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.