just such contempt for those useful occupations, as I dread on the
part of my foolishly refined scholars. Shakespeare and Chaucer,--Dante
and Virgil,--Horace and Pindar,--Homer, AEschylus, and Plato,--all the
men of any age or country who seem to have had Heaven's music on their
lips, agree in their scorn of mechanic life. And I imagine that the
feeling of prudent Englishmen, and sensible as well as sensitive
Englishwomen, on reading my last letter, would mostly be--"Is the man
mad, or laughing at us, to propose educating the working classes this
way? He could not, if his wild scheme were possible, find a better
method of making them acutely wretched."

104. It may be so, my sensible and polite friends; and I am heartily
willing, as well as curious, to hear you develop your own scheme of
operative education, so only that it be universal, orderly, and
careful. I do not say that I shall be prepared to advocate my
athletics and philosophies instead. Only, observe what you admit, or
imply, in bringing forward your possibly wiser system. You imply that
a certain portion of mankind must be employed in degrading work; and
that, to fit them for this work, it is necessary to limit their
knowledge, their active powers, and their enjoyments, from childhood
upwards, so that they may not be able to conceive of any state better
than the one they were born in, nor possess any knowledge or
acquirements inconsistent with the coarseness, or disturbing the
monotony, of their vulgar occupation. And by their labor in this
contracted state of mind, we superior beings are to be maintained; and
always to be curtseyed to by the properly ignorant little girls, and
capped by the properly ignorant little boys, whenever we pass by.

105. Mind, I do not say that this is _not_ the right state of things.
Only, if it be, you need not be so over-particular about the
slave-trade, it seems to me. What is the use of arguing so
pertinaciously that a black's skull will hold as much as a white's,
when you are declaring in the same breath that a white's skull must
not hold as much as it can, or it will be the worse for him? It does
not appear to me at all a profound state of slavery to be whipped into
doing a piece of low work that I don't like; but it is a very profound
state of slavery to be kept, myself, low in the forehead, that I may
not dislike low work.

106. You see, my friend, the dilemma is really an awkward one,
whichever way you look at it. But