But here again I felt that the thing was somehow not quite as high-minded as it seemed.  The goal designated was, after all, the goal of success.  It was not suggested that the unrewarded and self-denying life was perhaps the noblest.  The point was to come to the front somehow, and it was only indicating a sort of waiting game for the boys who were conscious neither of intellectual nor athletic capacity.  It was a sort of false socialism, this pretence of moral equality, a kind of consolation prize that was thus emphasised.  And I felt that here again the assumption was an untrue one.  That is the worst of life, if one examines it closely, that it is by no means wholly run on moral lines.  It is strength that is rewarded, rather than good desires.  The Bishop seemed to have forgotten the ancient maxim that prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, and affliction the blessing of the New.  These qualities that were going to produce ultimate success—­ conscientiousness, generosity, modesty, public spirit—­they are, after all, as much gifts as any other gifts of intellect and bodily skill.  How often has one seen boys who are immodest, idle, frivolous, mean-spirited, and ungenerous attain to the opposite virtues?  Not often, I confess.  Who does not know of abundant instances of boys who have been selfish, worthless, grasping, unprincipled, who have yet achieved success intellectually and athletically, and have also done well for themselves, amassed money, and obtained positions for themselves in after life.  Looking back on my own school days, I cannot honestly say that the prizes of life have fallen to the pure-minded, affectionate, high-principled boys.  The boys I remember who have achieved conspicuous success in the world have been hard-hearted, prudent, honourable characters with a certain superficial bonhomie, who by a natural instinct did the things that paid.  Stripped of its rhetoric, the Bishop’s address resolved itself into a panegyric of success, and the morality of it was that if you could not achieve intellectual and athletic prominence, you might get a certain degree of credit by unostentatious virtue.  What I felt was that somehow the goal proposed was—­dare I hint it?—­a vulgar one; that it was a glorification of prudence and good-humoured self-interest; and yet if the Bishop had preached the gospel of disinterestedness and quiet faithfulness and devotion, he would have had few enthusiastic hearers.  If he had said that an awkward and surly manner, no matter what virtues it concealed, was the greatest bar to ultimate mundane success, it would have been quite true, though perhaps not particularly edifying.  But what I desired was not startling paradox or cynical comment, but something more really manly, more just, more unconventional, more ardent, more disinterested.  The boys were not exhorted to care for beautiful things for the sake of their beauty; but to care for attractive things for the sake of their acceptability.