for the attitude of mind prevailing in the community is that it is just everyone’s duty to act thus; but he alone enjoys the pleasure of acting and working for the community, and of succeeding, if that should fall to his lot. Under this system of government, therefore, the acquirement of greater skill and the effort spent therein will result only in fresh effort and work, and it will be the very pupil who is abler than the rest who must often watch while others sleep, and reflect while others play.
27. To some pupils all this will be quite clear and intelligible. Yet they will continue to undertake that initial toil and the further labours that result from it so joyfully that they may be relied on with certainty. They will remain strong, and become even stronger, in their feeling of power and activity. Such pupils education can confidently send out into the world; it has achieved its purpose with them. Their love has been kindled and burns down to the root of their vital impulse; from now onwards it will lay hold of everything, without exception, that comes in contact with this vital impulse. In the larger community, which they now enter, they can never be anything but the steady and constant beings they have been in the little community they are now leaving.
The pupil has in this way been fully prepared for the demands which the world will immediately and certainly make of him. What education, in the name of this world, demands of him has been done. But he is still not perfect in and for himself, and what he himself can claim from education has not yet been done. When this demand, too, has been met, he will be able to satisfy also the demands which, in special circumstances, a higher world, in the name of the present world, may make of him.
