"_Your conversation with me the other day gave me a good deal to think about. What you said practically amounted to a charge of hedonism. Of course much depends upon the way in which the word is applied, because I suppose that the large majority of men are hedonists, in the sense that they pursue as far as possible their own pleasure. But the particular kind of hedonism of which you spoke, Epicureanism, bears the sense of a certain degree of malingering. It implies that the person who pursues the course which I indicated is for some reason or other shirking his duty in the world. It is against this that I wish to defend myself; I would say in the first place that what I was recommending was a very different sort of thing. I was rather attacking a certain sheepishness of character which seems to me to be the danger of our present type of education. The practical ideal held up before boys at our public schools is that they should be virtuous and industrious; and that after they have satisfied both these claims, they should amuse themselves in what is held to be a manly way; that they should fill their vacant hours with open-air exercise and talk about games; a little light reading is not objected to; but it is tacitly assumed that to be interested in ideas, in literature, art, and music is rather a dilettante business. I was reminded of a memorable conversation I once had with a man of some note, a great landowner and prominent politician. He was talking confidentially to me about his sons and their professions. One of the boys manifested a really remarkable artistic gift; he was a draughtsman of extraordinary skill, and I said something about his taking up art seriously. The great man said that it would never do. 'I consider it almost a misfortune,' he added, 'that the boy is so clever an artist, because it would be out of the question for him, in his position, to take up what is, after all, rather a disreputable profession. I have talked to him seriously about it, and I have said that there is no harm in his amusing himself in that way; but he must have a serious occupation._'