so difficult where the lower reason for a course of action is still a sound reason in itself, as, for instance, if one is trying to help a man out of drunken habits.  The highest motive to appeal to is the truth that in yielding to sensual impulses, in such a matter, a man is falling short of his best ideal; but a more practical motive is to point out the loss of health and respectability that results from the practice.  Yet when one appeals to a boy’s ambition, and encourages him to be ambitious, one cannot be quite certain whether one is not appealing to a false motive altogether.  The excuse for using it is the hope that, when for the sake of ambition he has learnt diligence and perseverance, he may grow to perceive that the competitive instinct, which in its barest form is the desire to obtain desirable things at the expense of others, is not in reality a good motive at all.  With immature characters part of the joy of success is that others have been beaten, the pride of having carried off a prize which others are disappointed of obtaining.  And if one talks to an ambitious boy, and tries to inculcate the principle that one should do one’s best without caring about results, one is generally conscious that he believes it to be only a tiresome professional platitude, the kind of sentiment in which older people think fit to indulge for the purpose, if possible, of throwing cold water on innocent enjoyment.

Yet, after all, how very few people there are who do learn the further lesson!  The successful man generally continues to show to the end of his life a contempt for unsuccessful persons, which is only good-humoured because of the consciousness of his own triumph; how rare, again, it is to find an unsuccessful person who does not attempt, if he can, to belittle the attainments of his successful rival, or who at least, if he overcomes that temptation from a sense of propriety, feels entitled to nourish a secret satisfaction at any indication of failure on the part of the man who has obtained the prize that he himself coveted in vain.  Yet if one has ever seen, as I have, the astonishing change of both work and even character which may come over a boy or a young man who is perhaps diffident and indolent, if one can get him to do a successful piece of work, or push an opportunity in his way and help him to seize it, one hesitates before ruling out the use of ambition as an incentive.  Perhaps it is uneasy and casuistical morality to shrink from using this incentive, so long as one faithfully puts the higher side of the question before a boy as well.  But when one is quite sure that the larger aspect of the case will fall on deaf ears, and that only the lower stimulus will be absorbed, one is apt to hesitate.  I am inclined, however, to think that such hesitation is on the whole misplaced, and that in dealing with immature minds one must be content to use immature motives.  There is a temptation to try and keep the education of people too much in