"Two years!" said Macdonald musingly, "two years! What about all your
private books? Anybody might have read your Log Book, or destroyed it
even!" and the thought almost made him turn pale.
"And what about it? Nobody will ever read it anyway."
"Eh?" His mouth gaped at this latest heresy.
"What about it?" I continued, "what about the whole damned lot of
registers and log books and Form 9 b's? I didn't care a rap who saw the
inside of my desk or my log book. As a matter of fact no one saw what
was in the log; never a child opened it. Why? Because there was no
prohibition. You lock up all the blamed things and put the fear of God
on any kid that dares touch your desk ... result! they look on all your
belongings as forbidden fruit, and if they can handle your log book when
you are safely out of the way you bet your boots that they'll do it.
Can't you see that children are really decent kindly creatures with
their own philosophy, that is, their own idea of the importance of
things? What is important to them is a toy or a dogfight or a quarrel or
a love affair. They don't want to touch stodgy official books. But when
you say to them: 'This desk is holy ground' why, every self-respecting
kid has but one ambition in life ... to poke his nose into your desk and
hide your registers."
"Well," he said with a grim smile, "what about those tools in the
woodwork room? If children are the saints you make them out to be, how
did your boys come to spoil good tools?"
"I admit that I made a mistake," I said cheerfully. "I set out on the
assumption that a boy can be trusted with tools. I dropped the belief.
Wood was scarce and often I couldn't get enough to keep the boys
working. Result!... they took to hammering nails into benches and walls.
I see now that much of a boy is destructiveness. I might have known it,
for as a boy I tore the inside out of everything to see how it worked.
If I had a small class I could have kept them interested in making an
article. Yet I remember seeing Tom Watson, the best worker in the
school, make a good rabbit-trough; then when he had finished he
deliberately chipped a chunk off a plane with a hammer."
"What did you do?"
"I simply chucked him out of woodwork; told him he wasn't beyond the
infant-room stage, and gave him lessons with a class two grades below
his own."
"Did you chuck him out forcibly?"
"I suppose I did."
"Ah!" Macdonald looked triumphant. "In other words you forgot your
principles and punished?"
"Human nature is weak," I said sadly. "If I saw a boy sticking a
pen-knife into the tyre of my bicycle I should kick him ... kick him
hard and then kick him again. There is such a thing as elemental rage in
every man--even Christ used a whip in the temple. There are times when
you cannot reason: you act impulsively. Principle can't touch this, but
it comes in when rage is gone. If I am a magistrate and a boy comes
before me charged with destroying a bicycle I personally have no rage
against the boy, and if I punish him I'm merely serving out juridical
vengeance. If I order him to be birched the jailor has no grudge against
the boy. The main point is that the owner of the cycle acts before
reasoning, while the magistrate acts after reasoning. And his reason
cannot prompt him to behave any better than the injured owner did. The
owner is primitive man for the time being: the magistrate stands for
reasoning civilisation. In other words reasoning civilisation is no
better than the barbarian. That's why I object to juridical punishment."
"Ha! Ha!" he laughed with a sneer, "when it touches yourself you let all
your principles slide, just as the most extreme Socialist turns Tory if
he happens to get money!"
"Macdonald," I said slowly, "I'm sorry you said that, for it means that
you'll reject everything I bring forward. You'll grasp the idea that my
views are useless because I tell you I can smite when I am angry, and
you'll consequently reject everything I say. You're like the man who
cries to a Socialist orator: 'Why don't you sell your watch and divide
the proceeds among this crowd?' or like the man who tells a member of
the no-hat brigade that he should go naked to be consistent. If I were
to adopt your tactics I might ask why you don't get the School Boards to
provide muzzles for the children on the plea that so much of your energy
is taken up in keeping them silent. If you make them salute you I see no
logical reason why you shouldn't carry respect to its extreme and force
them to kneel down and kiss your boots. If you insist on perfect
truthfulness why do you try to hide the truth about the sex of pigeons?
You pretend to be a believer in perfect obedience to authority, and yet
I saw you ride a bicycle without a light the other night. I am quite
willing to prove that every man is inconsistent. Bernard Shaw would no
doubt find some difficulty in explaining how his humanitarian
vegetarianism blends with his wearing of leather boots; for I don't
suppose that he has boots made from the hides of animals that died of
old age. I gave up shooting and fishing because I saw that both were
cruel, yet I will kill a wasp or a rat on occasion. If a tiger got loose
down in the village I should at once borrow Frank Thomson's gun, but I
should refuse to go tiger-hunting in Bengal. My dear chap, I am as full
of inconsistencies as an egg's full of meat. So are you; so is every
man. The best of us are but poor weaklings, for we are each carrying the
instincts of millions of our tree- and cave-dwelling ancestors on our
backs. My point, however, is that in spite of our weaknesses and
animalisms we are predominantly good. I am a caveman once in five years;
I am a reasoning humanitarian the rest of the time. You fasten on my
elemental side and refuse to think that there can be any good in my
humanitarian side.
"You see, I quite earnestly believe that your respect for law and
authority is genuine, almost religious, and the fact that I saw you
break the law by riding without a light doesn't make me doubt your
respect for law."
"I had had a puncture," he explained.
"Exactly! Extenuating circumstances. That's what I might plead when I
kick the boy who deliberately punctures my machine ... but you would
laugh. Why, I think I should start in to lecture _you_ on your
inconsistencies!"
I find that the worst man to answer is the fundamental antagonist. I
used to be stumped by the anti-socialist cry: Socialism will destroy
enterprise!... until I discovered that the best answer to this was: If
enterprise has made modern capitalism and industrialism, by all means
let it be destroyed. Macdonald will crow over what he considers my
failure to be consistent, but it will never once strike him that my
frank self-analysis is a thing that he will never practise himself.
Confound Macdonald! He has led me into defending myself; he never
defends himself when I attack him; he is far too cocksure to have any
doubts about himself.