will lose all interest in that branch of learning in which he
achieved distinction, unless, indeed, he has to earn his livelihood
by teaching it. Of the scores of young men who distinguish themselves
in "Classics" at Oxford and Cambridge, how many will continue to
study the classical writers when they have gained the "Firsts" for
which they worked so diligently? Apart from those who are going
to teach Classics in the Public Schools or Universities, a mere
handful,--one in ten perhaps, though that is probably an extravagant
estimate. And yet the poets, philosophers, and historians whom they
have studied are amongst the greatest that the world has produced.
What is it, then, that kills, in nine cases out of ten, the
classical student's interest in the masterpieces of antiquity? The
obvious fact that he was never interested in them for their own
sakes--that he studied them, not in order to enjoy them or profit by
them, but in order to pass an examination in them, of which he might
be able to say in after years:

"I am named and known by that hour's feat,
There took my station and degree."

How many Wranglers, other than those who have or will become
schoolmasters or college tutors, continue to study mathematics? How
many of the First Classmen in Science, History, Law, and other Honour
"Schools" continue to study their respective subjects? In every case
an utterly insignificant minority.

But if the prize system does this to the young man of twenty-two or
twenty-three, if it kills his interest in learning, if it makes him
register an inward vow never again to open the books which he has
crammed so successfully for his examinations, what may it be expected
to do to the child whose school education comes to an end when he
is only thirteen or fourteen years old? When, with the fear of
punishment, the complementary hope of reward is withdrawn from him,
is it reasonable to expect him to continue his education, to continue
to apply himself to subjects with which his acquaintance has been
entirely formal and superficial, and which he has never been allowed
to digest and assimilate? The utter indifference of the average
ex-elementary scholar to literature, to history, to geography, to
science, to music, to art, is the world-wide answer to this question.

For what is, above all, hateful in any scheme of rewards and
punishments, when applied to the school life of the young, is that it
wholly externalises what is really an in