ABSTRACT
Mankind may be divided into two general types of mentality—some people—the minority—work on a definite scheme of life directed to a realized end. It may be, like that of Plato’s old man in the Republic, merely to live an honourable life on the lines of a respectable ancestry, distracted neither by over-great ambition, nor by idleness and pleasure, and leaving a straight record for the next generation. Or it may be to serve a cause or an ideal. Or the end may be that of the ‘climber’—self-assertion, and the urge to win distinction in some sphere of activity—ranging from that of a small king who would like to be an emperor, down to that of an apprentice who would like to be a foreman, or of a girl who would like to ‘marry well’. The desire to climb will be affected in different degrees in each individual by the moral factor—some think honesty is the best policy, and they are often justified ; others think that all methods are good ‘quocumque modo rem’, and discover that there are limits to the efficacy of unscrupu-lousness, when one has acquired a well-established celebrity for it. Such was the fate of Napoleon after the affair of the kidnapping of Ferdinand of Spain—a nicely managed job which was, as he afterwards confessed, ‘trop louche’, and damned his moral reputation for ever. His previous efforts in self-assertion had not quite accomplished the feat—Charles James Fox believed in him, even after Brumaire, as a possible neighbour !
