The teaching of patriotism and citizenship, if it is to produce any effect, must be entirely informal and indirect.

Let the child be so educated that he will develop himself freely on all the sides of his being, and his communal instinct will, as I have said, evolve itself in its own season.

Until it has evolved itself, patriotism and citizenship will be mere names to him, and what he is taught about them will make no impression on him.

When it has evolved itself, he will be a patriot and a good citizen in _posse_, and will be ready on occasion to prove his patriotism and his good citizenship by his deeds, or, better still, by his life.[36] While the communal instinct is evolving itself, first in the school and then in the community at large, the standard of reality will, by a parallel or perhaps identical process, be transforming itself in all the grades of society.

The inward will be taking the place of the outward standard; and men will be learning to form a different conception of "the good things of life" from that which now dominates our social life.