gher. But the general principle of trial schools lies at the root of
the matter--of schools, that is to say, in which the knowledge offered
and discipline enforced shall be all a part of a great assay of the
human soul, and in which the one shall be increased, the other directed,
as the tried heart and brain will best bear, and no otherwise. One
thing, however, I must say, that in this trial I believe all emulation
to be a false motive, and all giving of prizes a false means. All that
you can depend upon in a boy, as significative of true power, likely to
issue in good fruit, is his will to work for the work's sake, not his
desire to surpass his school-fellows; and the aim of the teaching you
give him ought to be, to prove to him and strengthen in him his own
separate gift, not to puff him into swollen rivalry with those who are
everlastingly greater than he: still less ought you to hang favours and
ribands about the neck of the creature who is the greatest, to make the
rest envy him. Try to make them love him and follow him, not struggle
with him.

136. There must, of course, be examination to ascertain and attest both
progress and relative capacity; but our aim should be to make the
students rather look upon it as a means of ascertaining their own true
positions and powers in the world, than as an arena in which to carry
away a present victory. I have not, perhaps, in the course of the
lecture, insisted enough on the nature of relative capacity and
individual character, as the roots of all real _value_ in Art. We are
too much in the habit, in these days, of acting as if Art worth a price
in the market were a commodity which people could be generally taught to
produce, and as if the _education_ of the artist, not his _capacity_,
gave the sterling value to his work. No impression can possibly be more
absurd or false. Whatever people can teach each other to do, they will
estimate, and ought to estimate, only as common industry; nothing will
ever fetch a high price but precisely that which cannot be taught, and
which nobody can do but the man from whom it is purchased. No state of
society, nor stage of knowledge, ever does away with the natural
pre-eminence of one man over another; and it is that pre-eminence, and
that only, which will give work high value in the market, or which ought
to do so. It is a bad sign of the judgment, and bad omen for the
progress, of a nation, if it supposes itself to possess many artists of