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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: D'Arcy Thompson's Abstract Bagman, are the true and typical
Englishmen. There may be more HEAD of bagmen in the country,
but human beings are reckoned by number only in political
constitutions. And the Admirals are typical in the full force
of the word. They are splendid examples of virtue, indeed,
but of a virtue in which most Englishmen can claim a moderate
share; and what we admire in their lives is a sort of
apotheosis of ourselves. Almost everybody in our land, except
humanitarians and a few persons whose youth has been depressed
by exceptionally aesthetic surroundings, can understand and
sympathise with an Admiral or a prize-fighter. I do not wish
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