ATTAINABLE IDEALS. 4:1 



can, and work liard," we say in effect to the com- 

 mon-school scholar, " and then, perhaps, when you 

 come to be a man, j'ou may live in a handsome 

 brownstone mansion in Euclid Avenue, or drive 

 the finest trotting horse in Central Park on a 

 show day." 



Now all this may be true in its way, and in a 

 small number of exceptional instances it is really 

 true for boys and men endowed with unusual nat- 

 ural endowments, or with a superior gift for the 

 art of money-making. ButJiLfi_great aim of edu- 

 catioiiijisja, rule, ought certainly to be not to ena- 

 ble every one of us to rise into the position of 

 United States Senator, or President of the Hritish 

 Association for the Advancement of Science — • 

 which, as Euclid would say, is absurd — but to 

 /enable every one of us to live well, fully, and 

 / nobly the particular life for which each in his 

 v^vay is best fitted. Not what we do, but what we 

 are in ourselves, is the main question. It is rela- 

 tively unimportant to humanity at large whether 

 we belong to this, that, or the other grade in soci- 

 ety, whether we make boots, or sell books, or dis- 

 pense medicines, or direct and oversee national 

 undertakings ; what is really and fundamentally 

 most important of all to the connnunity as a whole 

 is that we should each be as well adapted as pos- 

 sible for the functions in life we have severally to 

 perform. There are some good but nervous peo- 



