imself as he can; and in
obedience to this idea the average American works with all his might
towards some special personal goal. The energy of the average
Englishman, on the other hand, is impaired by his complacent acceptance
of positions of social inferiority and by his worship of degrading
social distinctions; and even successful Englishmen suffer from a
similar handicap. The latter rarely push their business successes home,
because they themselves immediately begin to covet a place in the social
hierarchy, and to that end are content with a certain established
income. The pleasure which the average Englishman seems to feel in
looking up to the "upper classes" is only surpassed by the pleasure
which the exceptional Englishman seems to feel in looking down on the
"lower classes." Englishmen have always congratulated themselves because
their nobility was not a caste; but the facts that the younger sons of
the peers are commoners, and that a distinguished commoner may earn a
peerage, only makes the poison of these arbitrary social discriminations
the more deadly. An Englishman always has a chance of winning an
irrelevant but very gratifying social and political privilege. He may by
acceptable services of the ordinary kind become as good as a lord. Some
such ambition is nearly always the end to which the energy of the
successful Englishman is directed, and its particular nature hinders him
from realizing the special purpose of his own life with an unimpeded
will.

The net result of the English system is to infect English social,
political, military, and industrial life with social favoritism, and the
poison of the infection is only mitigated by the condition that the
"favorites" must deserve their selection by the maintenance of a certain
standard. This standard was formed a good many years ago when the
conditions of efficiency were not so exacting as they are to-day. At
that time it was a sufficiently high standard and made, on the whole,
for successful achievement. It demanded of the "favorite" that he be
honest, patriotic, well-educated, gentlemanly, courageous, and a "good
sort," but it wholly failed to demand high special training, intense
application, unremitting energy, or any exclusive devotion to one's
peculiar work. If an Englishman comes up to the regular standard, he can
usually obtain his share of the good things of English life; but if he
goes beyond, he falls under the social disqualification of being
ab