by a young man
who has hitherto neglected time and opportunity, and who, when
examination presses, overworks himself, perhaps standing the test with
honor, and then must rest for months afterwards from the over-effort? On
all such occasions attention is not objective and dispassionate, but
rather becomes, through anxiety to pass the examination, restless and
corrupted by egotism; and the usual evil result of such compulsory
industry is the ephemeral character of the knowledge thus gained.
"Lightly come, lightly go," says the proverb.--

--A special worth is always attached to study far into the night. The
student's "midnight lamp" always claims for itself a certain veneration.
But this is vanity. In the first place, it is injurious to contradict
Nature by working through the night, which she has ordained for sleep;
secondly, the question is not as to the number of hours spent in work
and their position in the twenty-four, but as to the quality of the
work. With regard to the value of my work, it is of no moment whatsoever
whether I have done it in the morning or in the evening, or how long I
have labored, and it is of no consequence to any one except to my own
very unimportant self. Finally, the question presents itself whether
these gentlemen who boast so much of their midnight work do not sleep in
the daytime!--

Sec. 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 i