in the old and classic
fashion of mobs upon all who oppose it.

It constitutes at present the most important and securely intrenched
intimidating force that modern society presents against the actual
culture of the world, whether in the schools or out of them. Its voice
is in every street, and its shout of derision may be heard in almost
every walk of life against all who refuse to conform to it. There are
but very few who refuse. Millions of human beings, young and old, in
meek and willing rows are seen on every side, standing before It--THE
DEAD LEVEL,--anxious to do anything to be graded up to it, or to be
graded down to it--offering their heads to be taken off, their necks to
be stretched, or their waists--willing to live footless all their
days--anything--anything whatever, bless their hearts! to know that they
are on the Level, the Dead Level, the precise and exact Dead Level of
Intelligence.

The fact that this mob-power keeps its hold by using books instead of
bricks is merely a matter of form. It occupies most of the strategic
positions just now in the highways of learning, and it does all the
things that mobs do, and does them in the way that mobs do them. It has
broken into the gardens, into the arts, the resting-places of nations,
and with its factories to learn to love in, its treadmills to learn to
sing in, it girdles its belt of drudgery around the world and carries
bricks and mortar to the clouds. It shouts to every human being across
the spaces--the outdoors of life: "Who goes there? Come thou with us.
Dig thou with us. Root or die!"

Every vagrant joy-maker and world-builder the modern era boasts--genius,
lover, singer, artist, has had to have his struggle with the
hod-carriers of culture, and if a lover of books has not enough love in
him to refuse to be coerced into joining the huge Intimidator, the
aggregation of the Reading Labour Unions of the world, which rules the
world, there is little hope for him. All true books draw quietly away
from him. Their spirit is a spirit he cannot know.

It would be hard to find a more significant fact with regard to the
ruling culture of modern life than the almost total displacement of
temperament in it,--its blank, staring inexpressiveness. We have lived
our lives so long under the domination of the "Cultured-man-must" theory
of education--the industry of being well informed has gained such
headway with us, that out of all of the crowds of the civilised we
p