Pride and pugnacity have often been considered unworthy passions to
appeal to in the young. But in their more refined and noble forms they
play a great part in the schoolroom and in education generally, being in
some characters most potent spurs to effort. Pugnacity need not be
thought of merely in the form of physical combativeness. It can be taken
in the sense of a general unwillingness to be beaten by any kind of
difficulty. It is what makes us feel 'stumped' and challenged by arduous
achievements, and is essential to a spirited and enterprising character.
We have of late been hearing much of the philosophy of tenderness in
education; 'interest' must be assiduously awakened in everything,
difficulties must be smoothed away. _Soft_ pedagogics have taken the
place of the old steep and rocky path to learning. But from this
lukewarm air the bracing oxygen of effort is left out. It is nonsense
to suppose that every step in education _can_ be interesting. The
fighting impulse must often be appealed to. Make the pupil feel ashamed
of being scared at fractions, of being 'downed' by the law of falling
bodies; rouse his pugnacity and pride, and he will rush at the difficult
places with a sort of inner wrath at himself that is one of his best
moral faculties. A victory scored under such conditions becomes a
turning-point and crisis of his character. It represents the high-water
mark of his powers, and serves thereafter as an ideal pattern for his
self-imitation. The teacher who never rouses this sort of pugnacious
excitement in his pupils falls short of one of his best forms of
usefulness.

The next instinct which I shall mention is that of _Ownership_, also one
of the radical endowments of the race. It often is the antagonist of
imitation. Whether social progress is due more to the passion for
keeping old things and habits or to the passion of imitating and