Face to face with what is recognized as superior to ourselves in a quality we hold to be good, we fall into that emotional state, a mingling of surprise and pleasure, called admiration. In its original usage, admiration meant wonder, and there is in all admiration something of that feeling which is born in the presence of the superior. The more profound the admiration, the greater is the proportion of wonder in the feeling. We find it difficult to admire where the competitive feeling is strongly aroused, though there are some who can do so. It is the essence of good sportsmanship, the ideal aimed at, to admire the rival for his good qualities, though sticking fast to one's confidence in oneself. The English and American athletes, perhaps also the athletes of other countries, make this part of their code of conduct and so are impelled to act in a way not entirely sincere. Wherever jealousy or envy are strongly aroused, admiration is impossible, and so it comes about that men find it easy to praise men in other noncompetitive fields or for qualities in which they are not competing. Thus an author may strongly admire an athlete or a novelist may praise the historian; a beautiful woman admires another for her learning, though with some reservation in her praise, and a successful business man admires the self-sacrificing scientist, albeit there is a little complacency in his approval. He is truly generous-hearted who can admire his competitor. I do not mean lip-admiration, through the fear of being held jealous. Many a man joins in the praise of one who has outstripped him, with envy gnawing at his heart, and waits for the first note of criticism to get out the hammer. "He is very fine--but" is the formula, and either through innuendo, insinuation or direct attack, the "subordinate" statement becomes the most sincere and significant. But there are those who can admire their conqueror, not only through the masochism that lurks in all of us, but because they have lifted their ideal of achievement and character higher than their own possibilities and seek in others the perfection they cannot hope to have in themselves. In other words, where competition is hopeless, in the presence of the greatly superior, a feeling of humility which is really admiration to the point of worship comes over us, and we can glory in the quality we love. To admire is to recede the ego-feeling, is to feel oneself in an ecstasy that becomes mystical, and in that sense the contradiction arises that we feel ourselves larger in a unification with the admired one.