And then the boyish ideal of courage is a very incomplete one. He
does not recognise it as courage if a sensitive, conscientious, and
right-minded boy risks unpopularity by telling a master of some
evil practice which is spreading in a school. He simply regards it
as a desire to meddle, a priggish and pragmatical act, and even as
a sneaking desire to inflict punishment by proxy.

Courage, for the schoolboy, is merely physical courage, aplomb,
boldness, recklessness, high-handedness. The hero of school life is
one like Odysseus, who is strong, inventive, daring, full of
resource. The point is to come out on the top. Odysseus yields to
sensual delight, he is cruel, vindictive, and incredibly deceitful.
It is evident that successful beguiling, the power of telling an
elaborate, plausible, and imperturbable lie on occasions, is an
heroic quality in the Odyssey. Odysseus is not a man who scorns to
deceive, or who would rather take the consequences than utter a
falsehood. His strength rather lies in his power, when at bay, of
flashing into some monstrous fiction, dramatising the situation,
playing an adopted part, with confidence and assurance. One sees
traces of the same thing in the Bible. The story of Jacob deceiving
Isaac, and pretending to be Esau in order to secure a blessing is
not related with disapprobation. Jacob does not forfeit his
blessing when his deceit is discovered. The whole incident is
regarded rather as a master-stroke of cunning and inventiveness.
Esau is angry not because Jacob has employed such trickery, but
because he has succeeded in supplanting him.

I remember, as a boy at Eton, seeing a scene which left a deep
impression on me. There was a big unpleasant unscrupulous boy of