ise it as courage if a sensitive, conscientious, and
right-minded boy risks unpopularity by telling a master of some evil
practice which is spreading in a school. He simply regards it as a
desire to meddle, a priggish and pragmatical act, and even as a
sneaking desire to inflict punishment by proxy.

Courage, for the schoolboy, is merely physical courage, aplomb,
boldness, recklessness, high-handedness. The hero of school life is one
like Odysseus, who is strong, inventive, daring, full of resource. The
point is to come out on the top. Odysseus yields to sensual delight, he
is cruel, vindictive, and incredibly deceitful. It is evident that
successful beguiling, the power of telling an elaborate, plausible, and
imperturbable lie on occasions, is an heroic quality in the Odyssey.
Odysseus is not a man who scorns to deceive, or who would rather take
the consequences than utter a falsehood. His strength rather lies in
his power, when at bay, of flashing into some monstrous fiction,
dramatising the situation, playing an adopted part, with confidence and
assurance. One sees traces of the same thing in the Bible. The story of
Jacob deceiving Isaac, and pretending to be Esau in order to secure a
blessing is not related with disapprobation. Jacob does not forfeit his
blessing when his deceit is discovered. The whole incident is regarded
rather as a master-stroke of cunning and inventiveness. Esau is angry
not because Jacob has employed such trickery, but because he has
succeeded in supplanting him.

I remember, as a boy at Eton, seeing a scene which left a deep
impression on me. There was a big unpleasant unscrupulous boy of great
physical strength, who was a noted football player. He was extremely
unpopular in the school, because he was rude, sulky, and overbearing,
and still more because he took unfair advantages in games. There was a
hotly contested house-match, in which he tried again and again to evade
rules, while he was for ever appealing to the umpires against
violations of rule by the opposite side. His own house was ultimately
victorious, but feeling ran very high indeed, because it was thought
that the victory was unfairly won. The crowd of boys who had been
watching the match drifted away in a state of great exasperation, and
finally collected in front of the house of the unpopular player, hissed
and hooted him. He took very little notice of the demonstration and
walked in, when there arose a babel of howls. He turn