Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/163

 moment you tell him that to appear good is to merit a prize, his goodness ceases to be disinterested, and, therefore, virtuous; and in order not to lose his own prize, won by the assiduous suppression of impulse, of temperamental revelation, of all natural instinct, is he not apt to fall into the approved vice of assisting in the discovery of the faults of his rivals? The only prizes we can accept without moral danger are those awarded for actual work done. These have their pitfalls for character too, but there is not nearly such peril of demoralisation. The conduct and work of pupils are appreciated every week by the number of marks, and rewards and punishments are allotted accordingly. A hundred marks buys an outing. Is not this atrocious? That bad conduct should keep a boy indoors when he might be out with his parents is a recognised form of punishment for ill-behaviour; but that he should have to purchase by marks the right to go out seems to me altogether wrong. Even a boy should have his rights, his heritage of free birth; and to be forced to pay for these upon the judgment of others is an iniquity. Forty-one long pages are devoted to the explanation of this futile, shabby, and spying system of emulation, a kind of artificial moral respiration, in which all apertures for simplicity, frankness, and spontaneity are hermetically sealed.