The advantage thus obtained led unexpectedly to another.  So long as he seldom won the prize, he ate it himself like his rivals, but as he got used to victory he grew generous, and often shared it with the defeated.  That taught me a lesson in morals and I saw what was the real root of generosity.

While I continued to mark out a different starting place for each competitor, he did not notice that I had made the distances unequal, so that one of them, having farther to run to reach the goal, was clearly at a disadvantage.  But though I left the choice to my pupil he did not know how to take advantage of it.  Without thinking of the distance, he always chose the smoothest path, so that I could easily predict his choice, and could almost make him win or lose the cake at my pleasure.  I had more than one end in view in this stratagem; but as my plan was to get him to notice the difference himself, I tried to make him aware of it.  Though he was generally lazy and easy going, he was so eager in his sports and trusted me so completely that I had great difficulty in making him see that I was cheating him.  When at last I managed to make him see it in spite of his excitement, he was angry with me.  “What have you to complain of?” said I.  “In a gift which I propose to give of my own free will am not I master of the conditions?  Who makes you run?  Did I promise to make the courses equal?  Is not the choice yours?  Do not you see that I am favouring you, and that the inequality you complain of is all to your advantage, if you knew how to use it?” That was plain to him; and to choose he must observe more carefully.  At first he wanted to count the paces, but a child measures paces slowly and inaccurately; moreover, I decided to have several races on one day; and the game having become a sort of passion with the child, he was sorry to waste in measuring the portion of time intended for running.  Such delays are not in accordance with a child’s impatience; he tried therefore to see better and to reckon the distance more accurately at sight.  It was now quite easy to extend and develop this power.  At length, after some months’ practice, and the correction of his errors, I so trained his power of judging at sight that I had only to place an imaginary cake on any distant object and his glance was nearly as accurate as the surveyor’s chain.

Of all the senses, sight is that which we can least distinguish from the judgments of the mind; as it takes a long time to learn to see.  It takes a long time to compare sight and touch, and to train the former sense to give a true report of shape and distance.  Without touch, without progressive motion, the sharpest eyes in the world could give us no idea of space.  To the oyster the whole world must seem a point, and it would seem nothing more to it even if it had a human mind.  It is only by walking, feeling, counting, measuring the dimensions of things, that we learn to judge them rightly; but, on the other hand, if we were always