Although both older and younger children are important, contemporaries are far more so, at any rate from the age of four onwards. Behaviour to equals is what most needs to be learnt. Most of the inequalities in the existing world are artificial, and it would be a good thing if our behaviour ignored them. Well-to-do people imagine themselves superior to their cooks, and behave to them in a different way from that in which they behave in society. But they feel inferior to a Duke, and treat him in a way which shows a lack of self-respect. In both cases they are wrong: the cook and the Duke should both be felt and treated as equals. In youth, age makes a hierarchy which is not artificial; but for that very reason the social habits which will be desirable in later life are best learnt by associating with contemporaries. Games of all kinds are better among equals, and so is school competition. Among schoolfellows, a boy has that degree of importance which is accorded to him by their judgment; he may be admired or despised, but the issue depends upon his own character and prowess. Affectionate parents create a too indulgent milieu; parents without affection create one where spontaneity is repressed. It is only contemporaries who can give scope for spontaneity in free competition and in equal co-operation. Self-respect without tyranny, consideration without slavishness, can be learnt best in dealing with equals. For these reasons, no amount of parental solicitude can give a boy or girl the same advantages at home as are to be enjoyed in a good school.