which I could
compete with him. Compete indeed! I might as well speak of a
third-standard child competing with Macaulay in a general knowledge
paper.

"_Useful_ knowledge," I have written, but the phrase needs definition. I
might have taught the Wonder many things, no doubt; the habits of men
in great cities, the aspects of foreign countries, or the subtleties of
cricket; but when I was with him I felt--and my feelings must have been
typical--that such things as these were of no account.

Towards the end of the summer, the occasions upon which I was able to
stimulate myself into a condition of bearable complacency were very
rare. I often thought of Challis's advice to leave the Wonder alone. I
should have gone away if I had been free, but Victor Stott had a use for
me, and I was powerless to disobey him. I feared him, but he controlled
me at his will. I feared him as I had once feared an imaginary God, but
I did not hate him.

One curious little fragment of wisdom came to me as the result of my
experience--a useless fragment perhaps, but something that has in one
way altered my opinion of my fellow-men. I have learnt that a measure of
self-pride, of complacency, is essential to every human being. I judge
no man any more for displaying an overweening vanity, rather do I envy
him this representative mark of his humanity. The Wonder was completely
and quite inimitably devoid of any conceit, and the word ambition had no
meaning for him. It was inconceivable that he should compare himself
with any of his fellow-creatures, and it was inconceivable that any
honour they might have lavished upon him would have given him one
moment's pleasure. He was entirely alone among aliens who were unable to
comprehend him, aliens who could not flatter him, whose opinions were
valueless to him. He had no more common ground on which to air his
knowledge, no more grounds for comparison by which to achieve
self-conceit than a man might have in a world tenanted only by sheep.
From what I have heard him say on the subject of our slavery to
preconceptions, I think the metaphor of sheep is one which he might have
approved.

But the result of all this, so far as I am concerned, is a feeling of
admiration for those men who are capable of such magnificent approval
for themselves, the causes they espouse, their family, their country,
and their species; it is an approval which I fear I can never again
attain in full measure.

I have seen possibil