tate. It is not possible to maintain
freedom in any State, no matter how perfect its original constitution,
unless its publicly active citizens know a good deal of constitutional
history, law, and political science, with its basis of economics. If
as much pains had been taken a century ago to make us all understand
Ricardo's law of rent as to learn our catechisms, the face of the world
would have been changed for the better. But for that very reason the
greatest care is taken to keep such beneficially subversive
knowledge from us, with the result that in public life we are either
place-hunters, anarchists, or sheep shepherded by wolves.

But it will be observed that these are highly controversial subjects.
Now no controversial subject can be taught dogmatically. He who knows
only the official side of a controversy knows less than nothing of its
nature. The abler a schoolmaster is, the more dangerous he is to his
pupils unless they have the fullest opportunity of hearing another
equally able person do his utmost to shake his authority and convict him
of error.

At present such teaching is very unpopular. It does not exist in
schools; but every adult who derives his knowledge of public affairs
from the newspapers can take in, at the cost of an extra halfpenny, two
papers of opposite politics. Yet the ordinary man so dislikes having his
mind unsettled, as he calls it, that he angrily refuses to allow a paper
which dissents from his views to be brought into his house. Even at his
club he resents seeing it, and excludes it if it happens to run counter
to the opinions of all the members. The result is that his opinions are
not worth considering. A churchman who never reads The Freethinker very
soon has no more real religion than the atheist who never reads The
Church Times. The attitude is the same in both cases: they want to hear
nothing good of their enemies; consequently they remain enemies and
suffer from bad blood all their lives; whereas men who know their
opponents and understand their case, quite commonly respect and like
them, and always learn something from them.

Here, again, as at so many points, we come up against the abuse of
schools to keep people in ignorance and error, so that they may be
incapable of successful revolt against their industrial slavery. The
most important simple fundamental economic truth to impress on a
child in complicated civilizations like ours is the truth that whoever
consumes goods o