the case is stronger when I include my family. We were all impressed the other day by the story of the poor boy who got some wretchedly small pittance by his work, spent a small portion of it upon his own needs, and devoted the chief part of it to trying to save his mother and her other children from starvation. Was he selfish? Was he selfish even in taking something for himself, as the only prop of his family? What may be the immediate motive of a man when he is working for his own bread and the bread of his family may often be a difficult question; but as, in point of fact, he is helping not only himself and those who depend on him, but also in some degree relieving others from a burden, his conduct must clearly not be set down as selfish in any sense which involves moral disapproval. Let us apply this to the case of competition. The word is generally used to convey a suggestion of selfishness in a bad sense. We think of the hardship upon the man who is ousted, as much as of the benefit to the man who gets in; or perhaps we think of it more. It suggests to us that one man has been shut out for the benefit of his neighbour; and that, of course, suggests envy, malice, and all uncharitableness. We hold that such competition must generate ill-will. I used--when I was intimately connected with a competitive system at the university--to hear occasionally of the evil influences of competition, as tending to promote jealousy between competitors. I always replied that, so far as my experience went, the evil was altogether imaginary. So far from competition generating ill-will, the keenest competitors were, as a rule, the closest friends. There was no stronger bond than the bond of rivalry in our intellectual contests. One main reason was, of course, that we had absolute faith in the fairness of the competition. We felt that it would be unworthy to complain of being beaten by a better man; and we had no doubt that, in point of fact, the winners were the better men; or, at any rate, were honestly believed to be the better men by those who distributed honours. The case, though on a small scale, may suggest one principle. So far as the end of such competitions is good, the normal motives cannot be bad. The end of a fair competition is the discovery of the ablest men, with a view to placing them in the position where their talents may be turned to most account. It can only be achieved so far as each man does his best to train his own powers, and is prepared to test them fairly against the powers of others. To work for that end is, then, not only permissible, but a duty. The spirit in which the end is pursued may be bad, in so far as a man pursues it by unfair means; in so far as he tries to make sham performance pass off for genuine; or, again, in so far as he sets an undue value upon the reward, as apart from the qualities by which it is gained. But if he works simply with the desire of making the best of