid relinquishment of one subject and the taking up of another should not be too difficult. Nothing is more natural than that when he is excited he should go back to the subject that has just been presented to him, and that he, feeling himself restrained, shall remain untouched by the following lesson, which may be of an entirely different nature. The young soul is brooding over what has been said, and is really exercising an intensive activity, though it appears to be idle. But in seeming-industry all the external motives of activity, all the mechanism of work, manifest themselves noisily, while there is no true energy of attention and productivity. One busies himself with all the apparatus of work; he heaps up instruments and books around him; he sketches plans; he spends many hours staring into vacancy, biting his pen, gazing at words, drawings, numbers, &c. Boys, under the protection of so great a scaffolding for work erected around them, often carry on their own amusements. Men, who arrive at no real concentration of their force, no clear defining of their vocation, no firm decision as to their action, dissipate their power in what is too often a great activity with absolutely no result. They are busy, very busy; they have hardly time to do this thing because they really wish or ought to do that; but, with all their driving, their energy is all dissipated, and nothing comes from their countless labors. III. _The Modality of the Process of Teaching._ § 122. Now that we have learned something of the relation of the teacher to the taught, and of the process of learning itself, we must examine the mode and manner of instruction. This may have (1) the character of contingency: the way in which our immediate existence in the world, our life, teaches us; or it may be given (2) by the printed page; or (3) it may take the shape of formal oral instruction.