He has pursued it for the sake of the prizes and other honours which it brought him.

When he has won his last prize the chances are that he will lose all interest in that branch of learning in which he achieved distinction, unless, indeed, he has to earn his livelihood by teaching it.

Of the scores of young men who distinguish themselves in "Classics" at Oxford and Cambridge, how many will continue to study the classical writers when they have gained the "Firsts" for which they worked so diligently?
Apart from those who are going to teach Classics in the Public Schools or Universities, a mere handful,--one in ten perhaps, though that is probably an extravagant estimate.

And yet the poets, philosophers, and historians whom they have studied are amongst the greatest that the world has produced.
What is it, then, that kills, in nine cases out of ten, the classical student's interest in the masterpieces of antiquity?
The obvious fact that he was never interested in them for their own sakes--that he studied them, not in order to enjoy them or profit by them, but in order to pass an examination in them, of which he might be able to say in after years: "I am named and known by that hour's feat, There took my station and degree." How many Wranglers, other than those who have or will become schoolmasters or college tutors, continue to study mathematics?
How many of the First Classmen in Science, History, Law, and other Honour "Schools" continue to study their respective subjects?
In every case an utterly insignificant minority.
But if the prize system does this to the young man of twenty-two or twenty-three, if it kills his interest in learning, if it makes him register an inward vow never again to open the books which he has crammed so successfully for his examinations, what may it be expected to do to the child whose school education comes to an end when he is only thirteen or fourteen years old?
When, with the fear of punishment, the complementary hope of reward is withdrawn from him, is it reasonable to expect him to continue his education, to continue to apply himself to subjects with which his acquaintance has been entirely formal and superficial, and which he has never been allowed to digest and assimilate?
The utter indifference of the average ex-elementary scholar to literature, to history, to geography, to science, to music, to art, is the world-wide answer to this question.
For what is, above all, hateful in any scheme of rewards and punishments, when applied to the school life of the young, is that it wholly externalises what is really an inward and spiritual process, the evolution of the youthful mind.

Just as in the sphere of religion it is postulated as a self-evident truth that righteousness is not its own reward, nor iniquity its own punishment,--so in the sphere of education it is postulated as a self-evident truth, that knowledge is not its own reward, nor ignorance its own punishment.