to themselves an undue share of the rising sap of Man's
life.

CHAPTER II

EDUCATION THROUGH MECHANICAL OBEDIENCE

The God of popular theology has been engaged for more than thirty
centuries in educating his child, Man. His system of education has
been based on complete distrust of Man's nature. In the schools which
Man has been required to attend--the Legal School under the Old
Dispensation, the Ecclesiastical School under the New--it has
been taken for granted that he can neither discern what is true,
nor desire what is good. The truth of things has therefore been
formulated for him, and he has been required to learn it by rote and
profess his belief in it, clause by clause. His duty has also been
formulated for him, and he has been required to perform it, detail by
detail, in obedience to the commandments of an all-embracing Code, or
to the direction of an all-controlling Church.

It has further been taken for granted that Man's instincts and
impulses are wholly evil, and that "Right Faith" and "Right Conduct"
are entirely repugnant to his nature. In order to overcome the
resistance which his corrupt heart and perverse will might therefore
be expected to offer to the authority and influence of his teachers,
a scheme of rewards and punishments has had to be devised for his
benefit. As there is no better nature for the scheme to appeal to,
an appeal has had to be made to fears and hopes which are avowedly
base. The refractory child has had to be threatened with corporal
punishment in the form of an eternity of torment in Hell. And he has
had to be bribed by the offer of prizes, the chief of which is an
eternity of selfish enjoyment in Heaven,--enjoyment so selfish that
it will consist with, and even (it is said) be heightened by, the
knowledge that in the Final Examination the failures have been many
and the prize-winners few.

And as, under this system of education, obedience is the first and
last of virtues, so self-will--in the sense of daring to think and
act for oneself--is the first and last of offences. It is for the
sin of spiritual initiative--the sin of trying to work out one's
own salvation by the exercise of reason, conscience, imagination,
aspiration, and other spiritual faculties--that the direst penalties
are reserved. The path of salvation is the path of blind, passive,
mechanical obedience. To deviate even a little from that path is to
incur the penalty of eternal death.

*