{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_908/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_908","id":"gutenberg_908","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/908","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Parenthood & Family Relations","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Teaching & Education","Essays","Nobel Prizes in Literature","Parent and child"],"text":"Produced by Ron Burkey and Amy Thomte\n\n\n\n\n\nA TREATISE ON PARENTS AND CHILDREN\n\nBy Bernard Shaw\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n     Parents and Children\n     Trailing Clouds of Glory\n     The Child is Father to the Man\n     What is a Child?\n     The Sin of Nadab and Abihu\n     The Manufacture of Monsters\n     Small and Large Families\n     Children as Nuisances\n     Child Fanciers\n     Childhood as a State of Sin\n     School\n     My Scholastic Acquirements\n     Schoolmasters of Genius\n     What We Do Not Teach, and Why\n     Taboo in Schools\n     Alleged Novelties in Modern Schools\n     What is to be Done?\n     Children's Rights and Duties\n     Should Children Earn their Living?\n     Children's Happiness\n     The Horror of the Perpetual Holiday\n     University Schoolboyishness\n     The New Laziness\n     The Infinite School Task\n     The Rewards and Risks of Knowledge\n     English Physical Hardihood and Spiritual Cowardice\n     The Risks of Ignorance and Weakness\n     The Common Sense of Toleration\n     The Sin of Athanasius\n     The Experiment Experimenting\n     Why We Loathe Learning and Love Sport\n     Antichrist\n     Under the Whip\n     Technical Instruction\n     Docility and Dependence\n     The Abuse of Docility\n     The Schoolboy and the Homeboy\n     The Comings of Age of Children\n     The Conflict of Wills\n     The Demagogue's Opportunity\n     Our Quarrelsomeness\n     We Must Reform Society before we can Reform Ourselves\n     The Pursuit of Manners\n     Not too much Wind on the Heath, Brother\n     Wanted:  a Child's Magna Charta\n     The Pursuit of Learning\n     Children and Game:  a Proposal\n     The Parents' Intolerable Burden\n     Mobilization\n     Children's Rights and Parents' Wrongs\n     How Little We Know About Our Parents\n     Our Abandoned Mothers\n     Family Affection\n     The Fate of the Family\n     Family Mourning\n     Art Teaching\n     The Impossibility of Secular Education\n     Natural Selection as a Religion\n     Moral Instruction Leagues\n     The Bible\n     Artist Idolatry\n     \"The Machine\"\n     The Provocation to Anarchism\n     Imagination\n     Government by Bullies\n\n\n\n\nPARENTS AND CHILDREN\n\n\n\nTrailing Clouds of Glory\n\nChildhood is a stage in the process of that continual remanufacture of\nthe Life Stuff by which the human race is perpetuated. The Life Force\neither will not or cannot achieve immortality except in very low\norganisms: indeed it is by no means ascertained that even the amoeba is\nimmortal. Human beings visibly wear out, though they last longer than\ntheir friends the dogs. Turtles, parrots, and elephants are believed to\nbe capable of outliving the memory of the oldest human inhabitant. But\nthe fact that new ones are born conclusively proves that they are not\nimmortal. Do away with death and you do away with the need for birth: in\nfact if you went on breeding, you would finally have to kill old people\nto make room for young ones.\n\nNow death is not necessarily a failure of energy on the part of the Life\nForce. People with no imagination try to make things which will last for\never, and even want to live for ever themselves. But the intelligently\nimaginative man knows very well that it is waste of labor to make a\nmachine that will last ten years, because it will probably be superseded\nin half that time by an improved machine answering the same purpose.\nHe also knows that if some devil were to convince us that our dream\nof personal immortality is no dream but a hard fact, such a shriek of\ndespair would go up from the human race as no other conceivable horror\ncould provoke. With all our perverse nonsense as to John Smith living\nfor a thousand million eons and for ever after, we die voluntarily,\nknowing that it is time for us to be scrapped, to be remanufactured, to\ncome back, as Wordsworth divined, trailing ever brightening clouds of\nglory. We must all be born again, and yet again and again. We should\nlike to live a little longer just as we should like 50 pounds: that is,\nwe should take it if we could get it for nothing; but that sort of idle\nliking is not will. It is amazing--considering the way we talk--how\nlittle a man will do to get 50 pounds: all the 50-pound notes I have\never known of have been more easily earned than a laborious sixpence;\nbut the difficulty of inducing a man to make any serious effort to\nobtain 50 pounds is nothing to the difficulty of inducing him to make a\nserious effort to keep alive. The moment he sees death approach, he gets\ninto bed and sends for a doctor. He knows very well at the back of\nhis conscience that he is rather a poor job and had better be\nremanufactured. He knows that his death will make room for a birth; and\nhe hopes that it will be a birth of something that he aspired to be and\nfell short of. He knows that it is through death and rebirth that\nthis corruptible shall become incorruptible, and this mortal put on\nimmortality. Practise as you will on his ignorance, his fears, and his\nimagination, with bribes of paradises and threats of hells, there is\nonly one belief that can rob death of its sting and the grave of its\nvictory; and that is the belief that we can lay down the burden of our\nwretched little makeshift individualities for ever at each lift towards\nthe goal of evolution, which can only be a being that cannot be improved\nupon. After all, what man is capable of the insane self-conceit of\nbelieving that an eternity of himself would be tolerable even to\nhimself? Those who try to believe it postulate that they shall be made\nperfect first. But if you make me perfect I shall no longer be myself,\nnor will it be possible for me to conceive my present imperfections (and\nwhat I cannot conceive I cannot remember); so that you may just as well\ngive me a new name and face the fact that I am a new person and that\nthe old Bernard Shaw is as dead as mutton. Thus, oddly enough, the\nconventional belief in the matter comes to this: that if you wish to\nlive for ever you must be wicked enough to be irretrievably damned,\nsince the saved are no longer what they were, and in hell alone do\npeople retain their sinful nature: that is to say, their individuality.\nAnd this sort of hell, however convenient as a means of intimidating\npersons who have practically no honor and no conscience, is not a fact.\nDeath is for many of us the gate of hell; but we are inside on the way\nout, not outside on the way in. Therefore let us give up telling one\nanother idle stories, and rejoice in death as we rejoice in birth; for\nwithout death we cannot be born again; and the man who does not wish\nto be born again and born better is fit only to represent the City of\nLondon in Parliament, or perhaps the university of Oxford.\n\n\n\n\nThe Child is Father to the Man\n\nIs he? Then in the name of common sense why do we always treat children\non the assumption that the man is father to the child? Oh, these\nfathers! And we are not content with fathers: we must have godfathers,\nforgetting that the child is godfather to the man. Has it ever struck\nyou as curious that in a country where the first article of belief is\nthat every child is born with a godfather whom we all call \"our father\nwhich art in heaven,\" two very limited individual mortals should\nbe allowed to appear at its baptism and explain that they are its\ngodparents, and that they will look after its salvation until it is no\nlonger a child. I had a godmother who made herself responsible in this\nway for me. She presented me with a Bible with a gilt clasp and edges,\nlarger than the Bibles similarly presented to my sisters, because my sex\nentitled me to a heavier article. I must have seen that lady at least\nfour times in the twenty years following. She never alluded to my\nsalvation in any way. People occasionally ask me to act as godfather to\ntheir children with a levity which convinces me that they have not the\nfaintest notion that it involves anything more than calling the helpless\nchild George Bernard without regard to the possibility that it may grow\nup in the liveliest abhorrence of my notions.\n\nA person with a turn for logic might argue that if God is the Father of\nall men, and if the child is father to the man, it follows that the true\nrepresentative of God at the christening is the child itself. But such\nposers are unpopular, because they imply that our little customs, or,\nas we often call them, our religion, mean something, or must originally\nhave meant something, and that we understand and believe that something.\n\nHowever, my business is not to make confusion worse confounded, but to\nclear it up. Only, it is as well to begin by a sample of current thought\nand practice which shews that on the subject of children we are very\ndeeply confused. On the whole, whatever our theory or no theory may\nbe, our practice is to treat the child as the property of its immediate\nphysical parents, and to allow them to do what they like with it as far\nas it will let them. It has no rights and no liberties: in short, its\ncondition is that which adults recognize as the most miserable and\ndangerous politically possible for themselves: namely, the condition of\nslavery. For its alleviation we trust to the natural affection of the\nparties, and to public opinion. A father cannot for his own credit let\nhis son go in rags. Also, in a very large section of the population,\nparents finally become dependent on their children. Thus there are\nchecks on child slavery which do not exist, or are less powerful, in the\ncase of manual and industrial slavery. Sensationally bad cases fall into\ntwo classes, which are really the same class: namely, the children\nwhose parents are excessively addicted to the sensual luxury of petting\nchildren, and the children whose parents are excessively addicted to the\nsensual luxury of physically torturing them. There is a Society for the\nPrevention of Cruelty to Children which has effectually made an end of\nour belief that mothers are any more to be trusted than stepmothers, or\nfathers than slave-drivers. And there is a growing body of law designed\nto prevent parents from using their children ruthlessly to make money\nfor the household. Such legislation has always been furiously resisted\nby the parents, even when the horrors of factory slavery were at\ntheir worst; and the extension of such legislation at present would be\nimpossible if it were not that the parents affected by it cannot control\na majority of votes in Parliament. In domestic life a great deal of\nservice is done by children, the girls acting as nursemaids and general\nservants, and the lads as errand boys. In the country both boys and\ngirls do a substantial share of farm labor. This is why it is necessary\nto coerce poor parents to send their children to school, though in the\nrelatively small class which keeps plenty of servants it is impossible\nto induce parents to keep their children at home instead of paying\nschoolmasters to take them off their hands.\n\nIt appears then that the bond of affection between parents and children\ndoes not save children from the slavery that denial of rights involves\nin adult political relations. It sometimes intensifies it, sometimes\nmitigates it; but on the whole children and parents confront one another\nas two classes in which all the political power is on one side; and\nthe results are not at all unlike what they would be if there were no\nimmediate consanguinity between them, and one were white and the other\nblack, or one enfranchised and the other disenfranchised, or one ranked\nas gentle and the other simple. Not that Nature counts for nothing in\nthe case and political rights for everything. But a denial of political\nrights, and the resultant delivery of one class into the mastery of\nanother, affects their relations so extensively and profoundly that it\nis impossible to ascertain what the real natural relations of the two\nclasses are until this political relation is abolished.\n\n\n\n\nWhat is a Child?\n\nAn experiment. A fresh attempt to produce the just man made perfect:\nthat is, to make humanity divine. And you will vitiate the experiment\nif you make the slightest attempt to abort it into some fancy figure of\nyour own: for example, your notion of a good man or a womanly woman.\nIf you treat it as a little wild beast to be tamed, or as a pet to be\nplayed with, or even as a means to save you trouble and to make money\nfor you (and these are our commonest ways), it may fight its way through\nin spite of you and save its soul alive; for all its instincts will\nresist you, and possibly be strengthened in the resistance; but if you\nbegin with its own holiest aspirations, and suborn them for your own\npurposes, then there is hardly any limit to the mischief you may do.\nSwear at a child, throw your boots at it, send it flying from the room\nwith a cuff or a kick; and the experience will be as instructive to the\nchild as a difficulty with a short-tempered dog or a bull. Francis Place\ntells us that his father always struck his children when he found one\nwithin his reach. The effect on the young Places seems to have been\nsimply to make them keep out of their father's way, which was no doubt\nwhat he desired, as far as he desired anything at all. Francis records\nthe habit without bitterness, having reason to thank his stars that his\nfather respected the inside of his head whilst cuffing the outside of\nit; and this made it easy for Francis to do yeoman's service to his\ncountry as that rare and admirable thing, a Freethinker: the only\nsort of thinker, I may remark, whose thoughts, and consequently whose\nreligious convictions, command any respect.\n\nNow Mr Place, senior, would be described by many as a bad father; and\nI do not contend that he was a conspicuously good one. But as compared\nwith the conventional good father who deliberately imposes himself on\nhis son as a god; who takes advantage of childish credulity and parent\nworship to persuade his son that what he approves of is right and what\nhe disapproves of is wrong; who imposes a corresponding conduct on the\nchild by a system of prohibitions and penalties, rewards and eulogies,\nfor which he claims divine sanction: compared to this sort of\nabortionist and monster maker, I say, Place appears almost as a\nProvidence. Not that it is possible to live with children any more than\nwith grown-up people without imposing rules of conduct on them. There\nis a point at which every person with human nerves has to say to a child\n\"Stop that noise.\" But suppose the child asks why! There are various\nanswers in use. The simplest: \"Because it irritates me,\" may fail; for\nit may strike the child as being rather amusing to irritate you; also\nthe child, having comparatively no nerves, may be unable to conceive\nyour meaning vividly enough. In any case it may want to make a noise\nmore than to spare your feelings. You may therefore have to explain\nthat the effect of the irritation will be that you will do something\nunpleasant if the noise continues. The something unpleasant may be only\na look of suffering to rouse the child's affectionate sympathy (if it\nhas any), or it may run to forcible expulsion from the room with plenty\nof unnecessary violence; but the principle is the same: there are no\nfalse pretences involved: the child learns in a straightforward way that\nit does not pay to be inconsiderate. Also, perhaps, that Mamma, who made\nthe child learn the Sermon on the Mount, is not really a Christian.\n\n\n\n\nThe Sin of Nadab and Abihu\n\nBut there is another sort of answer in wide use which is neither\nstraightforward, instructive, nor harmless. In its simplest form it\nsubstitutes for \"Stop that noise,\" \"Dont be naughty,\" which means that\nthe child, instead of annoying you by a perfectly healthy and natural\ninfantile procedure, is offending God. This is a blasphemous lie; and\nthe fact that it is on the lips of every nurserymaid does not excuse it\nin the least. Dickens tells us of a nurserymaid who elaborated it into\n\"If you do that, angels wont never love you.\" I remember a servant who\nused to tell me that if I were not good, by which she meant if I did\nnot behave with a single eye to her personal convenience, the cock would\ncome down the chimney. Less imaginative but equally dishonest people\ntold me I should go to hell if I did not make myself agreeable to them.\nBodily violence, provided it be the hasty expression of normal provoked\nresentment and not vicious cruelty, cannot harm a child as this sort of\npious fraud harms it. There is a legal limit to physical cruelty; and\nthere are also human limits to it. There is an active Society which\nbrings to book a good many parents who starve and torture and overwork\ntheir children, and intimidates a good many more. When parents of this\ntype are caught, they are treated as criminals; and not infrequently\nthe police have some trouble to save them from being lynched. The\npeople against whom children are wholly unprotected are those who devote\nthemselves to the very mischievous and cruel sort of abortion which is\ncalled bringing up a child in the way it should go. Now nobody knows\nthe way a child should go. All the ways discovered so far lead to the\nhorrors of our existing civilizations, described quite justifiably by\nRuskin as heaps of agonizing human maggots, struggling with one another\nfor scraps of food. Pious fraud is an attempt to pervert that precious\nand sacred thing the child's conscience into an instrument of our own\nconvenience, and to use that wonderful and terrible power called Shame\nto grind our own axe. It is the sin of stealing fire from the altar: a\nsin so impudently practised by popes, parents, and pedagogues, that one\ncan hardly expect the nurserymaids to see any harm in stealing a few\ncinders when they are worrited.\n\nInto the blackest depths of this violation of children's souls one can\nhardly bear to look; for here we find pious fraud masking the violation\nof the body by obscene cruelty. Any parent or school teacher who takes\na secret and abominable delight in torture is allowed to lay traps into\nwhich every child must fall, and then beat it to his or her heart's\ncontent. A gentleman once wrote to me and said, with an obvious\nconviction that he was being most reasonable and high minded, that the\nonly thing he beat his children for was failure in perfect obedience and\nperfect truthfulness. On these attributes, he said, he must insist. As\none of them is not a virtue at all, and the other is the attribute of a\ngod, one can imagine what the lives of this gentleman's children would\nhave been if it had been possible for him to live down to his monstrous\nand foolish pretensions. And yet he might have written his letter to The\nTimes (he very nearly did, by the way) without incurring any danger of\nbeing removed to an asylum, or even losing his reputation for taking\na very proper view of his parental duties. And at least it was not a\ntrivial view, nor an ill meant one. It was much more respectable than\nthe general consensus of opinion that if a school teacher can devise a\nquestion a child cannot answer, or overhear it calling omega omeega,\nhe or she may beat the child viciously. Only, the cruelty must be\nwhitewashed by a moral excuse, and a pretence of reluctance. It must be\nfor the child's good. The assailant must say \"This hurts me more than\nit hurts you.\" There must be hypocrisy as well as cruelty. The injury to\nthe child would be far less if the voluptuary said frankly \"I beat you\nbecause I like beating you; and I shall do it whenever I can contrive\nan excuse for it.\" But to represent this detestable lust to the child\nas Divine wrath, and the cruelty as the beneficent act of God, which is\nexactly what all our floggers do, is to add to the torture of the body,\nout of which the flogger at least gets some pleasure, the maiming and\nblinding of the child's soul, which can bring nothing but horror to\nanyone.\n\n\n\n\nThe Manufacture of Monsters\n\nThis industry is by no means peculiar to China. The Chinese (they say)\nmake physical monsters. We revile them for it and proceed to make moral\nmonsters of our own children. The most excusable parents are those who\ntry to correct their own faults in their offspring. The parent who says\nto his child: \"I am one of the successes of the Almighty: therefore\nimitate me in every particular or I will have the skin off your back\"\n(a quite common attitude) is a much more absurd figure than the man who,\nwith a pipe in his mouth, thrashes his boy for smoking. If you must hold\nyourself up to your children as an object lesson (which is not at all\nnecessary), hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example. But\nyou had much better let the child's character alone. If you once allow\nyourself to regard a child as so much material for you to manufacture\ninto any shape that happens to suit your fancy you are defeating the\nexperiment of the Life Force. You are assuming that the child does\nnot know its own business, and that you do. In this you are sure to be\nwrong: the child feels the drive of the Life Force (often called the\nWill of God); and you cannot feel it for him. Handel's parents no doubt\nthought they knew better than their child when they tried to prevent\nhis becoming a musician. They would have been equally wrong and equally\nunsuccessful if they had tried to prevent the child becoming a great\nrascal had its genius lain in that direction. Handel would have been\nHandel, and Napoleon and Peter of Russia _them_selves in spite of all\nthe parents in creation, because, as often happens, they were stronger\nthan their parents. But this does not happen always. Most children\ncan be, and many are, hopelessly warped and wasted by parents who are\nignorant and silly enough to suppose that they know what a human being\nought to be, and who stick at nothing in their determination to force\ntheir children into their moulds. Every child has a right to its own\nbent. It has a right to be a Plymouth Brother though its parents be\nconvinced atheists. It has a right to dislike its mother or father or\nsister or brother or uncle or aunt if they are antipathetic to it. It\nhas a right to find its own way and go its own way, whether that way\nseems wise or foolish to others, exactly as an adult has. It has a right\nto privacy as to its own doings and its own affairs as much as if it\nwere its own father.\n\n\n\n\nSmall and Large Families\n\nThese rights have now become more important than they used to be,\nbecause the modern practice of limiting families enables them to be\nmore effectually violated. In a family of ten, eight, six, or even four\nchildren, the rights of the younger ones to a great extent take care of\nthemselves and of the rights of the elder ones too. Two adult parents,\nin spite of a house to keep and an income to earn, can still interfere\nto a disastrous extent with the rights and liberties of one child. But\nby the time a fourth child has arrived, they are not only outnumbered\ntwo to one, but are getting tired of the thankless and mischievous job\nof bringing up their children in the way they think they should go. The\nold observation that members of large families get on in the world\nholds good because in large families it is impossible for each child to\nreceive what schoolmasters call \"individual attention.\" The children\nmay receive a good deal of individual attention from one another in the\nshape of outspoken reproach, ruthless ridicule, and violent resistance\nto their attempts at aggression; but the parental despots are compelled\nby the multitude of their subjects to resort to political rather than\npersonal rule, and to spread their attempts at moral monster-making over\nso many children, that each child has enough freedom, and enough sport\nin the prophylactic process of laughing at its elders behind their\nbacks, to escape with much less damage than the single child. In a large\nschool the system may be bad; but the personal influence of the head\nmaster has to be exerted, when it is exerted at all, in a public way,\nbecause he has little more power of working on the affections of the\nindividual scholar in the intimate way that, for example, the mother\nof a single child can, than the prime minister has of working on the\naffections of any individual voter.\n\n\n\n\nChildren as Nuisances\n\nExperienced parents, when children's rights are preached to them, very\nnaturally ask whether children are to be allowed to do what they like.\nThe best reply is to ask whether adults are to be allowed to do what\nthey like. The two cases are the same. The adult who is nasty is not\nallowed to do what he likes: neither can the child who likes to be\nnasty. There is no difference in principle between the rights of a\nchild and those of an adult: the difference in their cases is one of\ncircumstance. An adult is not supposed to be punished except by process\nof law; nor, when he is so punished, is the person whom he has injured\nallowed to act as judge, jury, and executioner. It is true that\nemployers do act in this way every day to their workpeople; but this is\nnot a justified and intended part of the situation: it is an abuse\nof Capitalism which nobody defends in principle. As between child and\nparent or nurse it is not argued about because it is inevitable. You\ncannot hold an impartial judicial inquiry every time a child misbehaves\nitself. To allow the child to misbehave without instantly making it\nunpleasantly conscious of the fact would be to spoil it. The adult has\ntherefore to take action of some sort with nothing but his conscience\nto shield the child from injustice or unkindness. The action may be a\ntorrent of scolding culminating in a furious smack causing terror\nand pain, or it may be a remonstrance causing remorse, or it may be a\nsarcasm causing shame and humiliation, or it may be a sermon causing the\nchild to believe that it is a little reprobate on the road to hell. The\nchild has no defence in any case except the kindness and conscience of\nthe adult; and the adult had better not forget this; for it involves a\nheavy responsibility.\n\nAnd now comes our difficulty. The responsibility, being so heavy, cannot\nbe discharged by persons of feeble character or intelligence. And yet\npeople of high character and intelligence cannot be plagued with the\ncare of children. A child is a restless, noisy little animal, with\nan insatiable appetite for knowledge, and consequently a maddening\npersistence in asking questions. If the child is to remain in the room\nwith a highly intelligent and sensitive adult, it must be told, and if\nnecessary forced, to sit still and not speak, which is injurious to\nits health, unnatural, unjust, and therefore cruel and selfish beyond\ntoleration. Consequently the highly intelligent and sensitive adult\nhands the child over to a nurserymaid who has no nerves and can\ntherefore stand more noise, but who has also no scruples, and may\ntherefore be very bad company for the child.\n\nHere we have come to the central fact of the question: a fact nobody\navows, which is yet the true explanation of the monstrous system of\nchild imprisonment and torture which we disguise under such hypocrisies\nas education, training, formation of character and the rest of it. This\nfact is simply that a child is a nuisance to a grown-up person. What\nis more, the nuisance becomes more and more intolerable as the grown-up\nperson becomes more cultivated, more sensitive, and more deeply engaged\nin the highest methods of adult work. The child at play is noisy and\nought to be noisy: Sir Isaac Newton at work is quiet and ought to be\nquiet. And the child should spend most of its time at play, whilst the\nadult should spend most of his time at work. I am not now writing on\nbehalf of persons who coddle themselves into a ridiculous condition of\nnervous feebleness, and at last imagine themselves unable to work\nunder conditions of bustle which to healthy people are cheerful and\nstimulating. I am sure that if people had to choose between living where\nthe noise of children never stopped and where it was never heard, all\nthe goodnatured and sound people would prefer the incessant noise to the\nincessant silence. But that choice is not thrust upon us by the nature\nof things. There is no reason why children and adults should not see\njust as much of one another as is good for them, no more and no less.\nEven at present you are not compelled to choose between sending your\nchild to a boarding school (which means getting rid of it altogether on\nmore or less hypocritical pretences) and keeping it continually at home.\nMost working folk today either send their children to day schools or\nturn them out of doors. This solves the problem for the parents. It does\nnot solve it for the children, any more than the tethering of a goat in\na field or the chasing of an unlicensed dog into the streets solves\nit for the goat or the dog; but it shews that in no class are people\nwilling to endure the society of their children, and consequently\nthat it is an error to believe that the family provides children with\nedifying adult society, or that the family is a social unit. The family\nis in that, as in so many other respects, a humbug. Old people and young\npeople cannot walk at the same pace without distress and final loss of\nhealth to one of the parties. When they are sitting indoors they cannot\nendure the same degrees of temperature and the same supplies of\nfresh air. Even if the main factors of noise, restlessness, and\ninquisitiveness are left out of account, children can stand with\nindifference sights, sounds, smells, and disorders that would make an\nadult of fifty utterly miserable; whilst on the other hand such\nadults find a tranquil happiness in conditions which to children mean\nunspeakable boredom. And since our system is nevertheless to pack them\nall into the same house and pretend that they are happy, and that this\nparticular sort of happiness is the foundation of virtue, it is found\nthat in discussing family life we never speak of actual adults or actual\nchildren, or of realities of any sort, but always of ideals such as\nThe Home, a Mother's Influence, a Father's Care, Filial Piety, Duty,\nAffection, Family Life, etc. etc., which are no doubt very comforting\nphrases, but which beg the question of what a home and a mother's\ninfluence and a father's care and so forth really come to in practice.\nHow many hours a week of the time when his children are out of bed does\nthe ordinary bread-winning father spend in the company of his children\nor even in the same building with them? The home may be a thieves'\nkitchen, the mother a procuress, the father a violent drunkard; or the\nmother and father may be fashionable people who see their children three\nor four times a year during the holidays, and then not oftener than\nthey can help, living meanwhile in daily and intimate contact with their\nvalets and lady's-maids, whose influence and care are often dominant in\nthe household. Affection, as distinguished from simple kindliness, may\nor may not exist: when it does it either depends on qualities in the\nparties that would produce it equally if they were of no kin to one\nanother, or it is a more or less morbid survival of the nursing passion;\nfor affection between adults (if they are really adult in mind and not\nmerely grown-up children) and creatures so relatively selfish and cruel\nas children necessarily are without knowing it or meaning it, cannot be\ncalled natural: in fact the evidence shews that it is easier to love the\ncompany of a dog than of a commonplace child between the ages of six and\nthe beginnings of controlled maturity; for women who cannot bear to be\nseparated from their pet dogs send their children to boarding schools\ncheerfully. They may say and even believe that in allowing their\nchildren to leave home they are sacrificing themselves for their\nchildren's good; but there are very few pet dogs who would not be\nthe better for a month or two spent elsewhere than in a lady's lap or\nroasting on a drawingroom hearthrug. Besides, to allege that children\nare better continually away from home is to give up the whole popular\nsentimental theory of the family; yet the dogs are kept and the children\nare banished.\n\n\n\n\nChild Fanciers\n\nThere is, however, a good deal of spurious family affection. There is\nthe clannishness that will make a dozen brothers and sisters who quarrel\nfuriously among themselves close up their ranks and make common cause\nagainst a brother-in-law or a sister-in-law. And there is a strong sense\nof property in children, which often makes mothers and fathers bitterly\njealous of allowing anyone else to interfere with their children, whom\nthey may none the less treat very badly. And there is an extremely\ndangerous craze for children which leads certain people to establish\norphanages and baby farms and schools, seizing any pretext for filling\ntheir houses with children exactly as some eccentric old ladies and\ngentlemen fill theirs with cats. In such places the children are the\nvictims of all the caprices of doting affection and all the excesses\nof lascivious cruelty. Yet the people who have this morbid craze seldom\nhave any difficulty in finding victims. Parents and guardians are so\nworried by children and so anxious to get rid of them that anyone who\nis willing to take them off their hands is welcomed and whitewashed.\nThe very people who read with indignation of Squeers and Creakle in the\nnovels of Dickens are quite ready to hand over their own children\nto Squeers and Creakle, and to pretend that Squeers and Creakle\nare monsters of the past. But read the autobiography of Stanley the\ntraveller, or sit in the company of men talking about their school-days,\nand you will soon find that fiction, which must, if it is to be sold and\nread, stop short of being positively sickening, dare not tell the whole\ntruth about the people to whom children are handed over on educational\npretexts. Not very long ago a schoolmaster in Ireland was murdered by\nhis boys; and for reasons which were never made public it was at\nfirst decided not to prosecute the murderers. Yet all these flogging\nschoolmasters and orphanage fiends and baby farmers are \"lovers of\nchildren.\" They are really child fanciers (like bird fanciers or dog\nfanciers) by irresistible natural predilection, never happy unless they\nare surrounded by their victims, and always certain to make their living\nby accepting the custody of children, no matter how many alternative\noccupations may be available. And bear in mind that they are only\nthe extreme instances of what is commonly called natural affection,\napparently because it is obviously unnatural.\n\nThe really natural feeling of adults for children in the long prosaic\nintervals between the moments of affectionate impulse is just that\nfeeling that leads them to avoid their care and constant company as a\nburden beyond bearing, and to pretend that the places they send them to\nare well conducted, beneficial, and indispensable to the success of the\nchildren in after life. The true cry of the kind mother after her little\nrosary of kisses is \"Run away, darling.\" It is nicer than \"Hold\nyour noise, you young devil; or it will be the worse for you\"; but\nfundamentally it means the same thing: that if you compel an adult and\na child to live in one another's company either the adult or the child\nwill be miserable. There is nothing whatever unnatural or wrong or\nshocking in this fact; and there is no harm in it if only it be sensibly\nfaced and provided for. The mischief that it does at present is\nproduced by our efforts to ignore it, or to smother it under a heap of\nsentimental lies and false pretences.\n\n\n\n\nChildhood as a State of Sin\n\nUnfortunately all this nonsense tends to accumulate as we become more\nsympathetic. In many families it is still the custom to treat childhood\nfrankly as a state of sin, and impudently proclaim the monstrous\nprinciple that little children should be seen and not heard, and to\nenforce a set of prison rules designed solely to make cohabitation\nwith children as convenient as possible for adults without the smallest\nregard for the interests, either remote or immediate, of the\nchildren. This system tends to produce a tough, rather brutal, stupid,\nunscrupulous class, with a fixed idea that all enjoyment consists in\nundetected sinning; and in certain phases of civilization people of this\nkind are apt to get the upper hand of more amiable and conscientious\nraces and classes. They have the ferocity of a chained dog, and are\nproud of it. But the end of it is that they are always in chains,\neven at the height of their military or political success: they\nwin everything on condition that they are afraid to enjoy it. Their\ncivilizations rest on intimidation, which is so necessary to them that\nwhen they cannot find anybody brave enough to intimidate them they\nintimidate themselves and live in a continual moral and political panic.\nIn the end they get found out and bullied. But that is not the point\nthat concerns us here, which is, that they are in some respects better\nbrought up than the children of sentimental people who are always\nanxious and miserable about their duty to their children, and who end\nby neither making their children happy nor having a tolerable life for\nthemselves. A selfish tyrant you know where to have, and he (or she) at\nleast does not confuse your affections; but a conscientious and kindly\nmeddler may literally worry you out of your senses. It is fortunate that\nonly very few parents are capable of doing what they conceive their duty\ncontinuously or even at all, and that still fewer are tough enough to\nride roughshod over their children at home.\n\n\n\n\nSchool\n\nBut please observe the limitation \"at home.\" What private amateur\nparental enterprise cannot do may be done very effectively by organized\nprofessional enterprise in large institutions established for the\npurpose. And it is to such professional enterprise that parents hand\nover their children when they can afford it. They send their children\nto school; and there is, on the whole, nothing on earth intended for\ninnocent people so horrible as a school. To begin with, it is a prison.\nBut it is in some respects more cruel than a prison. In a prison, for\ninstance, you are not forced to read books written by the warders and\nthe governor (who of course would not be warders and governors if they\ncould write readable books), and beaten or otherwise tormented if you\ncannot remember their utterly unmemorable contents. In the prison you\nare not forced to sit listening to turnkeys discoursing without charm or\ninterest on subjects that they dont understand and dont care about, and\nare therefore incapable of making you understand or care about. In a\nprison they may torture your body; but they do not torture your brains;\nand they protect you against violence and outrage from your fellow\nprisoners. In a school you have none of these advantages. With the\nworld's bookshelves loaded with fascinating and inspired books, the very\nmanna sent down from Heaven to feed your souls, you are forced to read\na hideous imposture called a school book, written by a man who cannot\nwrite: a book from which no human being can learn anything: a book\nwhich, though you may decipher it, you cannot in any fruitful sense\nread, though the enforced attempt will make you loathe the sight of\na book all the rest of your life. With millions of acres of woods and\nvalleys and hills and wind and air and birds and streams and fishes and\nall sorts of instructive and healthy things easily accessible, or with\nstreets and shop windows and crowds and vehicles and all sorts of city\ndelights at the door, you are forced to sit, not in a room with some\nhuman grace and comfort or furniture and decoration, but in a stalled\npound with a lot of other children, beaten if you talk, beaten if you\nmove, beaten if you cannot prove by answering idiotic questions that\neven when you escaped from the pound and from the eye of your gaoler,\nyou were still agonizing over his detestable sham books instead of\ndaring to live. And your childish hatred of your gaoler and flogger is\nnothing to his adult hatred of you; for he is a slave forced to endure\nyour society for his daily bread. You have not even the satisfaction of\nknowing how you are torturing him and how he loathes you; and you give\nyourself unnecessary pains to annoy him with furtive tricks and spiteful\ndoing of forbidden things. No wonder he is sometimes provoked to\nfiendish outbursts of wrath. No wonder men of downright sense, like Dr\nJohnson, admit that under such circumstances children will not learn\nanything unless they are so cruelly beaten that they make desperate\nefforts to memorize words and phrases to escape flagellation. It is a\nghastly business, quite beyond words, this schooling.\n\nAnd now I hear cries of protest arising all round. First my own\nschoolmasters, or their ghosts, asking whether I was cruelly beaten at\nschool? No; but then I did not learn anything at school. Dr Johnson's\nschoolmaster presumably did care enough whether Sam learned anything to\nbeat him savagely enough to force him to lame his mind--for\nJohnson's great mind _was_ lamed--by learning his lessons. None of my\nschoolmasters really cared a rap (or perhaps it would be fairer to them\nto say that their employers did not care a rap and therefore did not\ngive them the necessary caning powers) whether I learnt my lessons or\nnot, provided my father paid my schooling bill, the collection of which\nwas the real object of the school. Consequently I did not learn my\nschool lessons, having much more important ones in hand, with the result\nthat I have not wasted my life trifling with literary fools in taverns\nas Johnson did when he should have been shaking England with the thunder\nof his spirit. My schooling did me a great deal of harm and no good\nwhatever: it was simply dragging a child's soul through the dirt; but I\nescaped Squeers and Creakle just as I escaped Johnson and Carlyle. And\nthis is what happens to most of us. We are not effectively coerced to\nlearn: we stave off punishment as far as we can by lying and trickery\nand guessing and using our wits; and when this does not suffice we\nscribble impositions, or suffer extra imprisonments--\"keeping in\" was\nthe phrase in my time--or let a master strike us with a cane and fall\nback on our pride at being able to hear it physically (he not being\nallowed to hit us too hard) to outface the dishonor we should have been\ntaught to die rather than endure. And so idleness and worthlessness on\nthe one hand and a pretence of coercion on the other became a despicable\nroutine. If my schoolmasters had been really engaged in educating me\ninstead of painfully earning their bread by keeping me from annoying my\nelders they would have turned me out of the school, telling me that I\nwas thoroughly disloyal to it; that I had no intention of learning; that\nI was mocking and distracting the boys who did wish to learn; that I was\na liar and a shirker and a seditious little nuisance; and that nothing\ncould injure me in character and degrade their occupation more than\nallowing me (much less forcing me) to remain in the school under such\nconditions. But in order to get expelled, it was necessary commit\na crime of such atrocity that the parents of other boys would\nhave threatened to remove their sons sooner than allow them to be\nschoolfellows with the delinquent. I can remember only one case in which\nsuch a penalty was threatened; and in that case the culprit, a boarder,\nhad kissed a housemaid, or possibly, being a handsome youth, been kissed\nby her. She did not kiss me; and nobody ever dreamt of expelling me. The\ntruth was, a boy meant just so much a year to the institution. That was\nwhy he was kept there against his will. That was why he was kept there\nwhen his expulsion would have been an unspeakable relief and benefit\nboth to his teachers and himself.\n\nIt may be argued that if the uncommercial attitude had been taken,\nand all the disloyal wasters and idlers shewn sternly to the door,\nthe school would not have been emptied, but filled. But so honest an\nattitude was impossible. The masters must have hated the school much\nmore than the boys did. Just as you cannot imprison a man without\nimprisoning a warder to see that he does not escape, the warder being\ntied to the prison as effectually by the fear of unemployment and\nstarvation as the prisoner is by the bolts and bars, so these poor\nschoolmasters, with their small salaries and large classes, were as much\nprisoners as we were, and much more responsible and anxious ones. They\ncould not impose the heroic attitude on their employers; nor would they\nhave been able to obtain places as schoolmasters if their habits had\nbeen heroic. For the best of them their employment was provisional: they\nlooked forward to escaping from it into the pulpit. The ablest and most\nimpatient of them were often so irritated by the awkward, slow-witted,\nslovenly boys: that is, the ones that required special consideration and\npatient treatment, that they vented their irritation on them ruthlessly,\nnothing being easier than to entrap or bewilder such a boy into giving a\npretext for punishing him.\n\n\n\n\nMy Scholastic Acquirements\n\nThe results, as far as I was concerned, were what might have been\nexpected. My school made only the thinnest pretence of teaching anything\nbut Latin and Greek. When I went there as a very small boy I knew a good\ndeal of Latin grammar which I had been taught in a few weeks privately\nby my uncle. When I had been several years at school this same uncle\nexamined me and discovered that the net result of my schooling was that\nI had forgotten what he had taught me, and had learnt nothing else. To\nthis day, though I can still decline a Latin noun and repeat some of the\nold paradigms in the old meaningless way, because their rhythm sticks\nto me, I have never yet seen a Latin inscription on a tomb that I could\ntranslate throughout. Of Greek I can decipher perhaps the greater\npart of the Greek alphabet. In short, I am, as to classical education,\nanother Shakespear. I can read French as easily as English; and under\npressure of necessity I can turn to account some scraps of German and\na little operatic Italian; but these I was never taught at school.\nInstead, I was taught lying, dishonorable submission to tyranny, dirty\nstories, a blasphemous habit of treating love and maternity as\nobscene jokes, hopelessness, evasion, derision, cowardice, and all the\nblackguard's shifts by which the coward intimidates other cowards. And\nif I had been a boarder at an English public school instead of a day boy\nat an Irish one, I might have had to add to these, deeper shames still.\n\n\n\n\nSchoolmasters of Genius\n\nAnd now, if I have reduced the ghosts of my schoolmasters to melancholy\nacquiescence in all this (which everybody who has been at an ordinary\nschool will recognize as true), I have still to meet the much more\nsincere protests of the handful of people who have a natural genius for\n\"bringing up\" children. I shall be asked with kindly scorn whether I\nhave heard of Froebel and Pestalozzi, whether I know the work that is\nbeing done by Miss Mason and the Dottoressa Montessori or, best of all\nas I think, the Eurythmics School of Jacques Dalcroze at Hellerau near\nDresden. Jacques Dalcroze, like Plato, believes in saturating his pupils\nwith music. They walk to music, play to music, work to music, obey drill\ncommands that would bewilder a guardsman to music, think to music,\nlive to music, get so clearheaded about music that they can move their\nseveral limbs each in a different metre until they become complicated\nliving magazines of cross rhythms, and, what is more, make music\nfor others to do all these things to. Stranger still, though Jacques\nDalcroze, like all these great teachers, is the completest of tyrants,\nknowing what is right and that he must and will have the lesson just so\nor else break his heart (not somebody else's, observe), yet his school\nis so fascinating that every woman who sees it exclaims \"Oh, why was I\nnot taught like this!\" and elderly gentlemen excitedly enrol themselves\nas students and distract classes of infants by their desperate endeavors\nto beat two in a bar with one hand and three with the other, and start\noff on earnest walks round the room, taking two steps backward whenever\nMonsieur Daleroze calls out \"Hop!\" Oh yes: I know all about these\nwonderful schools that you cannot keep children or even adults out of,\nand these teachers whom their pupils not only obey without coercion, but\nadore. And if you will tell me roughly how many Masons and Montessoris\nand Dalcrozes you think you can pick up in Europe for salaries of from\nthirty shillings to five pounds a week, I will estimate your chances\nof converting your millions of little scholastic hells into little\nscholastic heavens. If you are a distressed gentlewoman starting to make\na living, you can still open a little school; and you can easily buy a\nsecondhand brass plate inscribed PESTALOZZIAN INSTITUTE and nail it to\nyour door, though you have no more idea of who Pestalozzi was and what\nhe advocated or how he did it than the manager of a hotel which began\nas a Hydropathic has of the water cure. Or you can buy a cheaper plate\ninscribed KINDERGARTEN, and imagine, or leave others to imagine, that\nFroebel is the governing genius of your little _creche_. No doubt the\nnew brass plates are being inscribed Montessori Institute, and will be\nused when the Dotteressa is no longer with us by all the Mrs Pipchins\nand Mrs Wilfers throughout this unhappy land.\n\nI will go further, and admit that the brass plates may not all be\nfrauds. I will tell you that one of my friends was led to genuine\nlove and considerable knowledge of classical literature by an Irish\nschoolmaster whom you would call a hedge schoolmaster (he would not be\nallowed to teach anything now) and that it took four years of Harrow\nto obliterate that knowledge and change the love into loathing. Another\nfriend of mine who keeps a school in the suburbs, and who deeply\ndeplores my \"prejudice against schoolmasters,\" has offered to accept my\nchallenge to tell his pupils that they are as free to get up and go out\nof the school at any moment as their parents are to get up and go out\nof a theatre where my plays are being performed. Even among my own\nschoolmasters I can recollect a few whose classes interested me, and\nwhom I should certainly have pestered for information and instruction\nif I could have got into any decent human relationship with them, and\nif they had not been compelled by their position to defend themselves as\ncarefully against such advances as against furtive attempts to hurt them\naccidentally in the football field or smash their hats with a clod from\nbehind a wall. But these rare cases actually do more harm than good; for\nthey encourage us to pretend that all schoolmasters are like that.\nOf what use is it to us that there are always somewhere two or three\nteachers of children whose specific genius for their occupation triumphs\nover our tyrannous system and even finds in it its opportunity? For that\nmatter, it is possible, if difficult, to find a solicitor, or even a\njudge, who has some notion of what law means, a doctor with a glimmering\nof science, an officer who understands duty and discipline, and a\nclergyman with an inkling of religion, though there are nothing like\nenough of them to go round. But even the few who, like Ibsen's Mrs\nSolness, have \"a genius for nursing the souls of little children\" are\nlike angels forced to work in prisons instead of in heaven; and even\nat that they are mostly underpaid and despised. That friend of mine who\nwent from the hedge schoolmaster to Harrow once saw a schoolmaster rush\nfrom an elementary school in pursuit of a boy and strike him. My friend,\nnot considering that the unfortunate man was probably goaded\nbeyond endurance, smote the schoolmaster and blackened his eye. The\nschoolmaster appealed to the law; and my friend found himself waiting\nnervously in the Hammersmith Police Court to answer for his breach of\nthe peace. In his anxiety he asked a police officer what would happen\nto him. \"What did you do?\" said the officer. \"I gave a man a black eye\"\nsaid my friend. \"Six pounds if he was a gentleman: two pounds if he\nwasnt,\" said the constable. \"He was a schoolmaster\" said my friend. \"Two\npounds\" said the officer; and two pounds it was. The blood money was\npaid cheerfully; and I have ever since advised elementary schoolmasters\nto qualify themselves in the art of self-defence, as the British\nConstitution expresses our national estimate of them by allowing us to\nblacken three of their eyes for the same price as one of an ordinary\nprofessional man. How many Froebels and Pestalozzis and Miss Masons and\nDoctoress Montessoris would you be likely to get on these terms even if\nthey occurred much more frequently in nature than they actually do?\n\nNo: I cannot be put off by the news that our system would be perfect if\nit were worked by angels. I do not admit it even at that, just as I do\nnot admit that if the sky fell we should all catch larks. But I do\nnot propose to bother about a supply of specific genius which does\nnot exist, and which, if it did exist, could operate only by at once\nrecognizing and establishing the rights of children.\n\n\n\n\nWhat We Do Not Teach, and Why\n\nTo my mind, a glance at the subjects now taught in schools ought to\nconvince any reasonable person that the object of the lessons is to keep\nchildren out of mischief, and not to qualify them for their part in life\nas responsible citizens of a free State. It is not possible to maintain\nfreedom in any State, no matter how perfect its original constitution,\nunless its publicly active citizens know a good deal of constitutional\nhistory, law, and political science, with its basis of economics. If\nas much pains had been taken a century ago to make us all understand\nRicardo's law of rent as to learn our catechisms, the face of the world\nwould have been changed for the better. But for that very reason the\ngreatest care is taken to keep such beneficially subversive\nknowledge from us, with the result that in public life we are either\nplace-hunters, anarchists, or sheep shepherded by wolves.\n\nBut it will be observed that these are highly controversial subjects.\nNow no controversial subject can be taught dogmatically. He who knows\nonly the official side of a controversy knows less than nothing of its\nnature. The abler a schoolmaster is, the more dangerous he is to his\npupils unless they have the fullest opportunity of hearing another\nequally able person do his utmost to shake his authority and convict him\nof error.\n\nAt present such teaching is very unpopular. It does not exist in\nschools; but every adult who derives his knowledge of public affairs\nfrom the newspapers can take in, at the cost of an extra halfpenny, two\npapers of opposite politics. Yet the ordinary man so dislikes having his\nmind unsettled, as he calls it, that he angrily refuses to allow a paper\nwhich dissents from his views to be brought into his house. Even at his\nclub he resents seeing it, and excludes it if it happens to run counter\nto the opinions of all the members. The result is that his opinions are\nnot worth considering. A churchman who never reads The Freethinker very\nsoon has no more real religion than the atheist who never reads The\nChurch Times. The attitude is the same in both cases: they want to hear\nnothing good of their enemies; consequently they remain enemies and\nsuffer from bad blood all their lives; whereas men who know their\nopponents and understand their case, quite commonly respect and like\nthem, and always learn something from them.\n\nHere, again, as at so many points, we come up against the abuse of\nschools to keep people in ignorance and error, so that they may be\nincapable of successful revolt against their industrial slavery. The\nmost important simple fundamental economic truth to impress on a\nchild in complicated civilizations like ours is the truth that whoever\nconsumes goods or services without producing by personal effort the\nequivalent of what he or she consumes, inflicts on the community\nprecisely the same injury that a thief produces, and would, in any\nhonest State, be treated as a thief, however full his or her pockets\nmight be of money made by other people. The nation that first teaches\nits children that truth, instead of flogging them if they discover\nit for themselves, may have to fight all the slaves of all the other\nnations to begin with; but it will beat them as easily as an unburdened\nman with his hands free and with all his energies in full play can beat\nan invalid who has to carry another invalid on his back.\n\nThis, however, is not an evil produced by the denial of children's\nrights, nor is it inherent in the nature of schools. I mention it only\nbecause it would be folly to call for a reform of our schools without\ntaking account of the corrupt resistance which awaits the reformer.\n\nA word must also be said about the opposition to reform of the vested\ninterest of the classical and coercive schoolmaster. He, poor wretch,\nhas no other means of livelihood; and reform would leave him as a\nworkman is now left when he is superseded by a machine. He had therefore\nbetter do what he can to get the workman compensated, so as to make the\npublic familiar with the idea of compensation before his own turn comes.\n\n\n\n\nTaboo in Schools\n\nThe suppression of economic knowledge, disastrous as it is, is quite\nintelligible, its corrupt motive being as clear as the motive of a\nburglar for concealing his jemmy from a policeman. But the other great\nsuppression in our schools, the suppression of the subject of sex, is a\ncase of taboo. In mankind, the lower the type, and the less cultivated\nthe mind, the less courage there is to face important subjects\nobjectively. The ablest and most highly cultivated people continually\ndiscuss religion, politics, and sex: it is hardly an exaggeration to say\nthat they discuss nothing else with fully-awakened interest. Commoner\nand less cultivated people, even when they form societies for\ndiscussion, make a rule that politics and religion are not to be\nmentioned, and take it for granted that no decent person would attempt\nto discuss sex. The three subjects are feared because they rouse the\ncrude passions which call for furious gratification in murder and rapine\nat worst, and, at best, lead to quarrels and undesirable states of\nconsciousness.\n\nEven when this excuse of bad manners, ill temper, and brutishness (for\nthat is what it comes to) compels us to accept it from those adults\namong whom political and theological discussion does as a matter of fact\nlead to the drawing of knives and pistols, and sex discussion leads to\nobscenity, it has no application to children except as an imperative\nreason for training them to respect other people's opinions, and to\ninsist on respect for their own in these as in other important matters\nwhich are equally dangerous: for example, money. And in any case\nthere are decisive reasons; superior, like the reasons for\nsuspending conventional reticences between doctor and patient, to all\nconsiderations of mere decorum, for giving proper instruction in the\nfacts of sex. Those who object to it (not counting coarse people who\nthoughtlessly seize every opportunity of affecting and parading a\nfictitious delicacy) are, in effect, advocating ignorance as a safeguard\nagainst precocity. If ignorance were practicable there would be\nsomething to be said for it up to the age at which ignorance is a danger\ninstead of a safeguard. Even as it is, it seems undesirable that any\nspecial emphasis should be given to the subject, whether by way of\ndelicacy and poetry or too impressive warning. But the plain fact is\nthat in refusing to allow the child to be taught by qualified unrelated\nelders (the parents shrink from the lesson, even when they are otherwise\nqualified, because their own relation to the child makes the subject\nimpossible between them) we are virtually arranging to have our children\ntaught by other children in guilty secrets and unclean jests. And that\nsettles the question for all sensible people.\n\nThe dogmatic objection, the sheer instinctive taboo which rules the\nsubject out altogether as indecent, has no age limit. It means that\nat no matter what age a woman consents to a proposal of marriage, she\nshould do so in ignorance of the relation she is undertaking. When this\nactually happens (and apparently it does happen oftener than would seem\npossible) a horrible fraud is being practiced on both the man and the\nwoman. He is led to believe that she knows what she is promising, and\nthat he is in no danger of finding himself bound to a woman to whom\nhe is eugenically antipathetic. She contemplates nothing but such\naffectionate relations as may exist between her and her nearest kinsmen,\nand has no knowledge of the condition which, if not foreseen, must come\nas an amazing revelation and a dangerous shock, ending possibly in the\ndiscovery that the marriage has been an irreparable mistake. Nothing can\njustify such a risk. There may be people incapable of understanding that\nthe right to know all there is to know about oneself is a natural human\nright that sweeps away all the pretences of others to tamper with one's\nconsciousness in order to produce what they choose to consider a good\ncharacter. But they must here bow to the plain mischievousness of\nentrapping people into contracts on which the happiness of their whole\nlives depends without letting them know what they are undertaking.\n\n\n\n\nAlleged Novelties in Modern Schools\n\nThere is just one more nuisance to be disposed of before I come to\nthe positive side of my case. I mean the person who tells me that\nmy schooldays belong to a bygone order of educational ideas and\ninstitutions, and that schools are not now a bit like my old school.\nI reply, with Sir Walter Raleigh, by calling on my soul to give this\nstatement the lie. Some years ago I lectured in Oxford on the subject\nof Education. A friend to whom I mentioned my intention said, \"You know\nnothing of modern education: schools are not now what they were when\nyou were a boy.\" I immediately procured the time sheets of half a dozen\nmodern schools, and found, as I expected, that they might all have been\nmy old school: there was no real difference. I may mention, too, that\nI have visited modern schools, and observed that there is a tendency to\nhang printed pictures in an untidy and soulless manner on the walls,\nand occasionally to display on the mantel-shelf a deplorable glass case\ncontaining certain objects which might possibly, if placed in the hands\nof the pupils, give them some practical experience of the weight of\na pound and the length of an inch. And sometimes a scoundrel who has\nrifled a bird's nest or killed a harmless snake encourages the children\nto go and do likewise by putting his victims into an imitation nest and\nbottle and exhibiting them as aids to \"Nature study.\" A suggestion that\nNature is worth study would certainly have staggered my schoolmasters;\nso perhaps I may admit a gleam of progress here. But as any child who\nattempted to handle these dusty objects would probably be caned, I do\nnot attach any importance to such modernities in school furniture.\nThe school remains what it was in my boyhood, because its real object\nremains what it was. And that object, I repeat, is to keep the children\nout of mischief: mischief meaning for the most part worrying the\ngrown-ups.\n\n\n\n\nWhat is to be Done?\n\nThe practical question, then, is what to do with the children. Tolerate\nthem at home we will not. Let them run loose in the streets we dare not\nuntil our streets become safe places for children, which, to our utter\nshame, they are not at present, though they can hardly be worse than\nsome homes and some schools.\n\nThe grotesque difficulty of making even a beginning was brought home to\nme in the little village in Hertfordshire where I write these lines by\nthe lady of the manor, who asked me very properly what I was going to do\nfor the village school. I did not know what to reply. As the school kept\nthe children quiet during my working hours, I did not for the sake of\nmy own personal convenience want to blow it up with dynamite as I should\nlike to blow up most schools. So I asked for guidance. \"You ought to\ngive a prize,\" said the lady. I asked if there was a prize for good\nconduct. As I expected, there was: one for the best-behaved boy and\nanother for the best-behaved girl. On reflection I offered a handsome\nprize for the worst-behaved boy and girl on condition that a record\nshould be kept of their subsequent careers and compared with the records\nof the best-behaved, in order to ascertain whether the school criterion\nof good conduct was valid out of school. My offer was refused because\nit would not have had the effect of encouraging the children to give as\nlittle trouble as possible, which is of course the real object of all\nconduct prizes in schools.\n\nI must not pretend, then, that I have a system ready to replace all\nthe other systems. Obstructing the way of the proper organization of\nchildhood, as of everything else, lies our ridiculous misdistribution\nof the national income, with its accompanying class distinctions and\nimposition of snobbery on children as a necessary part of their social\ntraining. The result of our economic folly is that we are a nation of\nundesirable acquaintances; and the first object of all our institutions\nfor children is segregation. If, for example, our children were set free\nto roam and play about as they pleased, they would have to be policed;\nand the first duty of the police in a State like ours would be to see\nthat every child wore a badge indicating its class in society, and that\nevery child seen speaking to another child with a lower-class badge, or\nany child wearing a higher badge than that allotted to it by, say, the\nCollege of Heralds, should immediately be skinned alive with a birch\nrod. It might even be insisted that girls with high-class badges should\nbe attended by footmen, grooms, or even military escorts. In short,\nthere is hardly any limit to the follies with which our Commercialism\nwould infect any system that it would tolerate at all. But something\nlike a change of heart is still possible; and since all the evils of\nsnobbery and segregation are rampant in our schools at present we may as\nwell make the best as the worst of them.\n\n\n\n\nChildren's Rights and Duties\n\nNow let us ask what are a child's rights, and what are the rights of\nsociety over the child. Its rights, being clearly those of any other\nhuman being, are summed up in the right to live: that is, to have all\nthe conclusive arguments that prove that it would be better dead, that\nit is a child of wrath, that the population is already excessive, that\nthe pains of life are greater than its pleasures, that its sacrifice in\na hospital or laboratory experiment might save millions of lives,\netc. etc. etc., put out of the question, and its existence accepted\nas necessary and sacred, all theories to the contrary notwithstanding,\nwhether by Calvin or Schopenhauer or Pasteur or the nearest person with\na taste for infanticide. And this right to live includes, and in fact\nis, the right to be what the child likes and can, to do what it likes\nand can, to make what it likes and can, to think what it likes and\ncan, to smash what it dislikes and can, and generally to behave in an\naltogether unaccountable manner within the limits imposed by the similar\nrights of its neighbors. And the rights of society over it clearly\nextend to requiring it to qualify itself to live in society without\nwasting other peoples time: that is, it must know the rules of the road,\nbe able to read placards and proclamations, fill voting papers, compose\nand send letters and telegrams, purchase food and clothing and\nrailway tickets for itself, count money and give and take change, and,\ngenerally, know how many beans made five. It must know some law, were it\nonly a simple set of commandments, some political economy, agriculture\nenough to shut the gates of fields with cattle in them and not to\ntrample on growing crops, sanitation enough not to defile its haunts,\nand religion enough to have some idea of why it is allowed its rights\nand why it must respect the rights of others. And the rest of its\neducation must consist of anything else it can pick up; for beyond this\nsociety cannot go with any certainty, and indeed can only go this far\nrather apologetically and provisionally, as doing the best it can on\nvery uncertain ground.\n\n\n\n\nShould Children Earn their Living?\n\nNow comes the question how far children should be asked to contribute\nto the support of the community. In approaching it we must put aside\nthe considerations that now induce all humane and thoughtful political\nstudents to agitate for the uncompromising abolition of child labor\nunder our capitalist system. It is not the least of the curses of that\nsystem that it will bequeath to future generations a mass of legislation\nto prevent capitalists from \"using up nine generations of men in one\ngeneration,\" as they began by doing until they were restrained by law at\nthe suggestion of Robert Owen, the founder of English Socialism. Most of\nthis legislation will become an insufferable restraint upon freedom\nand variety of action when Capitalism goes the way of Druidic human\nsacrifice (a much less slaughterous institution). There is every reason\nwhy a child should not be allowed to work for commercial profit or for\nthe support of its parents at the expense of its own future; but there\nis no reason whatever why a child should not do some work for its own\nsake and that of the community if it can be shewn that both it and the\ncommunity will be the better for it.\n\n\n\n\nChildren's Happiness\n\nAlso it is important to put the happiness of the children rather\ncarefully in its place, which is really not a front place. The\nunsympathetic, selfish, hard people who regard happiness as a very\nexceptional indulgence to which children are by no means entitled,\nthough they may be allowed a very little of it on their birthdays or at\nChristmas, are sometimes better parents in effect than those who imagine\nthat children are as capable of happiness as adults. Adults habitually\nexaggerate their own capacity in that direction grossly; yet most adults\ncan stand an allowance of happiness that would be quite thrown away on\nchildren. The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother\nabout whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation,\nbecause occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person\nis neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active, which is\npleasanter than any happiness until you are tired of it. That is why it\nis necessary to happiness that one should be tired. Music after dinner\nis pleasant: music before breakfast is so unpleasant as to be clearly\nunnatural. To people who are not overworked holidays are a nuisance.\nTo people who are, and who can afford them, they are a troublesome\nnecessity. A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.\n\n\n\n\nThe Horror of the Perpetual Holiday\n\nIt will be said here that, on the contrary, heaven is always conceived\nas a perpetual holiday, and that whoever is not born to an independent\nincome is striving for one or longing for one because it gives holidays\nfor life. To which I reply, first, that heaven, as conventionally\nconceived, is a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable,\nthat nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven, though\nplenty of people have described a day at the seaside; and that the\ngenuine popular verdict on it is expressed in the proverb \"Heaven for\nholiness and Hell for company.\" Second, I point out that the wretched\npeople who have independent incomes and no useful occupation, do the\nmost amazingly disagreeable and dangerous things to make themselves\ntired and hungry in the evening. When they are not involved in what they\ncall sport, they are doing aimlessly what other people have to be paid\nto do: driving horses and motor cars; trying on dresses and walking up\nand down to shew them off; and acting as footmen and housemaids to royal\npersonages. The sole and obvious cause of the notion that idleness is\ndelightful and that heaven is a place where there is nothing to be done,\nis our school system and our industrial system. The school is a prison\nin which work is a punishment and a curse. In avowed prisons, hard\nlabor, the only alleviation of a prisoner's lot, is treated as an\naggravation of his punishment; and everything possible is done to\nintensify the prisoner's inculcated and unnatural notion that work is an\nevil. In industry we are overworked and underfed prisoners. Under such\nabsurd circumstances our judgment of things becomes as perverted as our\nhabits. If we were habitually underworked and overfed, our notion\nof heaven would be a place where everybody worked strenuously for\ntwenty-four hours a day and never got anything to eat.\n\nOnce realize that a perpetual holiday is beyond human endurance, and\nthat \"Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do\" and it will\nbe seen that we have no right to impose a perpetual holiday on children.\nIf we did, they would soon outdo the Labor Party in their claim for a\nRight to Work Bill.\n\nIn any case no child should be brought up to suppose that its food and\nclothes come down from heaven or are miraculously conjured from empty\nspace by papa. Loathsome as we have made the idea of duty (like the idea\nof work) we must habituate children to a sense of repayable obligation\nto the community for what they consume and enjoy, and inculcate the\nrepayment as a point of honor. If we did that today--and nothing but\nflat dishonesty prevents us from doing it--we should have no idle rich\nand indeed probably no rich, since there is no distinction in being\nrich if you have to pay scot and lot in personal effort like the working\nfolk. Therefore, if for only half an hour a day, a child should do\nsomething serviceable to the community.\n\nProductive work for children has the advantage that its discipline is\nthe discipline of impersonal necessity, not that of wanton personal\ncoercion. The eagerness of children in our industrial districts to\nescape from school to the factory is not caused by lighter tasks or\nshorter hours in the factory, nor altogether by the temptation of wages,\nnor even by the desire for novelty, but by the dignity of adult work,\nthe exchange of the factitious personal tyranny of the schoolmaster,\nfrom which the grown-ups are free, for the stern but entirely dignified\nLaws of Life to which all flesh is subject.\n\n\n\n\nUniversity Schoolboyishness\n\nOlder children might do a good deal before beginning their collegiate\neducation. What is the matter with our universities is that all the\nstudents are schoolboys, whereas it is of the very essence of university\neducation that they should be men. The function of a university is not\nto teach things that can now be taught as well or better by University\nExtension lectures or by private tutors or modern correspondence classes\nwith gramophones. We go to them to be socialized; to acquire the hall\nmark of communal training; to become citizens of the world instead of\ninmates of the enlarged rabbit hutches we call homes; to learn manners\nand become unchallengeable ladies and gentlemen. The social pressure\nwhich effects these changes should be that of persons who have faced\nthe full responsibilities of adults as working members of the general\ncommunity, not that of a barbarous rabble of half emancipated schoolboys\nand unemancipable pedants. It is true that in a reasonable state of\nsociety this outside experience would do for us very completely what the\nuniversity does now so corruptly that we tolerate its bad manners only\nbecause they are better than no manners at all. But the university will\nalways exist in some form as a community of persons desirous of pushing\ntheir culture to the highest pitch they are capable of, not as solitary\nstudents reading in seclusion, but as members of a body of individuals\nall pursuing culture, talking culture, thinking culture, above all,\ncriticizing culture. If such persons are to read and talk and criticize\nto any purpose, they must know the world outside the university at least\nas well as the shopkeeper in the High Street does. And this is just\nwhat they do not know at present. You may say of them, paraphrasing\nMr. Kipling, \"What do they know of Plato that only Plato know?\" If our\nuniversities would exclude everybody who had not earned a living by his\nor her own exertions for at least a couple of years, their effect would\nbe vastly improved.\n\n\n\n\nThe New Laziness\n\nThe child of the future, then, if there is to be any future but one of\ndecay, will work more or less for its living from an early age; and\nin doing so it will not shock anyone, provided there be no longer any\nreason to associate the conception of children working for their living\nwith infants toiling in a factory for ten hours a day or boys drudging\nfrom nine to six under gas lamps in underground city offices. Lads and\nlasses in their teens will probably be able to produce as much as the\nmost expensive person now costs in his own person (it is retinue that\neats up the big income) without working too hard or too long for quite\nas much happiness as they can enjoy. The question to be balanced then\nwill be, not how soon people should be put to work, but how soon they\nshould be released from any obligation of the kind. A life's work is\nlike a day's work: it can begin early and leave off early or begin late\nand leave off late, or, as with us, begin too early and never leave off\nat all, obviously the worst of all possible plans. In any event we\nmust finally reckon work, not as the curse our schools and prisons and\ncapitalist profit factories make it seem today, but as a prime necessity\nof a tolerable existence. And if we cannot devise fresh wants as fast\nas we develop the means of supplying them, there will come a scarcity\nof the needed, cut-and-dried, appointed work that is always ready to\neverybody's hand. It may have to be shared out among people all of whom\nwant more of it. And then a new sort of laziness will become the bugbear\nof society: the laziness that refuses to face the mental toil and\nadventure of making work by inventing new ideas or extending the domain\nof knowledge, and insists on a ready-made routine. It may come to\nforcing people to retire before they are willing to make way for younger\nones: that is, to driving all persons of a certain age out of industry,\nleaving them to find something experimental to occupy them on pain of\nperpetual holiday. Men will then try to spend twenty thousand a year\nfor the sake of having to earn it. Instead of being what we are now, the\ncheapest and nastiest of the animals, we shall be the costliest, most\nfastidious, and best bred. In short, there is no end to the astonishing\nthings that may happen when the curse of Adam becomes first a blessing\nand then an incurable habit. And in that day we must not grudge children\ntheir share of it.\n\n\n\n\nThe Infinite School Task\n\nThe question of children's work, however, is only a question of what the\nchild ought to do for the community. How highly it should qualify itself\nis another matter. But most of the difficulty of inducing children\nto learn would disappear if our demands became not only definite but\nfinite. When learning is only an excuse for imprisonment, it is an\ninstrument of torture which becomes more painful the more progress is\nmade. Thus when you have forced a child to learn the Church Catechism,\na document profound beyond the comprehension of most adults, you are\nsometimes at a standstill for something else to teach; and you therefore\nkeep the wretched child repeating its catechism again and again until\nyou hit on the plan of making it learn instalments of Bible verses,\npreferably from the book of Numbers. But as it is less trouble to set a\nlesson that you know yourself, there is a tendency to keep repeating the\nalready learnt lesson rather than break new ground. At school I began\nwith a fairly complete knowledge of Latin grammar in the childish sense\nof being able to repeat all the paradigms; and I was kept at this, or\nrather kept in a class where the master never asked me to do it because\nhe knew I could, and therefore devoted himself to trapping the boys who\ncould not, until I finally forgot most of it. But when progress took\nplace, what did it mean? First it meant Caesar, with the foreknowledge\nthat to master Caesar meant only being set at Virgil, with the\nculminating horror of Greek and Homer in reserve at the end of that. I\npreferred Caesar, because his statement that Gaul is divided into three\nparts, though neither interesting nor true, was the only Latin sentence\nI could translate at sight: therefore the longer we stuck at Caesar the\nbetter I was pleased. Just so do less classically educated children see\nnothing in the mastery of addition but the beginning of subtraction, and\nso on through multiplication and division and fractions, with the black\ncloud of algebra on the horizon. And if a boy rushes through all that,\nthere is always the calculus to fall back on, unless indeed you insist\non his learning music, and proceed to hit him if he cannot tell you the\nyear Beethoven was born.\n\nA child has a right to finality as regards its compulsory lessons.\nAlso as regards physical training. At present it is assumed that the\nschoolmaster has a right to force every child into an attempt to become\nPorson and Bentley, Leibnitz and Newton, all rolled into one. This is\nthe tradition of the oldest grammar schools. In our times an even more\nhorrible and cynical claim has been made for the right to drive boys\nthrough compulsory games in the playing fields until they are too much\nexhausted physically to do anything but drop off to sleep. This is\nsupposed to protect them from vice; but as it also protects them from\npoetry, literature, music, meditation and prayer, it may be dismissed\nwith the obvious remark that if boarding schools are places whose\nkeepers are driven to such monstrous measures lest more abominable\nthings should happen, then the sooner boarding schools are violently\nabolished the better. It is true that society may make physical claims\non the child as well as mental ones: the child must learn to walk, to\nuse a knife and fork, to swim, to ride a bicycle, to acquire sufficient\npower of self-defence to make an attack on it an arduous and uncertain\nenterprise, perhaps to fly. What as a matter of common-sense it clearly\nhas not a right to do is to make this an excuse for keeping the child\nslaving for ten hours at physical exercises on the ground that it is not\nyet as dexterous as Cinquevalli and as strong as Sandow.\n\n\n\n\nThe Rewards and Risks of Knowledge\n\nIn a word, we have no right to insist on educating a child; for its\neducation can end only with its life and will not even then be complete.\nCompulsory completion of education is the last folly of a rotten\nand desperate civilization. It is the rattle in its throat before\ndissolution. All we can fairly do is to prescribe certain definite\nacquirements and accomplishments as qualifications for certain\nemployments; and to secure them, not by the ridiculous method of\ninflicting injuries on the persons who have not yet mastered them, but\nby attaching certain privileges (not pecuniary) to the employments.\n\nMost acquirements carry their own privileges with them. Thus a baby has\nto be pretty closely guarded and imprisoned because it cannot take\ncare of itself. It has even to be carried about (the most complete\nconceivable infringement of its liberty) until it can walk. But nobody\ngoes on carrying children after they can walk lest they should walk into\nmischief, though Arab boys make their sisters carry them, as our own\nspoiled children sometimes make their nurses, out of mere laziness,\nbecause sisters in the East and nurses in the West are kept in\nservitude. But in a society of equals (the only reasonable and\npermanently possible sort of society) children are in much greater\ndanger of acquiring bandy legs through being left to walk before they\nare strong enough than of being carried when they are well able to walk.\nAnyhow, freedom of movement in a nursery is the reward of learning to\nwalk; and in precisely the same way freedom of movement in a city is\nthe reward of learning how to read public notices, and to count and use\nmoney. The consequences are of course much larger than the mere ability\nto read the name of a street or the number of a railway platform and the\ndestination of a train. When you enable a child to read these, you also\nenable it to read this preface, to the utter destruction, you may quite\npossibly think, of its morals and docility. You also expose it to the\ndanger of being run over by taxicabs and trains. The moral and physical\nrisks of education are enormous: every new power a child acquires,\nfrom speaking, walking, and co-ordinating its vision, to conquering\ncontinents and founding religions, opens up immense new possibilities of\nmischief. Teach a child to write and you teach it how to forge: teach it\nto speak and you teach it how to lie: teach it to walk and you teach it\nhow to kick its mother to death.\n\nThe great problem of slavery for those whose aim is to maintain it\nis the problem of reconciling the efficiency of the slave with\nthe helplessness that keeps him in servitude; and this problem is\nfortunately not completely soluble; for it is not in fact found possible\nfor a duke to treat his solicitor or his doctor as he treats his\nlaborers, though they are all equally his slaves: the laborer being in\nfact less dependent on his favor than the professional man. Hence it is\nthat men come to resent, of all things, protection, because it so often\nmeans restriction of their liberty lest they should make a bad use\nof it. If there are dangerous precipices about, it is much easier\nand cheaper to forbid people to walk near the edge than to put up an\neffective fence: that is why both legislators and parents and the paid\ndeputies of parents are always inhibiting and prohibiting and punishing\nand scolding and laming and cramping and delaying progress and growth\ninstead of making the dangerous places as safe as possible and then\nboldly taking and allowing others to take the irreducible minimum of\nrisk.\n\n\n\n\nEnglish Physical Hardihood and Spiritual Cowardice\n\nIt is easier to convert most people to the need for allowing their\nchildren to run physical risks than moral ones. I can remember a\nrelative of mine who, when I was a small child, unused to horses and\nvery much afraid of them, insisted on putting me on a rather rumbustious\npony with little spurs on my heels (knowing that in my agitation I would\nuse them unconsciously), and being enormously amused at my terrors. Yet\nwhen that same lady discovered that I had found a copy of The Arabian\nNights and was devouring it with avidity, she was horrified, and hid it\naway from me lest it should break my soul as the pony might have broken\nmy neck. This way of producing hardy bodies and timid souls is so common\nin country houses that you may spend hours in them listening to stories\nof broken collar bones, broken backs, and broken necks without coming\nupon a single spiritual adventure or daring thought.\n\nBut whether the risks to which liberty exposes us are moral or physical\nour right to liberty involves the right to run them. A man who is not\nfree to risk his neck as an aviator or his soul as a heretic is not free\nat all; and the right to liberty begins, not at the age of 21 years but\nof 21 seconds.\n\n\n\n\nThe Risks of Ignorance and Weakness\n\nThe difficulty with children is that they need protection from risks\nthey are too young to understand, and attacks they can neither avoid\nnor resist. You may on academic grounds allow a child to snatch glowing\ncoals from the fire once. You will not do it twice. The risks of\nliberty we must let everyone take; but the risks of ignorance and\nself-helplessness are another matter. Not only children but adults\nneed protection from them. At present adults are often exposed to risks\noutside their knowledge or beyond their comprehension or powers of\nresistance or foresight: for example, we have to look on every day\nat marriages or financial speculations that may involve far worse\nconsequences than burnt fingers. And just as it is part of the business\nof adults to protect children, to feed them, clothe them, shelter them,\nand shift for them in all sorts of ways until they are able to shift for\nthemselves, it is coming more and more to be seen that this is true not\nonly of the relation between adults and children, but between adults and\nadults. We shall not always look on indifferently at foolish marriages\nand financial speculations, nor allow dead men to control live\ncommunities by ridiculous wills and living heirs to squander and ruin\ngreat estates, nor tolerate a hundred other absurd liberties that\nwe allow today because we are too lazy to find out the proper way to\ninterfere. But the interference must be regulated by some theory of the\nindividual's rights. Though the right to live is absolute, it is not\nunconditional. If a man is unbearably mischievous, he must be killed.\nThis is a mere matter of necessity, like the killing of a man-eating\ntiger in a nursery, a venomous snake in the garden, or a fox in the\npoultry yard. No society could be constructed on the assumption that\nsuch extermination is a violation of the creature's right to live, and\ntherefore must not be allowed. And then at once arises the danger into\nwhich morality has led us: the danger of persecution. One Christian\nspreading his doctrines may seem more mischievous than a dozen thieves:\nthrow him therefore to the lions. A lying or disobedient child may\ncorrupt a whole generation and make human Society impossible: therefore\nthrash the vice out of him. And so on until our whole system of\nabortion, intimidation, tyranny, cruelty and the rest is in full swing\nagain.\n\n\n\n\nThe Common Sense of Toleration\n\nThe real safeguard against this is the dogma of Toleration. I need not\nhere repeat the compact treatise on it which I prepared for the Joint\nCommittee on the Censorship of Stage Plays, and prefixed to The Shewing\nUp of Blanco Posnet. It must suffice now to say that the present must\nnot attempt to schoolmaster the future by pretending to know good from\nevil in tendency, or protect citizens against shocks to their opinions\nand convictions, moral, political or religious: in other words it must\nnot persecute doctrines of any kind, or what is called bad taste,\nand must insist on all persons facing such shocks as they face frosty\nweather or any of the other disagreeable, dangerous, or bracing\nincidents of freedom. The expediency of Toleration has been forced on us\nby the fact that progressive enlightenment depends on a fair hearing for\ndoctrines which at first appear seditious, blasphemous, and immoral, and\nwhich deeply shock people who never think originally, thought being with\nthem merely a habit and an echo. The deeper ground for Toleration is\nthe nature of creation, which, as we now know, proceeds by evolution.\nEvolution finds its way by experiment; and this finding of the way\nvaries according to the stage of development reached, from the blindest\ngroping along the line of least resistance to intellectual speculation,\nwith its practical sequel of hypothesis and experimental verification;\nor to observation, induction, and deduction; or even into so rapid and\nintuitive an integration of all these processes in a single brain\nthat we get the inspired guess of the man of genius and the desperate\nresolution of the teacher of new truths who is first slain as a\nblasphemous apostate and then worshipped as a prophet.\n\nHere the law for the child is the same as for the adult. The high priest\nmust not rend his garments and cry \"Crucify him\" when he is shocked:\nthe atheist must not clamor for the suppression of Law's Serious Call\nbecause it has for two centuries destroyed the natural happiness of\ninnumerable unfortunate children by persuading their parents that it is\ntheir religious duty to be miserable. It, and the Sermon on the Mount,\nand Machiavelli's Prince, and La Rochefoucauld's maxims, and Hymns\nAncient and Modern, and De Glanville's apologue, and Dr. Watts's rhymes,\nand Nietzsche's Gay Science, and Ingersoll's Mistakes of Moses, and the\nspeeches and pamphlets of the people who want us to make war on\nGermany, and the Noodle's Orations and articles of our politicians and\njournalists, must all be tolerated not only because any of them may for\nall we know be on the right track but because it is in the conflict of\nopinion that we win knowledge and wisdom. However terrible the wounds\nsuffered in that conflict, they are better than the barren peace of\ndeath that follows when all the combatants are slaughtered or bound hand\nand foot.\n\nThe difficulty at present is that though this necessity for Toleration\nis a law of political science as well established as the law of\ngravitation, our rulers are never taught political science: on the\ncontrary, they are taught in school that the master tolerates nothing\nthat is disagreeable to him; that ruling is simply being master; and\nthat the master's method is the method of violent punishment. And our\ncitizens, all school taught, are walking in the same darkness. As I\nwrite these lines the Home Secretary is explaining that a man who has\nbeen imprisoned for blasphemy must not be released because his remarks\nwere painful to the feelings of his pious fellow townsmen. Now it\nhappens that this very Home Secretary has driven many thousands of his\nfellow citizens almost beside themselves by the crudity of his notions\nof government, and his simple inability to understand why he should\nnot use and make laws to torment and subdue people who do not happen\nto agree with him. In a word, he is not a politician, but a grown-up\nschoolboy who has at last got a cane in his hand. And as all the rest of\nus are in the same condition (except as to command of the cane) the only\nobjection made to his proceedings takes the shape of clamorous demands\nthat _he_ should be caned instead of being allowed to cane other people.\n\n\n\n\nThe Sin of Athanasius\n\nIt seems hopeless. Anarchists are tempted to preach a violent and\nimplacable resistance to all law as the only remedy; and the result of\nthat speedily is that people welcome any tyranny that will rescue them\nfrom chaos. But there is really no need to choose between anarchy and\ntyranny. A quite reasonable state of things is practicable if we proceed\non human assumptions and not on academic ones. If adults will frankly\ngive up their claim to know better than children what the purposes\nof the Life Force are, and treat the child as an experiment like\nthemselves, and possibly a more successful one, and at the same time\nrelinquish their monstrous parental claims to personal private property\nin children, the rest must be left to common sense. It is our attitude,\nour religion, that is wrong. A good beginning might be made by enacting\nthat any person dictating a piece of conduct to a child or to anyone\nelse as the will of God, or as absolutely right, should be dealt with\nas a blasphemer: as, indeed, guilty of the unpardonable sin against the\nHoly Ghost. If the penalty were death, it would rid us at once of that\nscourge of humanity, the amateur Pope. As an Irish Protestant, I raise\nthe cry of No Popery with hereditary zest. We are overrun with Popes.\nFrom curates and governesses, who may claim a sort of professional\nstanding, to parents and uncles and nurserymaids and school teachers\nand wiseacres generally, there are scores of thousands of human insects\ngroping through our darkness by the feeble phosphorescence of their own\ntails, yet ready at a moment's notice to reveal the will of God on every\npossible subject; to explain how and why the universe was made (in my\nyouth they added the exact date) and the circumstances under which\nit will cease to exist; to lay down precise rules of right and wrong\nconduct; to discriminate infallibly between virtuous and vicious\ncharacter; and all this with such certainty that they are prepared to\nvisit all the rigors of the law, and all the ruinous penalties of social\nostracism on people, however harmless their actions maybe who venture\nto laugh at their monstrous conceit or to pay their assumptions the\nextravagant compliment of criticizing them. As to children, who shall\nsay what canings and birchings and terrifyings and threats of hell fire\nand impositions and humiliations and petty imprisonings and sendings\nto bed and standing in corners and the like they have suffered because\ntheir parents and guardians and teachers knew everything so much better\nthan Socrates or Solon?\n\nIt is this ignorant uppishness that does the mischief. A stranger on the\nplanet might expect that its grotesque absurdity would provoke enough\nridicule to cure it; but unfortunately quite the contrary happens.\nJust as our ill health delivers us into the hands of medical quacks and\ncreates a passionate demand for impudent pretences that doctors can\ncure the diseases they themselves die of daily, so our ignorance and\nhelplessness set us clamoring for spiritual and moral quacks who pretend\nthat they can save our souls from their own damnation. If a doctor were\nto say to his patients, \"I am familiar with your symptoms, because I\nhave seen other people in your condition; and I will bring the very\nlittle knowledge we have to your treatment; but except in that very\nshallow sense I dont know what is the matter with you; and I cant\nundertake to cure you,\" he would be a lost man professionally; and if a\nclergyman, on being called on to award a prize for good conduct in\nthe village school, were to say, \"I am afraid I cannot say who is the\nbest-behaved child, because I really do not know what good conduct is;\nbut I will gladly take the teacher's word as to which child has\ncaused least inconvenience,\" he would probably be unfrocked, if not\nexcommunicated. And yet no honest and intellectually capable doctor or\nparson can say more. Clearly it would not be wise of the doctor to say\nit, because optimistic lies have such immense therapeutic value that a\ndoctor who cannot tell them convincingly has mistaken his profession.\nAnd a clergyman who is not prepared to lay down the law dogmatically\nwill not be of much use in a village school, though it behoves him all\nthe more to be very careful what law he lays down. But unless both the\nclergyman and the doctor are in the attitude expressed by these speeches\nthey are not fit for their work. The man who believes that he has more\nthan a provisional hypothesis to go upon is a born fool. He may have\nto act vigorously on it. The world has no use for the Agnostic who wont\nbelieve anything because anything might be false, and wont deny anything\nbecause anything might be true. But there is a wide difference between\nsaying, \"I believe this; and I am going to act on it,\" or, \"I dont\nbelieve it; and I wont act on it,\" and saying, \"It is true; and it is\nmy duty and yours to act on it,\" or, \"It is false; and it is my duty\nand yours to refuse to act on it.\" The difference is as great as that\nbetween the Apostles' Creed and the Athanasian Creed. When you repeat\nthe Apostles' Creed you affirm that you believe certain things. There\nyou are clearly within your rights. When you repeat the Athanasian\nCreed, you affirm that certain things are so, and that anybody who\ndoubts that they are so cannot be saved. And this is simply a piece of\nimpudence on your part, as you know nothing about it except that as good\nmen as you have never heard of your creed. The apostolic attitude is\na desire to convert others to our beliefs for the sake of sympathy and\nlight: the Athanasian attitude is a desire to murder people who dont\nagree with us. I am sufficient of an Athanasian to advocate a law\nfor the speedy execution of all Athanasians, because they violate the\nfundamental proposition of my creed, which is, I repeat, that all\nliving creatures are experiments. The precise formula for the Superman,\n_ci-devant_ The Just Man Made Perfect, has not yet been discovered.\nUntil it is, every birth is an experiment in the Great Research which is\nbeing conducted by the Life Force to discover that formula.\n\n\n\n\nThe Experiment Experimenting\n\nAnd now all the modern schoolmaster abortionists will rise up beaming,\nand say, \"We quite agree. We regard every child in our school as a\nsubject for experiment. We are always experimenting with them. We\nchallenge the experimental test for our system. We are continually\nguided by our experience in our great work of moulding the character of\nour future citizens, etc. etc. etc.\" I am sorry to seem irreconcilable;\nbut it is the Life Force that has to make the experiment and not the\nschoolmaster; and the Life Force for the child's purpose is in the child\nand not in the schoolmaster. The schoolmaster is another experiment;\nand a laboratory in which all the experiments began experimenting on one\nanother would not produce intelligible results. I admit, however, that\nif my schoolmasters had treated me as an experiment of the Life Force:\nthat is, if they had set me free to do as I liked subject only to my\npolitical rights and theirs, they could not have watched the experiment\nvery long, because the first result would have been a rapid movement\non my part in the direction of the door, and my disappearance\nthere-through.\n\nIt may be worth inquiring where I should have gone to. I should say that\npractically every time I should have gone to a much more educational\nplace. I should have gone into the country, or into the sea, or into the\nNational Gallery, or to hear a band if there was one, or to any library\nwhere there were no schoolbooks. I should have read very dry and\ndifficult books: for example, though nothing would have induced me\nto read the budget of stupid party lies that served as a text-book of\nhistory in school, I remember reading Robertson's Charles V. and his\nhistory of Scotland from end to end most laboriously. Once, stung by the\nairs of a schoolfellow who alleged that he had read Locke On The Human\nUnderstanding, I attempted to read the Bible straight through, and\nactually got to the Pauline Epistles before I broke down in disgust at\nwhat seemed to me their inveterate crookedness of mind. If there had\nbeen a school where children were really free, I should have had to\nbe driven out of it for the sake of my health by the teachers; for the\nchildren to whom a literary education can be of any use are insatiable:\nthey will read and study far more than is good for them. In fact the\nreal difficulty is to prevent them from wasting their time by reading\nfor the sake of reading and studying for the sake of studying, instead\nof taking some trouble to find out what they really like and are capable\nof doing some good at. Some silly person will probably interrupt me\nhere with the remark that many children have no appetite for a literary\neducation at all, and would never open a book if they were not forced\nto. I have known many such persons who have been forced to the point\nof obtaining University degrees. And for all the effect their literary\nexercises has left on them they might just as well have been put on the\ntreadmill. In fact they are actually less literate than the treadmill\nwould have left them; for they might by chance have picked up and dipped\ninto a volume of Shakespear or a translation of Homer if they had not\nbeen driven to loathe every famous name in literature. I should probably\nknow as much Latin as French, if Latin had not been made the excuse for\nmy school imprisonment and degradation.\n\n\n\n\nWhy We Loathe Learning and Love Sport\n\nIf we are to discuss the importance of art, learning, and intellectual\nculture, the first thing we have to recognize is that we have very\nlittle of them at present; and that this little has not been produced by\ncompulsory education: nay, that the scarcity is unnatural and has been\nproduced by the violent exclusion of art and artists from schools. On\nthe other hand we have quite a considerable degree of bodily culture:\nindeed there is a continual outcry against the sacrifice of mental\naccomplishments to athletics. In other words a sacrifice of the\nprofessed object of compulsory education to the real object of voluntary\neducation. It is assumed that this means that people prefer bodily\nto mental culture; but may it not mean that they prefer liberty and\nsatisfaction to coercion and privation. Why is it that people who have\nbeen taught Shakespear as a school subject loathe his plays and cannot\nby any means be persuaded ever to open his works after they escape from\nschool, whereas there is still, 300 years after his death, a wide and\nsteady sale for his works to people who read his plays as plays, and not\nas task work? If Shakespear, or for that matter, Newton and Leibnitz,\nare allowed to find their readers and students they will find them.\nIf their works are annotated and paraphrased by dullards, and the\nannotations and paraphrases forced on all young people by imprisonment\nand flogging and scolding, there will not be a single man of letters or\nhigher mathematician the more in the country: on the contrary there will\nbe less, as so many potential lovers of literature and mathematics will\nhave been incurably prejudiced against them. Everyone who is conversant\nwith the class in which child imprisonment and compulsory schooling is\ncarried out to the final extremity of the university degree knows that\nits scholastic culture is a sham; that it knows little about literature\nor art and a great deal about point-to-point races; and that the\nvillage cobbler, who has never read a page of Plato, and is admittedly\na dangerously ignorant man politically, is nevertheless a Socrates\ncompared to the classically educated gentlemen who discuss politics in\ncountry houses at election time (and at no other time) after their day's\nearnest and skilful shooting. Think of the years and years of weary\ntorment the women of the piano-possessing class have been forced to\nspend over the keyboard, fingering scales. How many of them could be\nbribed to attend a pianoforte recital by a great player, though they\nwill rise from sick beds rather than miss Ascot or Goodwood?\n\nAnother familiar fact that teaches the same lesson is that many women\nwho have voluntarily attained a high degree of culture cannot add\nup their own housekeeping books, though their education in simple\narithmetic was compulsory, whereas their higher education has been\nwholly voluntary. Everywhere we find the same result. The imprisonment,\nthe beating, the taming and laming, the breaking of young spirits, the\narrest of development, the atrophy of all inhibitive power except the\npower of fear, are real: the education is sham. Those who have been\ntaught most know least.\n\n\n\n\nAntichrist\n\nAmong the worst effects of the unnatural segregation of children in\nschools and the equally unnatural constant association of them with\nadults in the family is the utter defeat of the vital element in\nChristianity. Christ stands in the world for that intuition of the\nhighest humanity that we, being members one of another, must not\ncomplain, must not scold, must not strike, nor revile nor persecute nor\nrevenge nor punish. Now family life and school life are, as far as the\nmoral training of children is concerned, nothing but the deliberate\ninculcation of a routine of complaint, scolding, punishment,\npersecution, and revenge as the natural and only possible way of dealing\nwith evil or inconvenience. \"Aint nobody to be whopped for this here?\"\nexclaimed Sam Weller when he saw his employer's name written up on a\nstage coach, and conceived the phenomenon as an insult which reflected\non himself. This exclamation of Sam Weller is at once the negation of\nChristianity and the beginning and the end of current morality; and so\nit will remain as long as the family and the school persist as we know\nthem: that is, as long as the rights of children are so utterly denied\nthat nobody will even take the trouble to ascertain what they are, and\ncoming of age is like the turning of a convict into the street after\ntwenty-one years penal servitude. Indeed it is worse; for the convict\nmay have learnt before his conviction how to live in freedom and may\nremember how to set about it, however lamed his powers of freedom may\nhave become through disuse; but the child knows no other way of life but\nthe slave's way. Born free, as Rousseau says, he has been laid hands on\nby slaves from the moment of his birth and brought up as a slave. How is\nhe, when he is at last set free, to be anything else than the slave he\nactually is, clamoring for war, for the lash, for police, prisons, and\nscaffolds in a wild panic of delusion that without these things he\nis lost. The grown-up Englishman is to the end of his days a badly\nbrought-up child, beyond belief quarrelsome, petulant, selfish,\ndestructive, and cowardly: afraid that the Germans will come and enslave\nhim; that the burglar will come and rob him; that the bicycle or motor\ncar will run over him; that the smallpox will attack him; and that the\ndevil will run away with him and empty him out like a sack of coals on a\nblazing fire unless his nurse or his parents or his schoolmaster or\nhis bishop or his judge or his army or his navy will do something to\nfrighten these bad things away. And this Englishman, without the moral\ncourage of a louse, will risk his neck for fun fifty times every winter\nin the hunting field, and at Badajos sieges and the like will ram his\nhead into a hole bristling with sword blades rather than be beaten in\nthe one department in which he has been brought up to consult his own\nhonor. As a Sportsman (and war is fundamentally the sport of hunting\nand fighting the most dangerous of the beasts of prey) he feels free. He\nwill tell you himself that the true sportsman is never a snob, a coward,\na duffer, a cheat, a thief, or a liar. Curious, is it not, that he has\nnot the same confidence in other sorts of man?\n\nAnd even sport is losing its freedom. Soon everybody will be schooled,\nmentally and physically, from the cradle to the end of the term of adult\ncompulsory military service, and finally of compulsory civil service\nlasting until the age of superannuation. Always more schooling, more\ncompulsion. We are to be cured by an excess of the dose that has\npoisoned us. Satan is to cast out Satan.\n\n\n\n\nUnder the Whip\n\nClearly this will not do. We must reconcile education with liberty.\nWe must find out some means of making men workers and, if need be,\nwarriors, without making them slaves. We must cultivate the noble\nvirtues that have their root in pride. Now no schoolmaster will teach\nthese any more than a prison governor will teach his prisoners how to\nmutiny and escape. Self-preservation forces him to break the spirit\nthat revolts against him, and to inculcate submission, even to obscene\nassault, as a duty. A bishop once had the hardihood to say that he would\nrather see England free than England sober. Nobody has yet dared to say\nthat he would rather see an England of ignoramuses than an England of\ncowards and slaves. And if anyone did, it would be necessary to point\nout that the antithesis is not a practical one, as we have got at\npresent an England of ignoramuses who are also cowards and slaves, and\nextremely proud of it at that, because in school they are taught to\nsubmit, with what they ridiculously call Oriental fatalism (as if any\nOriental has ever submitted more helplessly and sheepishly to robbery\nand oppression than we Occidentals do), to be driven day after day into\ncompounds and set to the tasks they loathe by the men they hate and\nfear, as if this were the inevitable destiny of mankind. And naturally,\nwhen they grow up, they helplessly exchange the prison of the school for\nthe prison of the mine or the workshop or the office, and drudge along\nstupidly and miserably, with just enough gregarious instinct to turn\nfuriously on any intelligent person who proposes a change. It would be\nquite easy to make England a paradise, according to our present ideas,\nin a few years. There is no mystery about it: the way has been pointed\nout over and over again. The difficulty is not the way but the will. And\nwe have no will because the first thing done with us in childhood was to\nbreak our will. Can anything be more disgusting than the spectacle of a\nnation reading the biography of Gladstone and gloating over the account\nof how he was flogged at Eton, two of his schoolfellows being compelled\nto hold him down whilst he was flogged. Not long ago a public body in\nEngland had to deal with the case of a schoolmaster who, conceiving\nhimself insulted by the smoking of a cigaret against his orders by\na pupil eighteen years old, proposed to flog him publicly as a\nsatisfaction to what he called his honor and authority. I had intended\nto give the particulars of this ease, but find the drudgery of repeating\nsuch stuff too sickening, and the effect unjust to a man who was\ndoing only what others all over the country were doing as part of the\nestablished routine of what is called education. The astounding part of\nit was the manner in which the person to whom this outrage on decency\nseemed quite proper and natural claimed to be a functionary of high\ncharacter, and had his claim allowed. In Japan he would hardly have been\nallowed the privilege of committing suicide. What is to be said of a\nprofession in which such obscenities are made points of honor, or of\ninstitutions in which they are an accepted part of the daily routine?\nWholesome people would not argue about the taste of such nastinesses:\nthey would spit them out; but we are tainted with flagellomania from\nour childhood. When will we realize that the fact that we can become\naccustomed to anything, however disgusting at first, makes it necessary\nfor us to examine carefully everything we have become accustomed to?\nBefore motor cars became common, necessity had accustomed us to a\nfoulness in our streets which would have horrified us had the street\nbeen our drawing-room carpet. Before long we shall be as particular\nabout our streets as we now are about our carpets; and their condition\nin the nineteenth century will become as forgotten and incredible as the\ncondition of the corridors of palaces and the courts of castles was as\nlate as the eighteenth century. This foulness, we can plead, was imposed\non us as a necessity by the use of horses and of huge retinues; but\nflogging has never been so imposed: it has always been a vice, craved\nfor on any pretext by those depraved by it. Boys were flogged when\ncriminals were hanged, to impress the awful warning on them. Boys were\nflogged at boundaries, to impress the boundaries on their memory. Other\nmethods and other punishments were always available: the choice of\nthis one betrayed the sensual impulse which makes the practice an\nabomination. But when its viciousness made it customary, it was\npractised and tolerated on all hands by people who were innocent of\nanything worse than stupidity, ill temper, and inability to discover\nother methods of maintaining order than those they had always seen\npractised and approved of. From children and animals it extended to\nslaves and criminals. In the days of Moses it was limited to 39 lashes.\nIn the early nineteenth century it had become an open madness: soldiers\nwere sentenced to a thousand lashes for trifling offences, with the\nresult (among others less mentionable) that the Iron Duke of Wellington\ncomplained that it was impossible to get an order obeyed in the British\narmy except in two or three crack regiments. Such frantic excesses of\nthis disgusting neurosis provoked a reaction against it; but the clamor\nfor it by depraved persons never ceased, and was tolerated by a nation\ntrained to it from childhood in the schools until last year (1913), when\nin what must be described as a paroxysm of sexual excitement provoked by\nthe agitation concerning the White Slave Traffic (the purely commercial\nnature of which I was prevented from exposing on the stage by the\nCensorship twenty years ago) the Government yielded to an outcry for\nflagellation led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and passed an Act\nunder which a judge can sentence a man to be flogged to the utmost\nextremity with any instrument usable for such a purpose that he cares\nto prescribe. Such an Act is not a legislative phenomenon but a\npsychopathic one. Its effect on the White Slave Traffic was, of course,\nto distract public attention from its real cause and from the people who\nreally profit by it to imaginary \"foreign scoundrels,\" and to secure a\nmonopoly of its organization for women.\n\nAnd all this evil is made possible by the schoolmaster with his cane and\nbirch, by the parents getting rid as best they can of the nuisance of\nchildren making noise and mischief in the house, and by the denial to\nchildren of the elementary rights of human beings.\n\nThe first man who enslaved and \"broke in\" an animal with a whip would\nhave invented the explosion engine instead could he have foreseen the\ncurse he was laying on his race. For men and women learnt thereby to\nenslave and break in their children by the same means. These children,\ngrown up, knew no other methods of training. Finally the evil that was\ndone for gain by the greedy was refined on and done for pleasure by the\nlustful. Flogging has become a pleasure purchasable in our streets, and\ninhibition a grown-up habit that children play at. \"Go and see what baby\nis doing; and tell him he mustnt\" is the last word of the nursery; and\nthe grimmest aspect of it is that it was first formulated by a comic\npaper as a capital joke.\n\n\n\n\nTechnical Instruction\n\nTechnical instruction tempts to violence (as a short cut) more\nthan liberal education. The sailor in Mr Rudyard Kipling's Captains\nCourageous, teaching the boy the names of the ship's tackle with a\nrope's end, does not disgust us as our schoolmasters do, especially as\nthe boy was a spoiled boy. But an unspoiled boy would not have needed\nthat drastic medicine. Technical training may be as tedious as learning\nto skate or to play the piano or violin; but it is the price one must\npay to achieve certain desirable results or necessary ends. It is a\nmonstrous thing to force a child to learn Latin or Greek or mathematics\non the ground that they are an indispensable gymnastic for the mental\npowers. It would be monstrous even if it were true; for there is no\nlabor that might not be imposed on a child or an adult on the same\npretext; but as a glance at the average products of our public school\nand university education shews that it is not true, it need not trouble\nus. But it is a fact that ignorance of Latin and Greek and mathematics\ncloses certain careers to men (I do not mean artificial, unnecessary,\nnoxious careers like those of the commercial schoolmaster). Languages,\neven dead ones, have their uses; and, as it seems to many of us,\nmathematics have their uses. They will always be learned by people who\nwant to learn them; and people will always want to learn them as long as\nthey are of any importance in life: indeed the want will survive their\nimportance: superstition is nowhere stronger than in the field of\nobsolete acquirements. And they will never be learnt fruitfully by\npeople who do not want to learn them either for their own sake or for\nuse in necessary work. There is no harder schoolmaster than experience;\nand yet experience fails to teach where there is no desire to learn.\n\nStill, one must not begin to apply this generalization too early.\nAnd this brings me to an important factor in the case: the factor of\nevolution.\n\n\n\n\nDocility and Dependence\n\nIf anyone, impressed by my view that the rights of a child are precisely\nthose of an adult, proceeds to treat a child as if it were an adult, he\n(or she) will find that though the plan will work much better at some\npoints than the usual plan, at others it will not work at all; and this\ndiscovery may provoke him to turn back from the whole conception of\nchildren's rights with a jest at the expense of bachelors' and old\nmaids' children. In dealing with children what is needed is not logic\nbut sense. There is no logical reason why young persons should be\nallowed greater control of their property the day after they are\ntwenty-one than the day before it. There is no logical reason why I,\nwho strongly object to an adult standing over a boy of ten with a Latin\ngrammar, and saying, \"you must learn this, whether you want to or not,\"\nshould nevertheless be quite prepared to stand over a boy of five with\nthe multiplication table or a copy book or a code of elementary good\nmanners, and practice on his docility to make him learn them. And there\nis no logical reason why I should do for a child a great many little\noffices, some of them troublesome and disagreeable, which I should\nnot do for a boy twice its age, or support a boy or girl when I would\nunhesitatingly throw an adult on his own resources. But there are\npractical reasons, and sensible reasons, and affectionate reasons for\nall these illogicalities. Children do not want to be treated altogether\nas adults: such treatment terrifies them and over-burdens them with\nresponsibility. In truth, very few adults care to be called on for\nindependence and originality: they also are bewildered and terrified\nin the absence of precedents and precepts and commandments; but modern\nDemocracy allows them a sanctioning and cancelling power if they are\ncapable of using it, which children are not. To treat a child wholly\nas an adult would be to mock and destroy it. Infantile docility and\njuvenile dependence are, like death, a product of Natural Selection;\nand though there is no viler crime than to abuse them, yet there is no\ngreater cruelty than to ignore them. I have complained sufficiently\nof what I suffered through the process of assault, imprisonment,\nand compulsory lessons that taught me nothing, which are called my\nschooling. But I could say a good deal also about the things I was not\ntaught and should have been taught, not to mention the things I was\nallowed to do which I should not have been allowed to do. I have no\nrecollection of being taught to read or write; so I presume I was born\nwith both faculties; but many people seem to have bitter recollections\nof being forced reluctantly to acquire them. And though I have the\nuttermost contempt for a teacher so ill mannered and incompetent as to\nbe unable to make a child learn to read and write without also making it\ncry, still I am prepared to admit that I had rather have been compelled\nto learn to read and write with tears by an incompetent and ill mannered\nperson than left in ignorance. Reading, writing, and enough arithmetic\nto use money honestly and accurately, together with the rudiments of law\nand order, become necessary conditions of a child's liberty before it\ncan appreciate the importance of its liberty, or foresee that these\naccomplishments are worth acquiring. Nature has provided for this by\nevolving the instinct of docility. Children are very docile: they have\na sound intuition that they must do what they are told or perish. And\nadults have an intuition, equally sound, that they must take advantage\nof this docility to teach children how to live properly or the children\nwill not survive. The difficulty is to know where to stop. To illustrate\nthis, let us consider the main danger of childish docility and parental\nofficiousness.\n\n\n\n\nThe Abuse of Docility\n\nDocility may survive as a lazy habit long after it has ceased to be a\nbeneficial instinct. If you catch a child when it is young enough to be\ninstinctively docile, and keep it in a condition of unremitted tutelage\nunder the nurserymaid, the governess, the preparatory school, the\nsecondary school, and the university, until it is an adult, you will\nproduce, not a self-reliant, free, fully matured human being, but a\ngrown-up schoolboy or schoolgirl, capable of nothing in the way of\noriginal or independent action except outbursts of naughtiness in the\nwomen and blackguardism in the men. That is exactly what we get at\npresent in our rich and consequently governing classes: they pass from\njuvenility to senility without ever touching maturity except in body.\nThe classes which cannot afford this sustained tutelage are notably more\nself-reliant and grown-up: an office boy of fifteen is often more of a\nman than a university student of twenty. Unfortunately this precocity\nis disabled by poverty, ignorance, narrowness, and a hideous power of\nliving without art or love or beauty and being rather proud of it. The\npoor never escape from servitude: their docility is preserved by their\nslavery. And so all become the prey of the greedy, the selfish, the\ndomineering, the unscrupulous, the predatory. If here and there an\nindividual refuses to be docile, ten docile persons will beat him or\nlock him up or shoot him or hang him at the bidding of his oppressors\nand their own. The crux of the whole difficulty about parents,\nschoolmasters, priests, absolute monarchs, and despots of every sort,\nis the tendency to abuse natural docility. A nation should always be\nhealthily rebellious; but the king or prime minister has yet to be found\nwho will make trouble by cultivating that side of the national spirit. A\nchild should begin to assert itself early, and shift for itself more\nand more not only in washing and dressing itself, but in opinions and\nconduct; yet as nothing is so exasperating and so unlovable as an uppish\nchild, it is useless to expect parents and schoolmasters to inculcate\nthis uppishness. Such unamiable precepts as Always contradict an\nauthoritative statement, Always return a blow, Never lose a chance of a\ngood fight, When you are scolded for a mistake ask the person who scolds\nyou whether he or she supposes you did it on purpose, and follow the\nquestion with a blow or an insult or some other unmistakable expression\nof resentment, Remember that the progress of the world depends on your\nknowing better than your elders, are just as important as those of The\nSermon on the Mount; but no one has yet seen them written up in letters\nof gold in a schoolroom or nursery. The child is taught to be kind, to\nbe respectful, to be quiet, not to answer back, to be truthful when its\nelders want to find out anything from it, to lie when the truth would\nshock or hurt its elders, to be above all things obedient, and to be\nseen and not heard. Here we have two sets of precepts, each warranted\nto spoil a child hopelessly if the other be omitted. Unfortunately we\ndo not allow fair play between them. The rebellious, intractable,\naggressive, selfish set provoke a corrective resistance, and do not\npretend to high moral or religious sanctions; and they are never urged\nby grown-up people on young people. They are therefore more in danger\nof neglect or suppression than the other set, which have all the adults,\nall the laws, all the religions on their side. How is the child to be\nsecured its due share of both bodies of doctrine?\n\n\n\n\nThe Schoolboy and the Homeboy\n\nIn practice what happens is that parents notice that boys brought up at\nhome become mollycoddles, or prigs, or duffers, unable to take care of\nthemselves. They see that boys should learn to rough it a little and\nto mix with children of their own age. This is natural enough. When you\nhave preached at and punished a boy until he is a moral cripple, you\nare as much hampered by him as by a physical cripple; and as you do not\nintend to have him on your hands all your life, and are generally rather\nimpatient for the day when he will earn his own living and leave you to\nattend to yourself, you sooner or later begin to talk to him about the\nneed for self-reliance, learning to think, and so forth, with the result\nthat your victim, bewildered by your inconsistency, concludes that there\nis no use trying to please you, and falls into an attitude of sulky\nresentment. Which is an additional inducement to pack him off to school.\n\nIn school, he finds himself in a dual world, under two dispensations.\nThere is the world of the boys, where the point of honor is to be\nuntameable, always ready to fight, ruthless in taking the conceit out of\nanyone who ventures to give himself airs of superior knowledge or taste,\nand generally to take Lucifer for one's model. And there is the world of\nthe masters, the world of discipline, submission, diligence, obedience,\nand continual and shameless assumption of moral and intellectual\nauthority. Thus the schoolboy hears both sides, and is so far better\noff than the homebred boy who hears only one. But the two sides are\nnot fairly presented. They are presented as good and evil, as vice and\nvirtue, as villainy and heroism. The boy feels mean and cowardly when\nhe obeys, and selfish and rascally when he disobeys. He looses his moral\ncourage just as he comes to hate books and languages. In the end, John\nRuskin, tied so close to his mother's apron-string that he did not\nescape even when he went to Oxford, and John Stuart Mill, whose father\nought to have been prosecuted for laying his son's childhood waste with\nlessons, were superior, as products of training, to our schoolboys. They\nwere very conspicuously superior in moral courage; and though they did\nnot distinguish themselves at cricket and football, they had quite as\nmuch physical hardihood as any civilized man needs. But it is to be\nobserved that Ruskin's parents were wise people who gave John a full\nshare in their own life, and put up with his presence both at home and\nabroad when they must sometimes have been very weary of him; and Mill,\nas it happens, was deliberately educated to challenge all the most\nsacred institutions of his country. The households they were brought\nup in were no more average households than a Montessori school is an\naverage school.\n\n\n\n\nThe Comings of Age of Children\n\nAll this inculcated adult docility, which wrecks every civilization as\nit is wrecking ours, is inhuman and unnatural. We must reconsider our\ninstitution of the Coming of Age, which is too late for some purposes,\nand too early for others. There should be a series of Coming of Ages for\nevery individual. The mammals have their first coming of age when they\nare weaned; and it is noteworthy that this rather cruel and selfish\noperation on the part of the parent has to be performed resolutely, with\nclaws and teeth; for your little mammal does not want to be weaned, and\nyields only to a pretty rough assertion of the right of the parent to\nbe relieved of the child as soon as the child is old enough to bear the\nseparation. The same thing occurs with children: they hang on to the\nmother's apron-string and the father's coat tails as long as they can,\noften baffling those sensitive parents who know that children should\nthink for themselves and fend for themselves, but are too kind to throw\nthem on their own resources with the ferocity of the domestic cat. The\nchild should have its first coming of age when it is weaned, another\nwhen it can talk, another when it can walk, another when it can dress\nitself without assistance; and when it can read, write, count money, and\npass an examination in going a simple errand involving a purchase and\na journey by rail or other public method of locomotion, it should have\nquite a majority. At present the children of laborers are soon mobile\nand able to shift for themselves, whereas it is possible to find\ngrown-up women in the rich classes who are actually afraid to take a\nwalk in the streets unattended and unprotected. It is true that this\nis a superstition from the time when a retinue was part of the state\nof persons of quality, and the unattended person was supposed to be a\ncommon person of no quality, earning a living; but this has now become\nso absurd that children and young women are no longer told why they are\nforbidden to go about alone, and have to be persuaded that the streets\nare dangerous places, which of course they are; but people who are not\neducated to live dangerously have only half a life, and are more likely\nto die miserably after all than those who have taken all the common\nrisks of freedom from their childhood onward as matters of course.\n\n\n\n\nThe Conflict of Wills\n\nThe world wags in spite of its schools and its families because both\nschools and families are mostly very largely anarchic: parents and\nschoolmasters are good-natured or weak or lazy; and children are docile\nand affectionate and very shortwinded in their fits of naughtiness; and\nso most families slummock along and muddle through until the children\ncease to be children. In the few cases when the parties are energetic\nand determined, the child is crushed or the parent is reduced to a\ncipher, as the case may be. When the opposed forces are neither of them\nstrong enough to annihilate the other, there is serious trouble: that\nis how we get those feuds between parent and child which recur to our\nmemory so ironically when we hear people sentimentalizing about natural\naffection. We even get tragedies; for there is nothing so tragic to\ncontemplate or so devastating to suffer as the oppression of will\nwithout conscience; and the whole tendency of our family and school\nsystem is to set the will of the parent and the school despot above\nconscience as something that must be deferred to abjectly and absolutely\nfor its own sake.\n\nThe strongest, fiercest force in nature is human will. It is the highest\norganization we know of the will that has created the whole universe.\nNow all honest civilization, religion, law, and convention is an attempt\nto keep this force within beneficent bounds. What corrupts civilization,\nreligion, law, and convention (and they are at present pretty nearly\nas corrupt as they dare) is the constant attempts made by the wills of\nindividuals and classes to thwart the wills and enslave the powers\nof other individuals and classes. The powers of the parent and the\nschoolmaster, and of their public analogues the lawgiver and the\njudge, become instruments of tyranny in the hands of those who are too\nnarrow-minded to understand law and exercise judgment; and in their\nhands (with us they mostly fall into such hands) law becomes tyranny.\nAnd what is a tyrant? Quite simply a person who says to another person,\nyoung or old, \"You shall do as I tell you; you shall make what I want;\nyou shall profess my creed; you shall have no will of your own; and\nyour powers shall be at the disposal of my will.\" It has come to this at\nlast: that the phrase \"she has a will of her own,\" or \"he has a will\nof his own\" has come to denote a person of exceptional obstinacy and\nself-assertion. And even persons of good natural disposition, if\nbrought up to expect such deference, are roused to unreasoning fury,\nand sometimes to the commission of atrocious crimes, by the slightest\nchallenge to their authority. Thus a laborer may be dirty, drunken,\nuntruthful, slothful, untrustworthy in every way without exhausting the\nindulgence of the country house. But let him dare to be \"disrespectful\"\nand he is a lost man, though he be the cleanest, soberest, most\ndiligent, most veracious, most trustworthy man in the county. Dickens's\ninstinct for detecting social cankers never served him better than when\nhe shewed us Mrs Heep teaching her son to \"be umble,\" knowing that if he\ncarried out that precept he might be pretty well anything else he liked.\nThe maintenance of deference to our wills becomes a mania which will\ncarry the best of us to any extremity. We will allow a village of\nEgyptian fellaheen or Indian tribesmen to live the lowest life they\nplease among themselves without molestation; but let one of them slay\nan Englishman or even strike him on the strongest provocation, and\nstraightway we go stark mad, burning and destroying, shooting and\nshelling, flogging and hanging, if only such survivors as we may leave\nare thoroughly cowed in the presence of a man with a white face. In\nthe committee room of a local council or city corporation, the humblest\nemployees of the committee find defenders if they complain of harsh\ntreatment. Gratuities are voted, indulgences and holidays are pleaded\nfor, delinquencies are excused in the most sentimental manner provided\nonly the employee, however patent a hypocrite or incorrigible a slacker,\nis hat in hand. But let the most obvious measure of justice be demanded\nby the secretary of a Trade Union in terms which omit all expressions\nof subservience, and it is with the greatest difficulty that the\ncooler-headed can defeat angry motions that the letter be thrown into\nthe waste paper basket and the committee proceed to the next business.\n\n\n\n\nThe Demagogue's Opportunity\n\nAnd the employee has in him the same fierce impulse to impose his will\nwithout respect for the will of others. Democracy is in practice nothing\nbut a device for cajoling from him the vote he refuses to arbitrary\nauthority. He will not vote for Coriolanus; but when an experienced\ndemagogue comes along and says, \"Sir: _you_ are the dictator: the\nvoice of the people is the voice of God; and I am only your very humble\nservant,\" he says at once, \"All right: tell me what to dictate,\" and\nis presently enslaved more effectually with his own silly consent than\nCoriolanus would ever have enslaved him without asking his leave. And\nthe trick by which the demagogue defeats Coriolanus is played on him in\nhis turn by _his_ inferiors. Everywhere we see the cunning succeeding\nin the world by seeking a rich or powerful master and practising on his\nlust for subservience. The political adventurer who gets into parliament\nby offering himself to the poor voter, not as his representative but as\nhis will-less soulless \"delegate,\" is himself the dupe of a clever wife\nwho repudiates Votes for Women, knowing well that whilst the man is\nmaster, the man's mistress will rule. Uriah Heep may be a crawling\ncreature; but his crawling takes him upstairs.\n\nThus does the selfishness of the will turn on itself, and obtain by\nflattery what it cannot seize by open force. Democracy becomes the\nlatest trick of tyranny: \"womanliness\" becomes the latest wile of\nprostitution.\n\nBetween parent and child the same conflict wages and the same\ndestruction of character ensues. Parents set themselves to bend the will\nof their children to their own--to break their stubborn spirit, as\nthey call it--with the ruthlessness of Grand Inquisitors. Cunning,\nunscrupulous children learn all the arts of the sneak in circumventing\ntyranny: children of better character are cruelly distressed and more or\nless lamed for life by it.\n\n\n\n\nOur Quarrelsomeness\n\nAs between adults, we find a general quarrelsomeness which makes\npolitical reform as impossible to most Englishmen as to hogs. Certain\nsections of the nation get cured of this disability. University men,\nsailors, and politicians are comparatively free from it, because the\ncommunal life of the University, the fact that in a ship a man must\neither learn to consider others or else go overboard or into irons, and\nthe habit of working on committees and ceasing to expect more of\none's own way than is included in the greatest common measure of the\ncommittee, educate the will socially. But no one who has ever had to\nguide a committee of ordinary private Englishmen through their first\nattempts at collective action, in committee or otherwise, can retain\nany illusions as to the appalling effects on our national manners\nand character of the organization of the home and the school as petty\ntyrannies, and the absence of all teaching of self-respect and training\nin self-assertion. Bullied and ordered about, the Englishman obeys like\na sheep, evades like a knave, or tries to murder his oppressor. Merely\ncriticized or opposed in committee, or invited to consider anybody's\nviews but his own, he feels personally insulted and wants to resign\nor leave the room unless he is apologized to. And his panic and\nbewilderment when he sees that the older hands at the work have no\npatience with him and do not intend to treat him as infallible, are\npitiable as far as they are anything but ludicrous. That is what comes\nof not being taught to consider other people's wills, and left to submit\nto them or to over-ride them as if they were the winds and the weather.\nSuch a state of mind is incompatible not only with the democratic\nintroduction of high civilization, but with the comprehension and\nmaintenance of such civilized institutions as have been introduced by\nbenevolent and intelligent despots and aristocrats.\n\n\n\n\nWe Must Reform Society before we can Reform Ourselves\n\nWhen we come to the positive problem of what to do with children if we\nare to give up the established plan, we find the difficulties so great\nthat we begin to understand why so many people who detest the system and\nlook back with loathing on their own schooldays, must helplessly send\ntheir children to the very schools they themselves were sent to, because\nthere is no alternative except abandoning the children to undisciplined\nvagabondism. Man in society must do as everybody else does in his class:\nonly fools and romantic novices imagine that freedom is a mere matter of\nthe readiness of the individual to snap his fingers at convention. It\nis true that most of us live in a condition of quite unnecessary\ninhibition, wearing ugly and uncomfortable clothes, making ourselves and\nother people miserable by the heathen horrors of mourning, staying away\nfrom the theatre because we cannot afford the stalls and are ashamed\nto go to the pit, and in dozens of other ways enslaving ourselves\nwhen there are comfortable alternatives open to us without any real\ndrawbacks. The contemplation of these petty slaveries, and of the\ntriumphant ease with which sensible people throw them off, creates an\nimpression that if we only take Johnson's advice to free our minds from\ncant, we can achieve freedom. But if we all freed our minds from cant\nwe should find that for the most part we should have to go on doing\nthe necessary work of the world exactly as we did it before until we\norganized new and free methods of doing it. Many people believed in\nsecondary co-education (boys and girls taught together) before schools\nlike Bedales were founded: indeed the practice was common enough in\nelementary schools and in Scotland; but their belief did not help them\nuntil Bedales and St George's were organized; and there are still not\nnearly enough co-educational schools in existence to accommodate all\nthe children of the parents who believe in co-education up to university\nage, even if they could always afford the fees of these exceptional\nschools. It may be edifying to tell a duke that our public schools are\nall wrong in their constitution and methods, or a costermonger that\nchildren should be treated as in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister instead of as\nthey are treated at the elementary school at the corner of his street;\nbut what are the duke and the coster to do? Neither of them has any\neffective choice in the matter: their children must either go to the\nschools that are, or to no school at all. And as the duke thinks with\nreason that his son will be a lout or a milksop or a prig if he does\nnot go to school, and the coster knows that his son will become an\nilliterate hooligan if he is left to the streets, there is no real\nalternative for either of them. Child life must be socially organized:\nno parent, rich or poor, can choose institutions that do not exist; and\nthe private enterprise of individual school masters appealing to a\ngroup of well-to-do parents, though it may shew what can be done by\nenthusiasts with new methods, cannot touch the mass of our children.\nFor the average parent or child nothing is really available except the\nestablished practice; and this is what makes it so important that the\nestablished practice should be a sound one, and so useless for clever\nindividuals to disparage it unless they can organize an alternative\npractice and make it, too, general.\n\n\n\n\nThe Pursuit of Manners\n\nIf you cross-examine the duke and the coster, you will find that they\nare not concerned for the scholastic attainments of their children.\nAsk the duke whether he could pass the standard examination of\ntwelve-year-old children in elementary schools, and he will admit,\nwith an entirely placid smile, that he would almost certainly be\nignominiously plucked. And he is so little ashamed of or disadvantaged\nby his condition that he is not prepared to spend an hour in remedying\nit. The coster may resent the inquiry instead of being amused by it;\nbut his answer, if true, will be the same. What they both want for their\nchildren is the communal training, the apprenticeship to society, the\nlessons in holding one's own among people of all sorts with whom one is\nnot, as in the home, on privileged terms. These can be acquired only by\n\"mixing with the world,\" no matter how wicked the world is. No parent\ncares twopence whether his children can write Latin hexameters or\nrepeat the dates of the accession of all the English monarchs since the\nConqueror; but all parents are earnestly anxious about the manners of\ntheir children. Better Claude Duval than Kaspar Hauser. Laborers who are\ncontemptuously anti-clerical in their opinions will send their\ndaughters to the convent school because the nuns teach them some sort\nof gentleness of speech and behavior. And peers who tell you that our\npublic schools are rotten through and through, and that our Universities\nought to be razed to the foundations, send their sons to Eton and\nOxford, Harrow and Cambridge, not only because there is nothing else to\nbe done, but because these places, though they turn out blackguards\nand ignoramuses and boobies galore, turn them out with the habits and\nmanners of the society they belong to. Bad as those manners are in many\nrespects, they are better than no manners at all. And no individual or\nfamily can possibly teach them. They can be acquired only by living in\nan organized community in which they are traditional.\n\nThus we see that there are reasons for the segregation of children even\nin families where the great reason: namely, that children are nuisances\nto adults, does not press very hardly, as, for instance, in the houses\nof the very poor, who can send their children to play in the streets,\nor the houses of the very rich, which are so large that the children's\nquarters can be kept out of the parents' way like the servants'\nquarters.\n\n\n\n\nNot too much Wind on the Heath, Brother\n\nWhat, then, is to be done? For the present, unfortunately, little except\npropagating the conception of Children's Rights. Only the achievement\nof economic equality through Socialism can make it possible to deal\nthoroughly with the question from the point of view of the total\ninterest of the community, which must always consist of grown-up\nchildren. Yet economic equality, like all simple and obvious\narrangements, seems impossible to people brought up as children are now.\nStill, something can be done even within class limits. Large communities\nof children of the same class are possible today; and voluntary\norganization of outdoor life for children has already begun in Boy\nScouting and excursions of one kind or another. The discovery that\nanything, even school life, is better for the child than home life,\nwill become an over-ridden hobby; and we shall presently be told by our\nfaddists that anything, even camp life, is better than school life.\nSome blundering beginnings of this are already perceptible. There is a\nmovement for making our British children into priggish little barefooted\nvagabonds, all talking like that born fool George Borrow, and supposed\nto be splendidly healthy because they would die if they slept in rooms\nwith the windows shut, or perhaps even with a roof over their heads.\nStill, this is a fairly healthy folly; and it may do something to\nestablish Mr Harold Cox's claim of a Right to Roam as the basis of a\nmuch needed law compelling proprietors of land to provide plenty of\ngates in their fences, and to leave them unlocked when there are no\ngrowing crops to be damaged nor bulls to be encountered, instead of, as\nat present, imprisoning the human race in dusty or muddy thoroughfares\nbetween walls of barbed wire.\n\nThe reaction against vagabondage will come from the children themselves.\nFor them freedom will not mean the expensive kind of savagery now called\n\"the simple life.\" Their natural disgust with the visions of cockney\nbook fanciers blowing themselves out with \"the wind on the heath,\nbrother,\" and of anarchists who are either too weak to understand that\nmen are strong and free in proportion to the social pressure they\ncan stand and the complexity of the obligations they are prepared to\nundertake, or too strong to realize that what is freedom to them may be\nterror and bewilderment to others, will drive them back to the home and\nthe school if these have meanwhile learned the lesson that children are\nindependent human beings and have rights.\n\n\n\n\nWanted: a Child's Magna Charta\n\nWhether we shall presently be discussing a Juvenile Magna Charta or\nDeclaration of Rights by way of including children in the Constitution\nis a question on which I leave others to speculate. But if it could\nonce be established that a child has an adult's Right of Egress from\nuncomfortable places and unpleasant company, and there were children's\nlawyers to sue pedagogues and others for assault and imprisonment, there\nwould be an amazing change in the behavior of schoolmasters, the quality\nof school books, and the amenities of school life. That Consciousness of\nConsent which, even in its present delusive form, has enabled Democracy\nto oust tyrannical systems in spite of all its vulgarities and\nstupidities and rancors and ineptitudes and ignorances, would operate as\npowerfully among children as it does now among grown-ups. No doubt the\npedagogue would promptly turn demagogue, and woo his scholars by all the\narts of demagogy; but none of these arts can easily be so dishonorable\nor mischievous as the art of caning. And, after all, if larger liberties\nare attached to the acquisition of knowledge, and the child finds\nthat it can no more go to the seaside without a knowledge of the\nmultiplication and pence tables than it can be an astronomer without\nmathematics, it will learn the multiplication table, which is more than\nit always does at present, in spite of all the canings and keepings in.\n\n\n\n\nThe Pursuit of Learning\n\nWhen the Pursuit of Learning comes to mean the pursuit of learning by\nthe child instead of the pursuit of the child by Learning, cane in\nhand, the danger will be precocity of the intellect, which is just as\nundesirable as precocity of the emotions. We still have a silly habit of\ntalking and thinking as if intellect were a mechanical process and not a\npassion; and in spite of the German tutors who confess openly that three\nout of every five of the young men they coach for examinations are lamed\nfor life thereby; in spite of Dickens and his picture of little Paul\nDombey dying of lessons, we persist in heaping on growing children and\nadolescent youths and maidens tasks Pythagoras would have declined out\nof common regard for his own health and common modesty as to his own\ncapacity. And this overwork is not all the effect of compulsion; for\nthe average schoolmaster does not compel his scholars to learn: he only\nscolds and punishes them if they do not, which is quite a different\nthing, the net effect being that the school prisoners need not learn\nunless they like. Nay, it is sometimes remarked that the school\ndunce--meaning the one who does not like--often turns out well\nafterwards, as if idleness were a sign of ability and character. A much\nmore sensible explanation is that the so-called dunces are not exhausted\nbefore they begin the serious business of life. It is said that boys\nwill be boys; and one can only add one wishes they would. Boys really\nwant to be manly, and are unfortunately encouraged thoughtlessly in this\nvery dangerous and overstraining aspiration. All the people who have\nreally worked (Herbert Spencer for instance) warn us against work as\nearnestly as some people warn us against drink. When learning is placed\non the voluntary footing of sport, the teacher will find himself saying\nevery day \"Run away and play: you have worked as much as is good for\nyou.\" Trying to make children leave school will be like trying to make\nthem go to bed; and it will be necessary to surprise them with the idea\nthat teaching is work, and that the teacher is tired and must go play or\nrest or eat: possibilities always concealed by that infamous humbug\nthe current schoolmaster, who achieves a spurious divinity and a witch\ndoctor's authority by persuading children that he is not human, just as\nladies persuade them that they have no legs.\n\n\n\n\nChildren and Game: a Proposal\n\nOf the many wild absurdities of our existing social order perhaps the\nmost grotesque is the costly and strictly enforced reservation of large\ntracts of country as deer forests and breeding grounds for pheasants\nwhilst there is so little provision of the kind made for children.\nI have more than once thought of trying to introduce the shooting\nof children as a sport, as the children would then be preserved very\ncarefully for ten months in the year, thereby reducing their death rate\nfar more than the fusillades of the sportsmen during the other two would\nraise it. At present the killing of a fox except by a pack of foxhounds\nis regarded with horror; but you may and do kill children in a hundred\nand fifty ways provided you do not shoot them or set a pack of dogs on\nthem. It must be admitted that the foxes have the best of it; and indeed\na glance at our pheasants, our deer, and our children will convince the\nmost sceptical that the children have decidedly the worst of it.\n\nThis much hope, however, can be extracted from the present state of\nthings. It is so fantastic, so mad, so apparently impossible, that no\nscheme of reform need ever henceforth be discredited on the ground that\nit is fantastic or mad or apparently impossible. It is the sensible\nschemes, unfortunately, that are hopeless in England. Therefore I have\ngreat hopes that my own views, though fundamentally sensible, can be\nmade to appear fantastic enough to have a chance.\n\nFirst, then, I lay it down as a prime condition of sane society, obvious\nas such to anyone but an idiot, that in any decent community, children\nshould find in every part of their native country, food, clothing,\nlodging, instruction, and parental kindness for the asking. For the\nmatter of that, so should adults; but the two cases differ in that as\nthese commodities do not grow on the bushes, the adults cannot have\nthem unless they themselves organize and provide the supply, whereas the\nchildren must have them as if by magic, with nothing to do but rub the\nlamp, like Aladdin, and have their needs satisfied.\n\n\n\n\nThe Parents' Intolerable Burden\n\nThere is nothing new in this: it is how children have always had and\nmust always have their needs satisfied. The parent has to play the part\nof Aladdin's djinn; and many a parent has sunk beneath the burden of\nthis service. All the novelty we need is to organize it so that instead\nof the individual child fastening like a parasite on its own particular\nparents, the whole body of children should be thrown not only upon the\nwhole body of parents, but upon the celibates and childless as well,\nwhose present exemption from a full share in the social burden of\nchildren is obviously unjust and unwholesome. Today it is easy to find a\nwidow who has at great cost to herself in pain, danger, and disablement,\nborne six or eight children. In the same town you will find rich\nbachelors and old maids, and married couples with no children or with\nfamilies voluntarily limited to two or three. The eight children do not\nbelong to the woman in any real or legal sense. When she has reared\nthem they pass away from her into the community as independent persons,\nmarrying strangers, working for strangers, spending on the community the\nlife that has been built up at her expense. No more monstrous injustice\ncould be imagined than that the burden of rearing the children should\nfall on her alone and not on the celibates and the selfish as well.\n\nThis is so far recognized that already the child finds, wherever it\ngoes, a school for it, and somebody to force it into the school; and\nmore and more these schools are being driven by the mere logic of facts\nto provide the children with meals, with boots, with spectacles, with\ndentists and doctors. In fact, when the child's parents are destitute or\nnot to be found, bread, lodging, and clothing are provided. It is true\nthat they are provided grudgingly and on conditions infamous enough to\ndraw down abundant fire from Heaven upon us every day in the shape of\ncrime and disease and vice; but still the practice of keeping children\nbarely alive at the charge of the community is established; and there is\nno need for me to argue about it. I propose only two extensions of the\npractice. One is to provide for all the child's reasonable human wants,\non which point, if you differ from me, I shall take leave to say that\nyou are socially a fool and personally an inhuman wretch. The other is\nthat these wants should be supplied in complete freedom from compulsory\nschooling or compulsory anything except restraint from crime, though,\nas they can be supplied only by social organization, the child must be\nconscious of and subject to the conditions of that organization, which\nmay involve such portions of adult responsibility and duty as a child\nmay be able to bear according to its age, and which will in any case\nprevent it from forming the vagabond and anarchist habit of mind.\n\nOne more exception might be necessary: compulsory freedom. I am sure\nthat a child should not be imprisoned in a school. I am not so sure that\nit should not sometimes be driven out into the open--imprisoned in the\nwoods and on the mountains, as it were. For there are frowsty children,\njust as there are frowsty adults, who dont want freedom. This morbid\nresult of over-domestication would, let us hope, soon disappear with its\ncause.\n\n\n\n\nMobilization\n\nThose who see no prospect held out to them by this except a country in\nwhich all the children shall be roaming savages, should consider, first,\nwhether their condition would be any worse than that of the little caged\nsavages of today, and second, whether either children or adults are\nso apt to run wild that it is necessary to tether them fast to one\nneighborhood to prevent a general dissolution of society. My own\nobservation leads me to believe that we are not half mobilized enough.\nTrue, I cannot deny that we are more mobile than we were. You will still\nfind in the home counties old men who have never been to London, and who\ntell you that they once went to Winchester or St Albans much as if they\nhad been to the South Pole; but they are not so common as the clerk who\nhas been to Paris or to Lovely Lucerne, and who \"goes away somewhere\"\nwhen he has a holiday. His grandfather never had a holiday, and, if he\nhad, would no more have dreamed of crossing the Channel than of taking\na box at the Opera. But with all allowance for the Polytechnic excursion\nand the tourist agency, our inertia is still appalling. I confess to\nhaving once spent nine years in London without putting my nose\noutside it; and though this was better, perhaps, than the restless\nglobe-trotting vagabondage of the idle rich, wandering from hotel to\nhotel and never really living anywhere, yet I should no more have done\nit if I had been properly mobilized in my childhood than I should have\nworn the same suit of clothes all that time (which, by the way, I very\nnearly did, my professional income not having as yet begun to sprout).\nThere are masses of people who could afford at least a trip to Margate,\nand a good many who could afford a trip round the world, who are more\nimmovable than Aldgate pump. To others, who would move if they knew how,\ntravelling is surrounded with imaginary difficulties and terrors. In\nshort, the difficulty is not to fix people, but to root them up. We keep\nrepeating the silly proverb that a rolling stone gathers no moss, as if\nmoss were a desirable parasite. What we mean is that a vagabond does not\nprosper. Even this is not true, if prosperity means enjoyment as well as\nresponsibility and money. The real misery of vagabondage is the misery\nof having nothing to do and nowhere to go, the misery of being derelict\nof God and Man, the misery of the idle, poor or rich. And this is one\nof the miseries of unoccupied childhood. The unoccupied adult, thus\nafflicted, tries many distractions which are, to say the least, unsuited\nto children. But one of them, the distraction of seeing the world, is\ninnocent and beneficial. Also it is childish, being a continuation of\nwhat nurses call \"taking notice,\" by which a child becomes experienced.\nIt is pitiable nowadays to see men and women doing after the age of 45\nall the travelling and sightseeing they should have done before they\nwere 15. Mere wondering and staring at things is an important part of\na child's education: that is why children can be thoroughly mobilized\nwithout making vagabonds of them. A vagabond is at home nowhere because\nhe wanders: a child should wander because it ought to be at home\neverywhere. And if it has its papers and its passports, and gets what\nit requires not by begging and pilfering, but from responsible agents\nof the community as of right, and with some formal acknowledgment of\nthe obligations it is incurring and a knowledge of the fact that these\nobligations are being recorded: if, further, certain qualifications are\nexacted before it is promoted from permission to go as far as its\nlegs will carry it to using mechanical aids to locomotion, it can roam\nwithout much danger of gypsification.\n\nUnder such circumstances the boy or girl could always run away, and\nnever be lost; and on no other conditions can a child be free without\nbeing also a homeless outcast.\n\nParents could also run away from disagreeable children or drive them out\nof doors or even drop their acquaintance, temporarily or permanently,\nwithout inhumanity. Thus both parties would be on their good behavior,\nand not, as at present, on their filial or parental behavior, which,\nlike all unfree behavior, is mostly bad behavior.\n\nAs to what other results might follow, we had better wait and see; for\nnobody now alive can imagine what customs and institutions would grow\nup in societies of free children. Child laws and child fashions, child\nmanners and child morals are now not tolerated; but among free children\nthere would certainly be surprising developments in this direction. I do\nnot think there would be any danger of free children behaving as badly\nas grown-up people do now because they have never been free. They could\nhardly behave worse, anyhow.\n\n\n\n\nChildren's Rights and Parents' Wrongs\n\nA very distinguished man once assured a mother of my acquaintance that\nshe would never know what it meant to be hurt until she was hurt through\nher children. Children are extremely cruel without intending it; and\nin ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the reason is that they do not\nconceive their elders as having any human feelings. Serve the elders\nright, perhaps, for posing as superhuman! The penalty of the impostor\nis not that he is found out (he very seldom is) but that he is taken\nfor what he pretends to be, and treated as such. And to be treated as\nanything but what you really are may seem pleasant to the imagination\nwhen the treatment is above your merits; but in actual experience it\nis often quite the reverse. When I was a very small boy, my romantic\nimagination, stimulated by early doses of fiction, led me to brag to a\nstill smaller boy so outrageously that he, being a simple soul, really\nbelieved me to be an invincible hero. I cannot remember whether this\npleased me much; but I do remember very distinctly that one day this\nadmirer of mine, who had a pet goat, found the animal in the hands of a\nlarger boy than either of us, who mocked him and refused to restore the\nanimal to his rightful owner. Whereupon, naturally, he came weeping\nto me, and demanded that I should rescue the goat and annihilate the\naggressor. My terror was beyond description: fortunately for me, it\nimparted such a ghastliness to my voice and aspect as I under the eye of\nmy poor little dupe, advanced on the enemy with that hideous extremity\nof cowardice which is called the courage of despair, and said \"You let\ngo that goat,\" that he abandoned his prey and fled, to my unforgettable,\nunspeakable relief. I have never since exaggerated my prowess in bodily\ncombat.\n\nNow what happened to me in the adventure of the goat happens very often\nto parents, and would happen to schoolmasters if the prison door of the\nschool did not shut out the trials of life. I remember once, at school,\nthe resident head master was brought down to earth by the sudden illness\nof his wife. In the confusion that ensued it became necessary to\nleave one of the schoolrooms without a master. I was in the class that\noccupied that schoolroom. To have sent us home would have been to break\nthe fundamental bargain with our parents by which the school was bound\nto keep us out of their way for half the day at all hazards. Therefore\nan appeal had to be made to our better feelings: that is, to our common\nhumanity, not to make a noise. But the head master had never admitted\nany common humanity with us. We had been carefully broken in to regard\nhim as a being quite aloof from and above us: one not subject to error\nor suffering or death or illness or mortality. Consequently sympathy was\nimpossible; and if the unfortunate lady did not perish, it was because,\nas I now comfort myself with guessing, she was too much pre-occupied\nwith her own pains, and possibly making too much noise herself, to be\nconscious of the pandemonium downstairs.\n\nA great deal of the fiendishness of schoolboys and the cruelty of\nchildren to their elders is produced just in this way. Elders cannot be\nsuperhuman beings and suffering fellow-creatures at the same time. If\nyou pose as a little god, you must pose for better for worse.\n\n\n\n\nHow Little We Know About Our Parents\n\nThe relation between parent and child has cruel moments for the parent\neven when money is no object, and the material worries are delegated to\nservants and school teachers. The child and the parent are strangers\nto one another necessarily, because their ages must differ widely. Read\nGoethe's autobiography; and note that though he was happy in his\nparents and had exceptional powers of observation, divination, and\nstory-telling, he knew less about his father and mother than about most\nof the other people he mentions. I myself was never on bad terms with\nmy mother: we lived together until I was forty-two years old, absolutely\nwithout the smallest friction of any kind; yet when her death set me\nthinking curiously about our relations, I realized that I knew very\nlittle about her. Introduce me to a strange woman who was a child when\nI was a child, a girl when I was a boy, an adolescent when I was an\nadolescent; and if we take naturally to one another I will know more of\nher and she of me at the end of forty days (I had almost said of\nforty minutes) than I knew of my mother at the end of forty years. A\ncontemporary stranger is a novelty and an enigma, also a possibility;\nbut a mother is like a broomstick or like the sun in the heavens, it\ndoes not matter which as far as one's knowledge of her is concerned:\nthe broomstick is there and the sun is there; and whether the child is\nbeaten by it or warmed and enlightened by it, it accepts it as a fact\nin nature, and does not conceive it as having had youth, passions, and\nweaknesses, or as still growing, yearning, suffering, and learning. If\nI meet a widow I may ask her all about her marriage; but what son ever\ndreams of asking his mother about her marriage, or could endure to hear\nof it without violently breaking off the old sacred relationship between\nthem, and ceasing to be her child or anything more to her than the first\nman in the street might be?\n\nYet though in this sense the child cannot realize its parent's\nhumanity, the parent can realize the child's; for the parents with their\nexperience of life have none of the illusions about the child that the\nchild has about the parents; and the consequence is that the child\ncan hurt its parents' feelings much more than its parents can hurt\nthe child's, because the child, even when there has been none of the\ndeliberate hypocrisy by which children are taken advantage of by their\nelders, cannot conceive the parent as a fellow-creature, whilst the\nparents know very well that the children are only themselves over again.\nThe child cannot conceive that its blame or contempt or want of interest\ncould possibly hurt its parent, and therefore expresses them all with\nan indifference which has given rise to the term _enfant terrible_ (a\ntragic term in spite of the jests connected with it); whilst the parent\ncan suffer from such slights and reproaches more from a child than from\nanyone else, even when the child is not beloved, because the child is so\nunmistakably sincere in them.\n\n\n\n\nOur Abandoned Mothers\n\nTake a very common instance of this agonizing incompatibility. A widow\nbrings up her son to manhood. He meets a strange woman, and goes off\nwith and marries her, leaving his mother desolate. It does not occur to\nhim that this is at all hard on her: he does it as a matter of course,\nand actually expects his mother to receive, on terms of special\naffection, the woman for whom she has been abandoned. If he shewed any\nsense of what he was doing, any remorse; if he mingled his tears with\nhers and asked her not to think too hardly of him because he had obeyed\nthe inevitable destiny of a man to leave his father and mother and\ncleave to his wife, she could give him her blessing and accept her\nbereavement with dignity and without reproach. But the man never dreams\nof such considerations. To him his mother's feeling in the matter, when\nshe betrays it, is unreasonable, ridiculous, and even odious, as shewing\na prejudice against his adorable bride.\n\nI have taken the widow as an extreme and obvious case; but there are\nmany husbands and wives who are tired of their consorts, or disappointed\nin them, or estranged from them by infidelities; and these parents, in\nlosing a son or a daughter through marriage, may be losing everything\nthey care for. No parent's love is as innocent as the love of a child:\nthe exclusion of all conscious sexual feeling from it does not exclude\nthe bitterness, jealousy, and despair at loss which characterize sexual\npassion: in fact, what is called a pure love may easily be more selfish\nand jealous than a carnal one. Anyhow, it is plain matter of fact that\nnaively selfish people sometimes try with fierce jealousy to prevent\ntheir children marrying.\n\n\n\n\nFamily Affection\n\nUntil the family as we know it ceases to exist, nobody will dare to\nanalyze parental affection as distinguished from that general human\nsympathy which has secured to many an orphan fonder care in a stranger's\nhouse than it would have received from its actual parents. Not even\nTolstoy, in The Kreutzer Sonata, has said all that we suspect about it.\nWhen it persists beyond the period at which it ceases to be necessary to\nthe child's welfare, it is apt to be morbid; and we are probably wrong\nto inculcate its deliberate cultivation. The natural course is for\nthe parents and children to cast off the specific parental and filial\nrelation when they are no longer necessary to one another. The\nchild does this readily enough to form fresh ties, closer and more\nfascinating. Parents are not always excluded from such compensations:\nit happens sometimes that when the children go out at the door the lover\ncomes in at the window. Indeed it happens now oftener than it used to,\nbecause people remain much longer in the sexual arena. The cultivated\nJewess no longer cuts off her hair at her marriage. The British matron\nhas discarded her cap and her conscientious ugliness; and a bishop's\nwife at fifty has more of the air of a _femme galante_ than an actress\nhad at thirty-five in her grandmother's time. But as people marry later,\nthe facts of age and time still inexorably condemn most parents to\ncomparative solitude when their children marry. This may be a privation\nand may be a relief: probably in healthy circumstances it is no worse\nthan a salutary change of habit; but even at that it is, for the moment\nat least, a wrench. For though parents and children sometimes dislike\none another, there is an experience of succor and a habit of dependence\nand expectation formed in infancy which naturally attaches a child to\nits parent or to its nurse (a foster parent) in a quite peculiar way.\nA benefit to the child may be a burden to the parent; but people become\nattached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached\nto them; and to \"suffer little children\" has become an affectionate\nimpulse deep in our nature.\n\nNow there is no such impulse to suffer our sisters and brothers,\nour aunts and uncles, much less our cousins. If we could choose our\nrelatives, we might, by selecting congenial ones, mitigate the repulsive\neffect of the obligation to like them and to admit them to our intimacy.\nBut to have a person imposed on us as a brother merely because he\nhappens to have the same parents is unbearable when, as may easily\nhappen, he is the sort of person we should carefully avoid if he were\nanyone else's brother. All Europe (except Scotland, which has clans\ninstead of families) draws the line at second cousins. Protestantism\ndraws it still closer by making the first cousin a marriageable\nstranger; and the only reason for not drawing it at sisters and brothers\nis that the institution of the family compels us to spend our\nchildhood with them, and thus imposes on us a curious relation in which\nfamiliarity destroys romantic charm, and is yet expected to create a\nspecially warm affection. Such a relation is dangerously factitious and\nunnatural; and the practical moral is that the less said at home about\nspecific family affection the better. Children, like grown-up people,\nget on well enough together if they are not pushed down one another's\nthroats; and grown-up relatives will get on together in proportion\nto their separation and their care not to presume on their blood\nrelationship. We should let children's feelings take their natural\ncourse without prompting. I have seen a child scolded and called\nunfeeling because it did not occur to it to make a theatrical\ndemonstration of affectionate delight when its mother returned after an\nabsence: a typical example of the way in which spurious family sentiment\nis stoked up. We are, after all, sociable animals; and if we are let\nalone in the matter of our affections, and well brought up otherwise,\nwe shall not get on any the worse with particular people because they\nhappen to be our brothers and sisters and cousins. The danger lies in\nassuming that we shall get on any better.\n\nThe main point to grasp here is that families are not kept together at\npresent by family feeling but by human feeling. The family cultivates\nsympathy and mutual help and consolation as any other form of kindly\nassociation cultivates them; but the addition of a dictated compulsory\naffection as an attribute of near kinship is not only unnecessary,\nbut positively detrimental; and the alleged tendency of modern social\ndevelopment to break up the family need alarm nobody. We cannot break up\nthe facts of kinship nor eradicate its natural emotional consequences.\nWhat we can do and ought to do is to set people free to behave naturally\nand to change their behavior as circumstances change. To impose on\na citizen of London the family duties of a Highland cateran in the\neighteenth century is as absurd as to compel him to carry a claymore and\ntarget instead of an umbrella. The civilized man has no special use\nfor cousins; and he may presently find that he has no special use for\nbrothers and sisters. The parent seems likely to remain indispensable;\nbut there is no reason why that natural tie should be made the excuse\nfor unnatural aggravations of it, as crushing to the parent as they are\noppressive to the child. The mother and father will not always have\nto shoulder the burthen of maintenance which should fall on the Atlas\nshoulders of the fatherland and motherland. Pending such reforms and\nemancipations, a shattering break-up of the parental home must remain\none of the normal incidents of marriage. The parent is left lonely and\nthe child is not. Woe to the old if they have no impersonal interests,\nno convictions, no public causes to advance, no tastes or hobbies! It is\nwell to be a mother but not to be a mother-in-law; and if men were cut\noff artificially from intellectual and public interests as women are,\nthe father-in-law would be as deplorable a figure in popular tradition\nas the mother-in-law.\n\nIt is not to be wondered at that some people hold that blood\nrelationship should be kept a secret from the persons related, and that\nthe happiest condition in this respect is that of the foundling who, if\nhe ever meets his parents or brothers or sisters, passes them by without\nknowing them. And for such a view there is this to be said: that our\nfamily system does unquestionably take the natural bond between members\nof the same family, which, like all natural bonds, is not too tight to\nbe borne, and superimposes on it a painful burden of forced, inculcated,\nsuggested, and altogether unnecessary affection and responsibility which\nwe should do well to get rid of by making relatives as independent of\none another as possible.\n\n\n\n\nThe Fate of the Family\n\nThe difficulty of inducing people to talk sensibly about the family is\nthe same as that which I pointed out in a previous volume as\nconfusing discussions of marriage. Marriage is not a single invariable\ninstitution: it changes from civilization to civilization, from religion\nto religion, from civil code to civil code, from frontier to frontier.\nThe family is still more variable, because the number of persons\nconstituting a family, unlike the number of persons constituting a\nmarriage, varies from one to twenty: indeed, when a widower with a\nfamily marries a widow with a family, and the two produce a third\nfamily, even that very high number may be surpassed. And the conditions\nmay vary between opposite extremes: for example, in a London or Paris\nslum every child adds to the burden of poverty and helps to starve the\nparents and all the other children, whereas in a settlement of pioneer\ncolonists every child, from the moment it is big enough to lend a hand\nto the family industry, is an investment in which the only danger is\nthat of temporary over-capitalization. Then there are the variations\nin family sentiment. Sometimes the family organization is as frankly\npolitical as the organization of an army or an industry: fathers being\nno more expected to be sentimental about their children than colonels\nabout soldiers, or factory owners about their employees, though the\nmother may be allowed a little tenderness if her character is weak. The\nRoman father was a despot: the Chinese father is an object of worship:\nthe sentimental modern western father is often a play-fellow looked to\nfor toys and pocket-money. The farmer sees his children constantly: the\nsquire sees them only during the holidays, and not then oftener than he\ncan help: the tram conductor, when employed by a joint stock company,\nsometimes never sees them at all.\n\nUnder such circumstances phrases like The Influence of Home Life, The\nFamily, The Domestic Hearth, and so on, are no more specific than The\nMammals, or The Man In The Street; and the pious generalizations founded\nso glibly on them by our sentimental moralists are unworkable.\nWhen households average twelve persons with the sexes about equally\nrepresented, the results may be fairly good. When they average three the\nresults may be very bad indeed; and to lump the two together under\nthe general term The Family is to confuse the question hopelessly. The\nmodern small family is much too stuffy: children \"brought up at home\"\nin it are unfit for society. But here again circumstances differ. If the\nparents live in what is called a garden suburb, where there is a good\ndeal of social intercourse, and the family, instead of keeping itself to\nitself, as the evil old saying is, and glowering at the neighbors over\nthe blinds of the long street in which nobody knows his neighbor and\neveryone wishes to deceive him as to his income and social importance,\nis in effect broken up by school life, by out-of-door habits, and by\nfrank neighborly intercourse through dances and concerts and theatricals\nand excursions and the like, families of four may turn out much less\nbarbarous citizens than families of ten which attain the Boer ideal of\nbeing out of sight of one another's chimney smoke.\n\nAll one can say is, roughly, that the homelier the home, and the more\nfamiliar the family, the worse for everybody concerned. The family ideal\nis a humbug and a nuisance: one might as reasonably talk of the barrack\nideal, or the forecastle ideal, or any other substitution of the\nmachinery of social organization for the end of it, which must always\nbe the fullest and most capable life: in short, the most godly life. And\nthis significant word reminds us that though the popular conception of\nheaven includes a Holy Family, it does not attach to that family\nthe notion of a separate home, or a private nursery or kitchen or\nmother-in-law, or anything that constitutes the family as we know it.\nEven blood relationship is miraculously abstracted from it; and the\nFather is the father of all children, the mother the mother of all\nmothers and babies, and the Son the Son of Man and the Savior of his\nbrothers: one whose chief utterance on the subject of the conventional\nfamily was an invitation to all of us to leave our families and follow\nhim, and to leave the dead to bury the dead, and not debauch ourselves\nat that gloomy festival the family funeral, with its sequel of hideous\nmourning and grief which is either affected or morbid.\n\n\n\n\nFamily Mourning\n\nI do not know how far this detestable custom of mourning is carried in\nFrance; but judging from the appearance of the French people I should\nsay that a Frenchwoman goes into mourning for her cousins to the\nseventeenth degree. The result is that when I cross the Channel I seem\nto have reached a country devastated by war or pestilence. It is really\nsuffering only from the family. Will anyone pretend that England has\nnot the best of this striking difference? Yet it is such senseless and\nunnatural conventions as this that make us so impatient of what we call\nfamily feeling. Even apart from its insufferable pretensions, the family\nneeds hearty discrediting; for there is hardly any vulnerable part of it\nthat could not be amputated with advantage.\n\n\n\n\nArt Teaching\n\nBy art teaching I hasten to say that I do not mean giving children\nlessons in freehand drawing and perspective. I am simply calling\nattention to the fact that fine art is the only teacher except torture.\nI have already pointed out that nobody, except under threat of torture,\ncan read a school book. The reason is that a school book is not a work\nof art. Similarly, you cannot listen to a lesson or a sermon unless the\nteacher or the preacher is an artist. You cannot read the Bible if you\nhave no sense of literary art. The reason why the continental European\nis, to the Englishman or American, so surprisingly ignorant of the\nBible, is that the authorized English version is a great work of\nliterary art, and the continental versions are comparatively artless.\nTo read a dull book; to listen to a tedious play or prosy sermon or\nlecture; to stare at uninteresting pictures or ugly buildings: nothing,\nshort of disease, is more dreadful than this. The violence done to our\nsouls by it leaves injuries and produces subtle maladies which have\nnever been properly studied by psycho-pathologists. Yet we are so inured\nto it in school, where practically all the teachers are bores trying\nto do the work of artists, and all the books artless, that we acquire\na truly frightful power of enduring boredom. We even acquire the notion\nthat fine art is lascivious and destructive to the character. In church,\nin the House of Commons, at public meetings, we sit solemnly listening\nto bores and twaddlers because from the time we could walk or speak we\nhave been snubbed, scolded, bullied, beaten and imprisoned whenever we\ndared to resent being bored or twaddled at, or to express our natural\nimpatience and derision of bores and twaddlers. And when a man arises\nwith a soul of sufficient native strength to break the bonds of this\ninculcated reverence and to expose and deride and tweak the noses of our\nhumbugs and panjandrums, like Voltaire or Dickens, we are shocked and\nscandalized, even when we cannot help laughing. Worse, we dread and\npersecute those who can see and declare the truth, because their\nsincerity and insight reflects on our delusion and blindness. We are\nall like Nell Gwynne's footman, who defended Nell's reputation with his\nfists, not because he believed her to be what he called an honest woman,\nbut because he objected to be scorned as the footman of one who was no\nbetter than she should be.\n\nThis wretched power of allowing ourselves to be bored may seem to give\nthe fine arts a chance sometimes. People will sit through a performance\nof Beethoven's ninth symphony or of Wagner's Ring just as they will sit\nthrough a dull sermon or a front bench politician saying nothing for two\nhours whilst his unfortunate country is perishing through the delay\nof its business in Parliament. But their endurance is very bad for the\nninth symphony, because they never hiss when it is murdered. I have\nheard an Italian conductor (no longer living) take the _adagio_ of that\nsymphony at a lively _allegretto_, slowing down for the warmer major\nsections into the speed and manner of the heroine's death song in a\nVerdi opera; and the listeners, far from relieving my excruciation by\nrising with yells of fury and hurling their programs and opera glasses\nat the miscreant, behaved just as they do when Richter conducts it. The\nmass of imposture that thrives on this combination of ignorance with\ndespairing endurance is incalculable. Given a public trained from\nchildhood to stand anything tedious, and so saturated with school\ndiscipline that even with the doors open and no schoolmasters to stop\nthem they will sit there helplessly until the end of the concert or\nopera gives them leave to go home; and you will have in great capitals\nhundreds of thousands of pounds spent every night in the season on\nprofessedly artistic entertainments which have no other effect on fine\nart than to exacerbate the hatred in which it is already secretly held\nin England.\n\nFortunately, there are arts that cannot be cut off from the people by\nbad performances. We can read books for ourselves; and we can play\na good deal of fine music for ourselves with the help of a pianola.\nNothing stands between us and the actual handwork of the great masters\nof painting except distance; and modern photographic methods of\nreproduction are in some cases quite and in many nearly as effective in\nconveying the artist's message as a modern edition of Shakespear's plays\nis in conveying the message that first existed in his handwriting. The\nreproduction of great feats of musical execution is already on the\nway: the phonograph, for all its wheezing and snarling and braying, is\nsteadily improving in its manners; and what with this improvement on the\none hand, and on the other that blessed selective faculty which enables\nus to ignore a good deal of disagreeable noise if there is a thread\nof music in the middle of it (few critics of the phonograph seem to be\nconscious of the very considerable mechanical noise set up by choirs\nand orchestras) we have at last reached a point at which, for example,\na person living in an English village where the church music is the only\nmusic, and that music is made by a few well-intentioned ladies with\nthe help of a harmonium, can hear masses by Palestrina very passably\nexecuted, and can thereby be led to the discovery that Jackson in F and\nHymns Ancient and Modern are not perhaps the last word of beauty and\npropriety in the praise of God.\n\nIn short, there is a vast body of art now within the reach of everybody.\nThe difficulty is that this art, which alone can educate us in grace of\nbody and soul, and which alone can make the history of the past live for\nus or the hope of the future shine for us, which alone can give delicacy\nand nobility to our crude lusts, which is the appointed vehicle of\ninspiration and the method of the communion of saints, is actually\nbranded as sinful among us because, wherever it arises, there is\nresistance to tyranny, breaking of fetters, and the breath of freedom.\nThe attempt to suppress art is not wholly successful: we might as well\ntry to suppress oxygen. But it is carried far enough to inflict on huge\nnumbers of people a most injurious art starvation, and to corrupt a\ngreat deal of the art that is tolerated. You will find in England plenty\nof rich families with little more culture than their dogs and horses.\nAnd you will find poor families, cut off by poverty and town life\nfrom the contemplation of the beauty of the earth, with its dresses of\nleaves, its scarves of cloud, and its contours of hill and valley, who\nwould positively be happier as hogs, so little have they cultivated\ntheir humanity by the only effective instrument of culture: art. The\ndearth is artificially maintained even when there are the means of\nsatisfying it. Story books are forbidden, picture post cards are\nforbidden, theatres are forbidden, operas are forbidden, circuses are\nforbidden, sweetmeats are forbidden, pretty colors are forbidden, all\nexactly as vice is forbidden. The Creator is explicitly prayed to, and\nimplicitly convicted of indecency every day. An association of vice and\nsin with everything that is delightful and of goodness with everything\nthat is wretched and detestable is set up. All the most perilous (and\nglorious) appetites and propensities are at once inflamed by starvation\nand uneducated by art. All the wholesome conditions which art imposes on\nappetite are waived: instead of cultivated men and women restrained by\na thousand delicacies, repelled by ugliness, chilled by vulgarity,\nhorrified by coarseness, deeply and sweetly moved by the graces that art\nhas revealed to them and nursed in them, we get indiscriminate rapacity\nin pursuit of pleasure and a parade of the grossest stimulations in\ncatering for it. We have a continual clamor for goodness, beauty,\nvirtue, and sanctity, with such an appalling inability to recognize\nit or love it when it arrives that it is more dangerous to be a great\nprophet or poet than to promote twenty companies for swindling simple\nfolk out of their savings. Do not for a moment suppose that uncultivated\npeople are merely indifferent to high and noble qualities. They hate\nthem malignantly. At best, such qualities are like rare and beautiful\nbirds: when they appear the whole country takes down its guns; but the\nbirds receive the statuary tribute of having their corpses stuffed.\n\nAnd it really all comes from the habit of preventing children from\nbeing troublesome. You are so careful of your boy's morals, knowing how\ntroublesome they may be, that you keep him away from the Venus of Milo\nonly to find him in the arms of the scullery maid or someone much worse.\nYou decide that the Hermes of Praxiteles and Wagner's Tristan are not\nsuited for young girls; and your daughter marries somebody appallingly\nunlike either Hermes or Tristan solely to escape from your parental\nprotection. You have not stifled a single passion nor averted a single\ndanger: you have depraved the passions by starving them, and broken down\nall the defences which so effectively protect children brought up in\nfreedom. You have men who imagine themselves to be ministers of religion\nopenly declaring that when they pass through the streets they have\nto keep out in the wheeled traffic to avoid the temptations of the\npavement. You have them organizing hunts of the women who tempt\nthem--poor creatures whom no artist would touch without a shudder--and\nwildly clamoring for more clothes to disguise and conceal the body, and\nfor the abolition of pictures, statues, theatres, and pretty colors.\nAnd incredible as it seems, these unhappy lunatics are left at large,\nunrebuked, even admired and revered, whilst artists have to struggle for\ntoleration. To them an undraped human body is the most monstrous, the\nmost blighting, the most obscene, the most unbearable spectacle in the\nuniverse. To an artist it is, at its best, the most admirable spectacle\nin nature, and, at its average, an object of indifference. If every rag\nof clothing miraculously dropped from the inhabitants of London at noon\ntomorrow (say as a preliminary to the Great Judgment), the artistic\npeople would not turn a hair; but the artless people would go mad and\ncall on the mountains to hide them. I submit that this indicates a\nthoroughly healthy state on the part of the artists, and a thoroughly\nmorbid one on the part of the artless. And the healthy state is\nattainable in a cold country like ours only by familiarity with the\nundraped figure acquired through pictures, statues, and theatrical\nrepresentations in which an illusion of natural clotheslessness is\nproduced and made poetic.\n\nIn short, we all grow up stupid and mad to just the extent to which we\nhave not been artistically educated; and the fact that this taint of\nstupidity and madness has to be tolerated because it is general, and is\neven boasted of as characteristically English, makes the situation all\nthe worse. It is becoming exceedingly grave at present, because the last\nray of art is being cut off from our schools by the discontinuance of\nreligious education.\n\n\n\n\nThe Impossibility of Secular Education\n\nNow children must be taught some sort of religion. Secular education is\nan impossibility. Secular education comes to this: that the only reason\nfor ceasing to do evil and learning to do well is that if you do not you\nwill be caned. This is worse than being taught in a church school that\nif you become a dissenter you will go to hell; for hell is presented as\nthe instrument of something eternal, divine, and inevitable: you cannot\nevade it the moment the schoolmaster's back is turned. What confuses\nthis issue and leads even highly intelligent religious persons to\nadvocate secular education as a means of rescuing children from the\nstrife of rival proselytizers is the failure to distinguish between\nthe child's personal subjective need for a religion and its right to\nan impartially communicated historical objective knowledge of all the\ncreeds and Churches. Just as a child, no matter what its race and color\nmay be, should know that there are black men and brown men and yellow\nmen, and, no matter what its political convictions may be, that\nthere are Monarchists and Republicans and Positivists, Socialists and\nUnsocialists, so it should know that there are Christians and Mahometans\nand Buddhists and Shintoists and so forth, and that they are on the\naverage just as honest and well-behaved as its own father. For example,\nit should not be told that Allah is a false god set up by the Turks and\nArabs, who will all be damned for taking that liberty; but it should be\ntold that many English people think so, and that many Turks and Arabs\nthink the converse about English people. It should be taught that Allah\nis simply the name by which God is known to Turks and Arabs, who are\njust as eligible for salvation as any Christian. Further, that the\npractical reason why a Turkish child should pray in a mosque and an\nEnglish child in a church is that as worship is organized in Turkey in\nmosques in the name of Mahomet and in England in churches in the name\nof Christ, a Turkish child joining the Church of England or an English\nchild following Mahomet will find that it has no place for its worship\nand no organization of its religion within its reach. Any other teaching\nof the history and present facts of religion is false teaching, and is\npolitically extremely dangerous in an empire in which a huge majority of\nthe fellow subjects of the governing island do not profess the religion\nof that island.\n\nBut this objectivity, though intellectually honest, tells the child\nonly what other people believe. What it should itself believe is quite\nanother matter. The sort of Rationalism which says to a child \"You must\nsuspend your judgment until you are old enough to choose your religion\"\nis Rationalism gone mad. The child must have a conscience and a code\nof honor (which is the essence of religion) even if it be only a\nprovisional one, to be revised at its confirmation. For confirmation is\nmeant to signalize a spiritual coming of age, and may be a repudiation.\nReally active souls have many confirmations and repudiations as their\nlife deepens and their knowledge widens. But what is to guide the child\nbefore its first confirmation? Not mere orders, because orders must\nhave a sanction of some sort or why should the child obey them? If, as a\nSecularist, you refuse to teach any sanction, you must say \"You will\nbe punished if you disobey.\" \"Yes,\" says the child to itself, \"if I am\nfound out; but wait until your back is turned and I will do as I like,\nand lie about it.\" There can be no objective punishment for successful\nfraud; and as no espionage can cover the whole range of a child's\nconduct, the upshot is that the child becomes a liar and schemer with an\natrophied conscience. And a good many of the orders given to it are not\nobeyed after all. Thus the Secularist who is not a fool is forced to\nappeal to the child's vital impulse towards perfection, to the divine\nspark; and no resolution not to call this impulse an impulse of loyalty\nto the Fellowship of the Holy Ghost, or obedience to the Will of God,\nor any other standard theological term, can alter the fact that the\nSecularist has stepped outside Secularism and is educating the child\nreligiously, even if he insists on repudiating that pious adverb and\nsubstituting the word metaphysically.\n\n\n\n\nNatural Selection as a Religion\n\nWe must make up our minds to it therefore that whatever measures we may\nbe forced to take to prevent the recruiting sergeants of the Churches,\nfree or established, from obtaining an exclusive right of entry to\nschools, we shall not be able to exclude religion from them. The most\nhorrible of all religions: that which teaches us to regard ourselves\nas the helpless prey of a series of senseless accidents called Natural\nSelection, is allowed and even welcomed in so-called secular schools\nbecause it is, in a sense, the negation of all religion; but for school\npurposes a religion is a belief which affects conduct; and no belief\naffects conduct more radically and often so disastrously as the belief\nthat the universe is a product of Natural Selection. What is more, the\ntheory of Natural Selection cannot be kept out of schools, because\nmany of the natural facts that present the most plausible appearance\nof design can be accounted for by Natural Selection; and it would be so\nabsurd to keep a child in delusive ignorance of so potent a factor\nin evolution as to keep it in ignorance of radiation or capillary\nattraction. Even if you make a religion of Natural Selection, and\nteach the child to regard itself as the irresponsible prey of its\ncircumstances and appetites (or its heredity as you will perhaps call\nthem), you will none the less find that its appetites are stimulated by\nyour encouragement and daunted by your discouragement; that one of its\nappetites is an appetite for perfection; that if you discourage this\nappetite and encourage the cruder acquisitive appetites the child will\nsteal and lie and be a nuisance to you; and that if you encourage its\nappetite for perfection and teach it to attach a peculiar sacredness\nto it and place it before the other appetites, it will be a much nicer\nchild and you will have a much easier job, at which point you will,\nin spite of your pseudoscientific jargon, find yourself back in the\nold-fashioned religious teaching as deep as Dr. Watts and in fact\nfathoms deeper.\n\n\n\n\nMoral Instruction Leagues\n\nAnd now the voices of our Moral Instruction Leagues will be lifted,\nasking whether there is any reason why the appetite for perfection\nshould not be cultivated in rationally scientific terms instead of being\nassociated with the story of Jonah and the great fish and the thousand\nother tales that grow up round religions. Yes: there are many reasons;\nand one of them is that children all like the story of Jonah and the\nwhale (they insist on its being a whale in spite of demonstrations by\nBible smashers without any sense of humor that Jonah would not have\nfitted into a whale's gullet--as if the story would be credible of a\nwhale with an enlarged throat) and that no child on earth can stand\nmoral instruction books or catechisms or any other statement of the case\nfor religion in abstract terms. The object of a moral instruction book\nis not to be rational, scientific, exact, proof against controversy, nor\neven credible: its object is to make children good; and if it makes them\nsick instead its place is the waste-paper basket.\n\nTake for an illustration the story of Elisha and the bears. To the\nauthors of the moral instruction books it is in the last degree\nreprehensible. It is obviously not true as a record of fact; and the\npicture it gives us of the temper of God (which is what interests an\nadult reader) is shocking and blasphemous. But it is a capital story for\na child. It interests a child because it is about bears; and it leaves\nthe child with an impression that children who poke fun at old gentlemen\nand make rude remarks about bald heads are not nice children, which is\na highly desirable impression, and just as much as a child is capable\nof receiving from the story. When a story is about God and a child,\nchildren take God for granted and criticize the child. Adults do the\nopposite, and are thereby led to talk great nonsense about the bad\neffect of Bible stories on infants.\n\nBut let no one think that a child or anyone else can learn religion from\na teacher or a book or by any academic process whatever. It is only\nby an unfettered access to the whole body of Fine Art: that is, to the\nwhole body of inspired revelation, that we can build up that conception\nof divinity to which all virtue is an aspiration. And to hope to find\nthis body of art purified from all that is obsolete or dangerous\nor fierce or lusty, or to pick and choose what will be good for any\nparticular child, much less for all children, is the shallowest\nof vanities. Such schoolmasterly selection is neither possible nor\ndesirable. Ignorance of evil is not virtue but imbecility: admiring\nit is like giving a prize for honesty to a man who has not stolen your\nwatch because he did not know you had one. Virtue chooses good from\nevil; and without knowledge there can be no choice. And even this is a\ndangerous simplification of what actually occurs. We are not choosing:\nwe are growing. Were you to cut all of what you call the evil out of\na child, it would drop dead. If you try to stretch it to full human\nstature when it is ten years old, you will simply pull it into two\npieces and be hanged. And when you try to do this morally, which is what\nparents and schoolmasters are doing every day, you ought to be hanged;\nand some day, when we take a sensible view of the matter, you will be;\nand serve you right. The child does not stand between a good and a\nbad angel: what it has to deal with is a middling angel who, in normal\nhealthy cases, wants to be a good angel as fast as it can without\nkilling itself in the process, which is a dangerous one.\n\nTherefore there is no question of providing the child with a carefully\nregulated access to good art. There is no good art, any more than there\nis good anything else in the absolute sense. Art that is too good for\nthe child will either teach it nothing or drive it mad, as the Bible has\ndriven many people mad who might have kept their sanity had they been\nallowed to read much lower forms of literature. The practical moral is\nthat we must read whatever stories, see whatever pictures, hear whatever\nsongs and symphonies, go to whatever plays we like. We shall not like\nthose which have nothing to say to us; and though everyone has a right\nto bias our choice, no one has a right to deprive us of it by keeping us\nfrom any work of art or any work of art from us.\n\nI may now say without danger of being misunderstood that the popular\nEnglish compromise called Cowper Templeism (unsectarian Bible education)\nis not so silly as it looks. It is true that the Bible inculcates half\na dozen religions: some of them barbarous; some cynical and pessimistic;\nsome amoristic and romantic; some sceptical and challenging; some\nkindly, simple, and intuitional; some sophistical and intellectual; none\nsuited to the character and conditions of western civilization unless it\nbe the Christianity which was finally suppressed by the Crucifixion, and\nhas never been put into practice by any State before or since. But the\nBible contains the ancient literature of a very remarkable Oriental\nrace; and the imposition of this literature, on whatever false\npretences, on our children left them more literate than if they knew\nno literature at all, which was the practical alternative. And as our\nAuthorized Version is a great work of art as well, to know it was better\nthan knowing no art, which also was the practical alternative. It is\nat least not a school book; and it is not a bad story book, horrible as\nsome of the stories are. Therefore as between the Bible and the blank\nrepresented by secular education, the choice is with the Bible.\n\n\n\n\nThe Bible\n\nBut the Bible is not sufficient. The real Bible of modern Europe is the\nwhole body of great literature in which the inspiration and revelation\nof Hebrew Scripture has been continued to the present day. Nietzsche's\nThus Spake Zoroaster is less comforting to the ill and unhappy than the\nPsalms; but it is much truer, subtler, and more edifying. The pleasure\nwe get from the rhetoric of the book of Job and its tragic picture of a\nbewildered soul cannot disguise the ignoble irrelevance of the retort of\nGod with which it closes, or supply the need of such modern revelations\nas Shelley's Prometheus or The Niblung's Ring of Richard Wagner. There\nis nothing in the Bible greater in inspiration than Beethoven's ninth\nsymphony; and the power of modern music to convey that inspiration to\na modern man is far greater than that of Elizabethan English, which is,\nexcept for people steeped in the Bible from childhood like Sir Walter\nScott and Ruskin, a dead language.\n\nBesides, many who have no ear for literature or for music are accessible\nto architecture, to pictures, to statues, to dresses, and to the arts of\nthe stage. Every device of art should be brought to bear on the young;\nso that they may discover some form of it that delights them naturally;\nfor there will come to all of them that period between dawning\nadolescence and full maturity when the pleasures and emotions of art\nwill have to satisfy cravings which, if starved or insulted, may become\nmorbid and seek disgraceful satisfactions, and, if prematurely gratified\notherwise than poetically, may destroy the stamina of the race. And it\nmust be borne in mind that the most dangerous art for this necessary\npurpose is the art that presents itself as religious ecstasy. Young\npeople are ripe for love long before they are ripe for religion. Only\na very foolish person would substitute the Imitation of Christ for\nTreasure Island as a present for a boy or girl, or for Byron's Don Juan\nas a present for a swain or lass. Pickwick is the safest saint for us in\nour nonage. Flaubert's Temptation of St Anthony is an excellent book\nfor a man of fifty, perhaps the best within reach as a healthy study of\nvisionary ecstasy; but for the purposes of a boy of fifteen Ivanhoe and\nthe Templar make a much better saint and devil. And the boy of\nfifteen will find this out for himself if he is allowed to wander in a\nwell-stocked literary garden, and hear bands and see pictures and spend\nhis pennies on cinematograph shows. His choice may often be rather\ndisgusting to his elders when they want him to choose the best before he\nis ready for it. The greatest Protestant Manifesto ever written, as\nfar as I know, is Houston Chamberlain's Foundations of the Nineteenth\nCentury: everybody capable of it should read it. Probably the History of\nMaria Monk is at the opposite extreme of merit (this is a guess: I have\nnever read it); but it is certain that a boy let loose in a library\nwould go for Maria Monk and have no use whatever for Mr Chamberlain. I\nshould probably have read Maria Monk myself if I had not had the Arabian\nNights and their like to occupy me better. In art, children, like\nadults, will find their level if they are left free to find it, and not\nrestricted to what adults think good for them. Just at present our\nyoung people are going mad over ragtimes, apparently because syncopated\nrhythms are new to them. If they had learnt what can be done with\nsyncopation from Beethoven's third Leonora overture, they would enjoy\nthe ragtimes all the more; but they would put them in their proper place\nas amusing vulgarities.\n\n\n\n\nArtist Idolatry\n\nBut there are more dangerous influences than ragtimes waiting for people\nbrought up in ignorance of fine art. Nothing is more pitiably ridiculous\nthan the wild worship of artists by those who have never been seasoned\nin youth to the enchantments of art. Tenors and prima donnas, pianists\nand violinists, actors and actresses enjoy powers of seduction which in\nthe middle ages would have exposed them to the risk of being burnt\nfor sorcery. But as they exercise this power by singing, playing, and\nacting, no great harm is done except perhaps to themselves. Far graver\nare the powers enjoyed by brilliant persons who are also connoisseurs\nin art. The influence they can exercise on young people who have been\nbrought up in the darkness and wretchedness of a home without art, and\nin whom a natural bent towards art has always been baffled and snubbed,\nis incredible to those who have not witnessed and understood it. He (or\nshe) who reveals the world of art to them opens heaven to them. They\nbecome satellites, disciples, worshippers of the apostle. Now the\napostle may be a voluptuary without much conscience. Nature may have\ngiven him enough virtue to suffice in a reasonable environment. But this\nallowance may not be enough to defend him against the temptation and\ndemoralization of finding himself a little god on the strength of\nwhat ought to be a quite ordinary culture. He may find adorers in\nall directions in our uncultivated society among people of stronger\ncharacter than himself, not one of whom, if they had been artistically\neducated, would have had anything to learn from him or regarded him\nas in any way extraordinary apart from his actual achievements as an\nartist. Tartuffe is not always a priest. Indeed he is not always a\nrascal: he is often a weak man absurdly credited with omniscience and\nperfection, and taking unfair advantages only because they are offered\nto him and he is too weak to refuse. Give everyone his culture, and no\none will offer him more than his due.\n\nIn thus delivering our children from the idolatry of the artist, we\nshall not destroy for them the enchantment of art: on the contrary, we\nshall teach them to demand art everywhere as a condition attainable\nby cultivating the body, mind, and heart. Art, said Morris, is the\nexpression of pleasure in work. And certainly, when work is made\ndetestable by slavery, there is no art. It is only when learning is\nmade a slavery by tyrannical teachers that art becomes loathsome to the\npupil.\n\n\n\n\n\"The Machine\"\n\nWhen we set to work at a Constitution to secure freedom for children, we\nhad better bear in mind that the children may not be at all obliged to\nus for our pains. Rousseau said that men are born free; and this saying,\nin its proper bearings, was and is a great and true saying; yet let it\nnot lead us into the error of supposing that all men long for freedom\nand embrace it when it is offered to them. On the contrary, it has to\nbe forced on them; and even then they will give it the slip if it is not\nreligiously inculcated and strongly safeguarded.\n\nBesides, men are born docile, and must in the nature of things remain so\nwith regard to everything they do not understand. Now political science\nand the art of government are among the things they do not understand,\nand indeed are not at present allowed to understand. They can be\nenslaved by a system, as we are at present, because it happens to be\nthere, and nobody understands it. An intelligently worked Capitalist\nsystem, as Comte saw, would give us all that most of us are intelligent\nenough to want. What makes it produce such unspeakably vile results is\nthat it is an automatic system which is as little understood by those\nwho profit by it in money as by those who are starved and degraded by\nit: our millionaires and statesmen are manifestly no more \"captains\nof industry\" or scientific politicians than our bookmakers are\nmathematicians. For some time past a significant word has been coming\ninto use as a substitute for Destiny, Fate, and Providence. It is \"The\nMachine\": the machine that has no god in it. Why do governments do\nnothing in spite of reports of Royal Commissions that establish the most\nfrightful urgency? Why do our philanthropic millionaires do nothing,\nthough they are ready to throw bucketfuls of gold into the streets? The\nMachine will not let them. Always the Machine. In short, they dont know\nhow.\n\nThey try to reform Society as an old lady might try to restore a broken\ndown locomotive by prodding it with a knitting needle. And this is not\nat all because they are born fools, but because they have been educated,\nnot into manhood and freedom, but into blindness and slavery by\ntheir parents and schoolmasters, themselves the victims of a similar\nmisdirection, and consequently of The Machine. They do not want\nliberty. They have not been educated to want it. They choose slavery and\ninequality; and all the other evils are automatically added to them.\n\nAnd yet we must have The Machine. It is only in unskilled hands under\nignorant direction that machinery is dangerous. We can no more govern\nmodern communities without political machinery than we can feed and\nclothe them without industrial machinery. Shatter The Machine, and you\nget Anarchy. And yet The Machine works so detestably at present that we\nhave people who advocate Anarchy and call themselves Anarchists.\n\n\n\n\nThe Provocation to Anarchism\n\nWhat is valid in Anarchism is that all Governments try to simplify their\ntask by destroying liberty and glorifying authority in general and their\nown deeds in particular. But the difficulty in combining law and\norder with free institutions is not a natural one. It is a matter of\ninculcation. If people are brought up to be slaves, it is useless and\ndangerous to let them loose at the age of twenty-one and say \"Now you\nare free.\" No one with the tamed soul and broken spirit of a slave can\nbe free. It is like saying to a laborer brought up on a family income of\nthirteen shillings a week, \"Here is one hundred thousand pounds: now you\nare wealthy.\" Nothing can make such a man really wealthy. Freedom and\nwealth are difficult and responsible conditions to which men must be\naccustomed and socially trained from birth. A nation that is free at\ntwenty-one is not free at all; just as a man first enriched at fifty\nremains poor all his life, even if he does not curtail it by drinking\nhimself to death in the first wild ecstasy of being able to swallow as\nmuch as he likes for the first time. You cannot govern men brought up\nas slaves otherwise than as slaves are governed. You may pile Bills\nof Right and Habeas Corpus Acts on Great Charters; promulgate American\nConstitutions; burn the chateaux and guillotine the seigneurs; chop\noff the heads of kings and queens and set up Democracy on the ruins of\nfeudalism: the end of it all for us is that already in the twentieth\ncentury there has been as much brute coercion and savage intolerance, as\nmuch flogging and hanging, as much impudent injustice on the bench\nand lustful rancor in the pulpit, as much naive resort to torture,\npersecution, and suppression of free speech and freedom of the press,\nas much war, as much of the vilest excess of mutilation, rapine, and\ndelirious indiscriminate slaughter of helpless non-combatants, old\nand young, as much prostitution of professional talent, literary and\npolitical, in defence of manifest wrong, as much cowardly sycophancy\ngiving fine names to all this villainy or pretending that it is \"greatly\nexaggerated,\" as we can find any record of from the days when the\nadvocacy of liberty was a capital offence and Democracy was hardly\nthinkable. Democracy exhibits the vanity of Louis XIV, the savagery\nof Peter of Russia, the nepotism and provinciality of Napoleon, the\nfickleness of Catherine II: in short, all the childishnesses of all the\ndespots without any of the qualities that enabled the greatest of them\nto fascinate and dominate their contemporaries.\n\nAnd the flatterers of Democracy are as impudently servile to the\nsuccessful, and insolent to common honest folk, as the flatterers of\nthe monarchs. Democracy in America has led to the withdrawal of ordinary\nrefined persons from politics; and the same result is coming in England\nas fast as we make Democracy as democratic as it is in America. This is\ntrue also of popular religion: it is so horribly irreligious that nobody\nwith the smallest pretence to culture, or the least inkling of what\nthe great prophets vainly tried to make the world understand, will have\nanything to do with it except for purely secular reasons.\n\n\n\n\nImagination\n\nBefore we can clearly understand how baleful is this condition of\nintimidation in which we live, it is necessary to clear up the confusion\nmade by our use of the word imagination to denote two very different\npowers of mind. One is the power to imagine things as they are not:\nthis I call the romantic imagination. The other is the power to imagine\nthings as they are without actually sensing them; and this I will call\nthe realistic imagination. Take for example marriage and war. One man\nhas a vision of perpetual bliss with a domestic angel at home, and of\nflashing sabres, thundering guns, victorious cavalry charges, and routed\nenemies in the field. That is romantic imagination; and the mischief it\ndoes is incalculable. It begins in silly and selfish expectations of\nthe impossible, and ends in spiteful disappointment, sour grievance,\ncynicism, and misanthropic resistance to any attempt to better a\nhopeless world. The wise man knows that imagination is not only a means\nof pleasing himself and beguiling tedious hours with romances and fairy\ntales and fools' paradises (a quite defensible and delightful amusement\nwhen you know exactly what you are doing and where fancy ends and facts\nbegin), but also a means of foreseeing and being prepared for realities\nas yet unexperienced, and of testing the possibility and desirability of\nserious Utopias. He does not expect his wife to be an angel; nor does he\noverlook the facts that war depends on the rousing of all the murderous\nblackguardism still latent in mankind; that every victory means a\ndefeat; that fatigue, hunger, terror, and disease are the raw material\nwhich romancers work up into military glory; and that soldiers for the\nmost part go to war as children go to school, because they are afraid\nnot to. They are afraid even to say they are afraid, as such candor is\npunishable by death in the military code.\n\nA very little realistic imagination gives an ambitious person enormous\npower over the multitudinous victims of the romantic imagination. For\nthe romancer not only pleases himself with fictitious glories: he also\nterrifies himself with imaginary dangers. He does not even picture what\nthese dangers are: he conceives the unknown as always dangerous. When\nyou say to a realist \"You must do this\" or \"You must not do that,\" he\ninstantly asks what will happen to him if he does (or does not, as the\ncase may be). Failing an unromantic convincing answer, he does just as\nhe pleases unless he can find for himself a real reason for refraining.\nIn short, though you can intimidate him, you cannot bluff him. But\nyou can always bluff the romantic person: indeed his grasp of real\nconsiderations is so feeble that you find it necessary to bluff him even\nwhen you have solid considerations to offer him instead. The campaigns\nof Napoleon, with their atmosphere of glory, illustrate this. In\nthe Russian campaign Napoleon's marshals achieved miracles of bluff,\nespecially Ney, who, with a handful of men, monstrously outnumbered,\nrepeatedly kept the Russian troops paralyzed with terror by pure\nbounce. Napoleon himself, much more a realist than Ney (that was why\nhe dominated him), would probably have surrendered; for sometimes the\nbravest of the brave will achieve successes never attempted by the\ncleverest of the clever. Wellington was a completer realist than\nNapoleon. It was impossible to persuade Wellington that he was beaten\nuntil he actually was beaten. He was unbluffable; and if Napoleon had\nunderstood the nature of Wellington's strength instead of returning\nWellington's snobbish contempt for him by an academic contempt for\nWellington, he would not have left the attack at Waterloo to Ney and\nD'Erlon, who, on that field, did not know when they were beaten, whereas\nWellington knew precisely when he was not beaten. The unbluffable\nwould have triumphed anyhow, probably, because Napoleon was an academic\nsoldier, doing the academic thing (the attack in columns and so forth)\nwith superlative ability and energy; whilst Wellington was an original\nsoldier who, instead of outdoing the terrible academic columns with\nstill more terrible and academic columns, outwitted them with the thin\nred line, not of heroes, but, as this uncompromising realist never\nhesitated to testify, of the scum of the earth.\n\n\n\n\nGovernment by Bullies\n\nThese picturesque martial incidents are being reproduced every day in\nour ordinary life. We are bluffed by hardy simpletons and headstrong\nbounders as the Russians were bluffed by Ney; and our Wellingtons\nare threadbound by slave-democracy as Gulliver was threadbound by the\nLilliputians. We are a mass of people living in a submissive routine to\nwhich we have been drilled from our childhood. When you ask us to take\nthe simplest step outside that routine, we say shyly, \"Oh, I really\ncouldnt,\" or \"Oh, I shouldnt like to,\" without being able to point out\nthe smallest harm that could possibly ensue: victims, not of a rational\nfear of real dangers, but of pure abstract fear, the quintessence of\ncowardice, the very negation of \"the fear of God.\" Dotted about among\nus are a few spirits relatively free from this inculcated paralysis,\nsometimes because they are half-witted, sometimes because they are\nunscrupulously selfish, sometimes because they are realists as to money\nand unimaginative as to other things, sometimes even because they are\nexceptionally able, but always because they are not afraid of shadows\nnor oppressed with nightmares. And we see these few rising as if by\nmagic into power and affluence, and forming, with the millionaires who\nhave accidentally gained huge riches by the occasional windfalls of our\ncommerce, the governing class. Now nothing is more disastrous than\na governing class that does not know how to govern. And how can this\nrabble of the casual products of luck, cunning, and folly, be expected\nto know how to govern? The merely lucky ones and the hereditary ones do\nnot owe their position to their qualifications at all. As to the rest,\nthe realism which seems their essential qualification often consists not\nonly in a lack of romantic imagination, which lack is a merit, but\nof the realistic, constructive, Utopian imagination, which lack is\na ghastly defect. Freedom from imaginative illusion is therefore no\nguarantee whatever of nobility of character: that is why inculcated\nsubmissiveness makes us slaves to people much worse than ourselves,\nand why it is so important that submissiveness should no longer be\ninculcated.\n\nAnd yet as long as you have the compulsory school as we know it, we\nshall have submissiveness inculcated. What is more, until the active\nhours of child life are organized separately from the active hours of\nadult life, so that adults can enjoy the society of children in reason\nwithout being tormented, disturbed, harried, burdened, and hindered\nin their work by them as they would be now if there were no compulsory\nschools and no children hypnotized into the belief that they must tamely\ngo to them and be imprisoned and beaten and over-tasked in them, we\nshall have schools under one pretext or another; and we shall have all\nthe evil consequences and all the social hopelessness that result from\nturning a nation of potential freemen and freewomen into a nation of\ntwo-legged spoilt spaniels with everything crushed out of their nature\nexcept dread of the whip. Liberty is the breath of life to nations; and\nliberty is the one thing that parents, schoolmasters, and rulers spend\ntheir lives in extirpating for the sake of an immediately quiet and\nfinally disastrous life.\n\n\nNotes on this etext:\n\n     This text was taken from a printed volume containing the\n     plays \"Misalliance\", \"The Dark Lady of the Sonnets\",\n     \"Fanny's First Play\", and the essay \"A Treatise on Parents\n     and Children\".\n\n     Notes on the editing:  Italicized text is delimited with\n     underlines (\"_\").  Punctuation and spelling retained as in\n     the printed text. Shaw intentionally spelled many words\n     according to a non-standard system.  For example, \"don't\" is\n     given as \"dont\" (without apostrophe), \"Dr.\" is given as \"Dr\"\n     (without a period at the end), and \"Shakespeare\" is given as\n     \"Shakespear\" (no \"e\" at the end).  The pound (currency)\n     symbol has been replaced by the word \"pounds\".","title":"Treatise on Parents and Children","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":39804}