ike 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