A Treatise on Parents and Children

As between adults, we find a general quarrelsomeness which makes / political reform as impossible to most Englishmen as to hogs. Certain / sections of the nation get cured of this disability. University men, / sailors, and politicians are comparatively free from it, because the / communal life of the University, the fact that in a ship a man must / either learn to consider others or else go overboard or into irons, and / the habit of working on committees and ceasing to expect more of / one's own way than is included in the greatest common measure of the / committee, educate the will socially. But no one who has ever had to / guide a committee of ordinary private Englishmen through their first / attempts at collective action, in committee or otherwise, can retain / any illusions as to the appalling effects on our national manners / and character of the organization of the home and the school as petty / tyrannies, and the absence of all teaching of self-respect and training / in self-assertion. Bullied and ordered about, the Englishman obeys like / a sheep, evades like a knave, or tries to murder his oppressor. Merely / criticized or opposed in committee, or invited to consider anybody's / views but his own, he feels personally insulted and wants to resign / or leave the room unless he is apologized to. And his panic and / bewilderment when he sees that the older hands at the work have no / patience with him and do not intend to treat him as infallible, are / pitiable as far as they are anything but ludicrous. That is what comes / of not being taught to consider other people's wills, and left to submit / to them or to over-ride them as if they were the winds and the weather. / Such a state of mind is incompatible not only with the democratic / introduction of high civilization, but with the comprehension and / maintenance of such civilized institutions as have been introduced by / benevolent and intelligent despots and aristocrats.