musical aspirations to the best whistle that he can himself emit, his ideal will be a low one, however faithfully pursued.  The ugly part of thus limiting our aspirations is that such petty enthusiasm is generally accompanied by an intense craving for the admiration of other people, and it is this which vitiates and poisons our own admirations.  We do not merely think how fine a performance it is; we think how much we should like to impress and astonish other people, to arouse their envy and jealousy by a similar performance.  The point is rather that we should enjoy effort, and that our aim should be rather to improve our own performances than to surpass the performances of others.  The right spirit is that which Matthew Arnold displays in one of his letters.  He was writing at a time when his own literary fame was securely established, yet he said that the longer he lived the more grateful he was for his own success.  He added that the more people he came to know, the more strongly he felt the comparative equality of human endowments, and the more clearly he perceived that the successful writer found rather than invented the telling phrase, the stimulating thought.  That is a very rare attitude of mind, and it is as noble as it is rare.  The successful writer, as a rule, instead of being grateful for his good fortune in perceiving what others have not perceived, takes the credit to himself for having originated it, whereas he ought rather to conceive of himself as one of a company of miners, and be thankful for having lighted upon a richer pocket of auriferous soil than the rest.

Of course it sounds what is commonly called priggish when a man, in the style of Mr. Barlow, is always imploring the boy who wins a race or gets a prize to turn his thoughts higher and to take no credit to himself for what is only a piece of good fortune, and is not so great a performance after all.  It is easy to say that this is but a pietistic quenching of natural and youthful delight; but much depends upon the way in which it is done, and it is probably the right line to take, though it is supposed to be merely the old-fashioned parental attitude of little goody books.  The really modest and ingenuous boy does it for himself, and the boy who “puts on side” because of his triumphs is universally disapproved of.  Moreover, as a rule, in the larger world, the greatest men are really apt to be among the most modest; and it is generally only the second-rate people who try to extort deference and admiration.

False enthusiasm is probably only one degree better than cynicism.  Cynicism is generally the refuge of the disappointed and indolent, but there is, after all, a nobler kind of cynicism, which even religion must strive to develop, the cynicism which realises the essential worthlessness and pettiness of human endeavour.  The cynicism that stops short at this point is the evil kind of cynicism, and becomes purely contemptuous and derisive.  But there is a fruitful kind of cynicism, which faithfully contrasts the aspirations and possibilities of humanity with its actual performances and its failures, which makes the poet and the philosopher humble in the presence of infinite beauty and infinite knowledge.