Now take your seat and copy this poetry.
Do it carefully. Unless you take pains, and do it as well as you
possibly can, I shall punish you severely before you go home.'
"How many motives have I got now? Four, I believe."
"Yes, sir," say the boys.
"Love of money, friendship, love of honor, and fear. We called the first
boy A; let us call the others B, C, and D; no, we shall remember better
to call them by the name of their motives. We will call the first M, for
money; the second, F, for friendship; the third, H, for honor; and the
last, F--we have got an F already; what shall we do? On the whole, it is
of no consequence; we will have two F's, but we will take care not to
confound them.
"But there are a great many other motives entirely distinct from these.
For example, suppose I should say to a fifth boy, 'Will you copy this
piece of poetry? It belongs to one of the little boys in school: he
wants a copy of it, and I told him I would try to get some one to copy
it for him.' This motive, now, would be benevolence; that is, if the boy
who was asked to copy it was not particularly acquainted with the other,
and did it chiefly to oblige him. We will call this boy B, for
Benevolence.
"Now suppose I call a sixth boy, and say to him, 'I have set four or
five boys to work copying this piece of poetry; now I wish you to sit
down, and see if you can not do it better than any of them. After all
are done, I will compare them, and see if yours is not the best.
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