Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/140

 So much for the physique. Now for the other great "result."

The ambition of the educated mechanic is a thing by itself, and is not to be confounded with the ambition of even the highest order of literary man. It is quite as ardent, but it is a great deal more confident. This enthusiasm and ambition effervesces in even the younger artisan boys. They are all going to make improvements and inventions, and they know of a score that require to be made, and that they may very well take a part in. As a matter of fact the young mechanic's ambitions are quite reasonable. There is no other field of invention where so many may make useful contributions; and the pupils know this.

Each knows that by working hard he may do some very important thing—that he may improve a machine, discover an improved way of dyeing, forging, tempering, a new way of applying what he has learned. Compare this with the ambition of the poet, the artist, the politician, the orator, so vague, troubled. &hellip; It is not, perhaps, a higher ambition. It may appear at the first blush a humbler one; but it is more impersonal. It makes less appeal to vanity and egoistic desires. The desire for "fame" plays but a small part in it. The incentives to vanity are not quickened in dealing, as