le and conscientious
races and classes. They have the ferocity of a chained dog, and are
proud of it. But the end of it is that they are always in chains,
even at the height of their military or political success: they
win everything on condition that they are afraid to enjoy it. Their
civilizations rest on intimidation, which is so necessary to them that
when they cannot find anybody brave enough to intimidate them they
intimidate themselves and live in a continual moral and political panic.
In the end they get found out and bullied. But that is not the point
that concerns us here, which is, that they are in some respects better
brought up than the children of sentimental people who are always
anxious and miserable about their duty to their children, and who end
by neither making their children happy nor having a tolerable life for
themselves. A selfish tyrant you know where to have, and he (or she) at
least does not confuse your affections; but a conscientious and kindly
meddler may literally worry you out of your senses. It is fortunate that
only very few parents are capable of doing what they conceive their duty
continuously or even at all, and that still fewer are tough enough to
ride roughshod over their children at home.

School

But please observe the limitation "at home." What private amateur
parental enterprise cannot do may be done very effectively by organized
professional enterprise in large institutions established for the
purpose. And it is to such professional enterprise that parents hand
over their children when they can afford it. They send their children
to school; and there is, on the whole, nothing on earth intended for
innocent people so horrible as a school. To begin with, it is a prison.
But it is in some respects more cruel than a prison. In a prison, for
instance, you are not forced to read books written by the warders and
the governor (who of course would not be warders and governors if they
could write readable books), and beaten or otherwise tormented if you
cannot remember their utterly unmemorable contents. In the prison you
are not forced to sit listening to turnkeys discoursing without charm or
interest on subjects that they dont understand and dont care about, and
are therefore incapable of making you understand or care about. In a
prison they may torture your body; but they do not torture your brains;
and they protect you against violence and outrage from your fellow
prisoners.