But in our adult world, there is still another moral quality demanded
of our human enterprise. It is not merely better to create than to
destroy, but it is better to create something which is useful, or
desirable, to others. Our moral attitude is a little uncertain upon
this point, for the artist knows that his coarsest and easiest kind
of enterprise is likely to be valued by others, and his finer and
more difficult enterprises neglected and scorned. And so he has the
impulse to work only for himself; nevertheless, he realizes that if
he does work only for himself he is doing wrong. For he really feels
a deep-lying moral obligation to work for others--a moral obligation
which comes, of course, from his egoistic need of the spiritual
sustenance of praise. The fact is that others are necessary to him,
and that his work must please others. So if he ignores the crowd, it
is because he wishes to compel it to take something better than what
it asked for. And this democratic quality in enterprise becomes the
third test of civilized life. Does a given action fit in everybody
else’s scheme as well as in your own: and, if it conflicts with the
outside scheme, is it with a fundamentally altruistic intention? There
are prophets and false prophets and of those who take the difficult
course of disagreeing with their fellows, the best we can immediately
demand of them is that they afflict us because they think it good for
us and not because they do not care. Yet even so they differ from us at
their peril. For we are to be the final judges of whether we are being
imposed on or not. If we do not, after full consideration, feel that we
can play our game if Napoleon or the Kaiser plays his, we put him out
of business.
Now the child has a certain natural tendency toward the Napoleon-Kaiser
attitude. He began, as we pointed out some time ago, by being an
infantile emperor. He likes it. And being deposed by his parents
does not alter his royalist convictions. For he has not merely been
deposed--he has seen another king set up in his place. And one reason
why parents are not the best persons to teach children democracy, is
that they are the authors of the whole succession of enthronements and
deposings which constitute the early history of a family. No, the
children need a change of air--a chance to forget their Wars of the
Roses and to take their places in a genuine democracy. The place for
them to learn democracy (though I believe this has been said before)
is the school. For in a properly conducted school there is an end of
jealous little princes and princesses squabbling over prestige and
appealing to the Power Behind the Throne; in such a school, conduct in
general and work in particular is performed not with reference to such
prestige as a reward, but with reference to their individual wishes in
democratic composition with the wishes of their fellows.
But this will be true only if they find at school something different
from what they have left at home. And what they have left at home may
be described as a couple of well-meaning, bewildered and helpless
people who are half the slaves of the children and half tyrants
over them. It is unfortunate, but it is true, that the first that
children learn of human relationships, is by personal experience of
a relationship which is on both sides tyrannical and slavish. They
naturally expect all their relationships with the adult world, if not
with each other, to be conducted on this same pattern. They expect to
find father and mother over again in the school-teacher. They hope
to find the slave and fear to find the tyrant. But it is necessary
that they should face the adult world into which they must grow up, as
equals; and therefore they must begin to learn the lesson of equality.
The school, by providing a kind of association between adults and
children which is free from the emotional complexes of the home, can
teach that lesson.
There is, however, so much intellectual confusion about what equality
means that we must be quite clear on that point before we go on. At
any moment of our careers, we are the servant of others, in the sense
of being their follower, helper, disciple or right-hand man; and
the master of still others, in that we are their leader, counsellor
or teacher. We can hardly conduct an ordinary conversation without
assuming, and usually shifting several times, these rôles. And these
relationships extend far beyond the bounds of acquaintanceship, for
one can scarcely read a book or write an article without creating
such relationships for the moment with unknown individuals. In all
the critical and important moments of one’s life one is inevitably a
leader or a follower. But in adult civilized life, these relationships
are fluid; they change and exchange with each other. And they are
fluid because they are free. You and I can choose, though perhaps not
consciously, our leaders and our helpers; we are not condemned to stand
in any fixed relationship to any other person. And this freedom to be
servant of whom we please, and master of whom we can, is equality. If I
want to know about fishing-tackle, I will sit at your feet and learn,
and if you will condescend to lead the expedition in quest of these
articles I will be your obedient follower; while if you happened to
want advice about pens, pencils, ink, or typewriter-ribbons, you would,
I trust, yield a similar deference to me. We have no shame in serving
nor any egregious pride in directing each other, because we are equals.
We are equals because we are free to become each other’s master and
each other’s servant whenever we so desire.
But the relationship of parents and children is not free. Parents
cannot choose their children, and must serve their helplessness
willy-nilly. Children cannot choose their parents, and must obey them
anyhow. It is a rare triumph of parenthood--and doubtless also of
childhood--when children and parents become friends, and serve and
obey each other not because they must but because they really like to.
But schools can easily take up the task which parents are only with
the greatest difficulty able to accomplish, and dissolve the infantile
tyrant-and-slave relationship to the grown-up world. The grown-up
people in the school can be the child’s equals. They can become so
by ceasing to encourage the notion which the child carries with him
from the home, that adults are beings of a different caste. Once they
regard an adult as a person like themselves--which, Heaven knows, he
is!--children will discover quickly enough his admirable qualities,
and his special abilities, and pay them the tribute of admiration and
emulation. There is no human reason why a child should not admire and
emulate his teacher’s ability to do sums, rather than the village bum’s
ability to whittle sticks and smoke cigarettes; the reason why the
child doesn’t is plain enough--the bum has put himself on an equality
with them and the teacher has not.