t they might
make a good show before the inspector; the new dominie leathers them
because he thinks that children ought to be disciplined so that they
may be able to fight the battle of life. He does not see that by using
authority he is doing the very opposite of what he intends; he is
making the child dependent on him, and for ever afterwards the child
will lack initiative, lack self-confidence, lack originality.

What the new dominie does do is to turn out excellent wage-slaves. The
discipline of the school gives each child an inner sense of
inferiority . . . . what the psycho-analysts call an inferiority
complex. And the working-classes are suffering from a gigantic
inferiority complex . . . . otherwise they would not be content to
remain wage-slaves. The fear that Duncan inspires in a boy will remain
in that boy all his life. When he enters the workshop he will
unconsciously identify the foreman with Duncan, and fear him and hate
him. I believe that many a strike is really a vague insurrection
against the teacher. For it is well known that the unconscious mind is
infantile.

* * * * *

To-night I dropped in to see my old friend Dauvit Todd the cobbler.
Many an evening have I spent in his dirty shop. Dauvit works on after
teatime, and the village worthies gather round his fire and smoke and
spit and grunt. I have sat there for an hour many a night, and not a
single word was said. Peter Smith the blacksmith would give a great
sigh and say: "Imphm!" There would be silence for ten minutes, and
then Jake Tosh the roadman would stare at the fire, shake his head, and
say: "Aye, man!" Then a ploughman would smack his lips and say: "Man,
aye!" A southerner looking in might have jumped to the conclusion that
the assembly was collectively and individually bored, but boredom never
enters Dauvit's shop. We Scots think better in crowds.

To-night the old gang was there. The hypothetical southerner again
would have marvelled at the reception I received. I walked into the
shop after an absence of five years.

"Weel, Dauvit," I said, and sat down in the basket chair. Dauvit and I
have never shaken hands in our lives. He looked up.

"Back again!" he said, without any evident surprise; then he added:
"And what like a nicht is 't ootside?"

Gradually other men dropped in, and the same sort of greeting took
place. The weather continued to be discussed for a time. Then the
blacksmit