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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Dominie in Doubt, by A. S. Neill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Dominie in Doubt
+
+Author: A. S. Neill
+
+Release Date: May 2, 2008 [EBook #25306]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DOMINIE IN DOUBT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+A DOMINIE IN DOUBT
+
+
+BY
+
+A. S. NEILL, M.A.
+
+
+
+
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+  A DOMINIE'S LOG
+  A DOMINIE DISMISSED
+  THE BOOMING OF BUNKIE
+
+
+
+HERBERT JENKINS LIMITED
+
+3 YORK STREET ST. JAMES'S
+
+LONDON S.W.1
+
+MCMXXI
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION.
+
+To Homer Lane, whose first lecture convinced me that I knew nothing
+about education.  I owe much to him, but I hasten to warn educationists
+that they must not hold him responsible for the views given in these
+pages.  I never understood him fully enough to expound his wonderful
+educational theories.
+
+A. S. N.
+
+FORFAR,
+  AUGUST 12, 1920.
+
+
+
+
+A DOMINIE IN DOUBT
+
+
+I.
+
+"Just give me your candid opinion of _A Dominie's_ Log; I'd like to
+hear it."
+
+Macdonald looked up from digging into the bowl of his pipe with a
+dilapidated penknife.  He is now head-master of Tarbonny Public School,
+a school I know well, for I taught in it for two years as an ex-pupil
+teacher.
+
+Six days ago he wrote asking me to come and spend a holiday with him,
+so I hastily packed my bag and made for Euston.
+
+This evening had been a sort of complimentary dinner in my honour, the
+guests being neighbouring dominies and their wives, none of whom I
+knew.  We had talked of the war, of rising prices, and a thousand other
+things.  Suddenly someone mentioned education, and of course my
+unfortunate _Log_ had come under discussion.
+
+I had been anxious to continue my discussion with a Mrs. Brown on the
+subject of the relative laying values of Minorcas and Buff Orpingtons,
+but I had been dragged to the miserable business in spite of myself.
+
+Now they were all gone, and Macdonald had returned to the charge.
+
+"It's hardly a fair question," said Mrs. Macdonald, "to ask an author
+what he thinks of his own book.  No man can judge his own work, any
+more than a mother can judge her own child."
+
+"That's true!" I said.  "A man can't judge his own behaviour, and
+writing a book is an element of behaviour.  Besides, there is a better
+reason why a writer cannot judge his own work," I added.
+
+"Because he never reads it?" queried Macdonald with a grin.
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"An author has no further interest in his book after it is published."
+
+Macdonald looked across at me.  It was clear that he doubted my
+seriousness.
+
+"Surely you don't mean to say that you have no interest in _A Dominie's
+Log_?"
+
+"None whatever!" I said.
+
+"You mean it?" persisted Macdonald.
+
+"My dear Mac," I said, "an author dare not read his own book."
+
+"Dare not!  Why?"
+
+"Because it's out of date five minutes after it's written."
+
+For fully a minute we smoked in silence.  Macdonald appeared to be
+digesting my remark.
+
+"You see," I continued presently, "when I read a book on education, I
+want to learn, and I certainly don't expect to learn anything from the
+man I was five years ago."
+
+"I think I understand," said Macdonald.  "You have come to realise that
+what you wrote five years ago was wrong.  That it?"
+
+"True for you, Mac.  You've just hit it."
+
+"You needn't have waited five years to find that out," he said, with a
+good-natured grin.  "I could have told you the day the book was
+published--I bought one of the first copies."
+
+"Still," he continued, "I don't see why a book should be out-of-date in
+five years.  That is if it deals with the truth.  Truth is eternal."
+
+"What is truth?" I asked wearily.  "We all thought we knew the truth
+about gravitation.  Then Einstein came along with his relativity
+theory, and told us we were wrong."
+
+"Did he?" inquired Macdonald, with a faint smile.
+
+"I am quoting from the newspapers," I added hastily.  "I haven't the
+remotest idea what relativity means.  Perhaps it's Epstein I mean--no,
+he's a sculptor."
+
+"You're hedging!" said Macdonald.
+
+"Can you blame me?" I asked.  "You're trying to get me to say what
+truth is.  I am not a professor of philosophy, I'm a dominie.  All I
+can say is that the _Log_ was the truth . . . for me . . . five years
+ago; but it isn't the truth for me now."
+
+"Then, what exactly is your honest opinion of the _Log_ as a work on
+education?"
+
+"As a work on education," I said deliberately, "the _Log_ isn't worth a
+damn."
+
+"Not a bad criticism, either," said Macdonald dryly.
+
+"I say that," I continued, "because when I wrote it I knew nothing
+about the most important factor in education--the psychology of
+children."
+
+"But," said Mrs. Macdonald in surprise--hitherto she had been an
+interested listener--"I thought that the bits about the bairns were the
+best part of the book."
+
+"Possibly," I answered, "but I was looking at children from a grown-up
+point of view.  I thought of them as they affected me, instead of as
+they affected themselves.  I'll give you an instance.  I think I said
+something about wanting to chuck woodwork and cookery out of the school
+curriculum.  I was wrong, hopelessly wrong."
+
+"I'm glad to hear you admit it," said Macdonald.  "I have always
+thought that every boy ought to be taught to mend a hen-house and every
+girl to cook a dinner."
+
+"Then I was right after all," I said quickly.
+
+Macdonald stared at me, whilst his wife looked up interrogatively from
+her embroidery.
+
+"If your aim is to make boys joiners and girls cooks," I explained,
+"then I still hold that cookery and woodwork ought to be chucked out of
+the schools."
+
+"But, man, what are schools for?"  I saw a combative light in
+Macdonald's eye.
+
+"Creation, self-expression . . . . the only thing that matters in
+education.  I don't care what a child is doing in the way of creation,
+whether he is making tables, or porridge, or sketches, or--or--"
+
+"Snowballs!" prompted Macdonald.
+
+"Or snowballs," I said.  "There is more true education in making a
+snowball than in listening to an hour's lecture on grammar."
+
+Mrs. Macdonald dropped her embroidery into her lap, with a little gasp
+at the heresy of my remark.
+
+"You're talking pure balderdash!" said Macdonald, leaning forward to
+knock the ashes from his pipe on the bars of the grate.
+
+"Very well," I said cheerfully.  "Let's discuss it.  You make a class
+sit in front of you for an hour, and you threaten to whack the first
+child that doesn't pay attention to your lesson on nouns and pronouns."
+
+"Discipline," said Macdonald.
+
+"I don't care what you call it.  I say it's stupidity."
+
+"But, hang it all, man, you can't teach if you haven't got the
+children's attention."
+
+"And you can't teach when you have got it," I said.  "A child learns
+only when it is interested."
+
+"But surely, discipline makes them interested," said Mrs. Macdonald.
+
+I shook my head.  "It only makes them attentive."
+
+"Same thing," said Macdonald.
+
+"No, Mac," I replied.  "It is not the same thing.  Attention means the
+applying of the conscious mind to a thing; interest means the
+application of both the conscious and the unconscious mind.  When you
+force a child to attend to a lesson for fear of the tawse, you merely
+engage the least important part of his mind--the conscious.  While he
+stares at the blackboard his unconscious is concerned with other
+things."
+
+"What sort of things?" asked Macdonald.
+
+"Very probably his unconscious is working out an elaborate plan to
+murder you," I said, "and I don't blame it either," I added.
+
+"And the snowballs?" queried Mrs. Macdonald.
+
+"When a boy makes a snowball, he is interested; his whole soul is in
+the job, that is, his unconscious and his conscious are working
+together.  For the moment he is an artist, a creator."
+
+"So that's the new education . . . making snowballs?" said Macdonald.
+
+"It isn't really," I said; "but what I want to do is to point out that
+making snowballs is nearer to true education than the spoon-feeding we
+call education to-day."
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Duncan does not like me.  He is a young dominie of twenty-three or
+thereabouts, a friend of Macdonald, and he has just been demobilised.
+He was a major, and he does not seem to have recovered from the
+experience.  He has got what the vulgar call swelled head.  Last night
+he was dilating upon the delinquencies of the old retired teacher who
+ran the school while Duncan was on active service.  It seems that the
+old man had allowed the school to run to seed.
+
+"Would you believe it," I overheard Duncan say to Macdonald, "when I
+came back I found that the boys and girls were playing in the same
+playground.  Why, man, some of them were playing on the road!  And the
+discipline!  Awful!"
+
+Poor children!  I see it all; I see Duncan line them up like a squad of
+recruits, and march them into school with never a smile on their faces
+or a word on their lips.  Macdonald tells me that he makes them lift
+their slates by numbers.
+
+And the amusing thing is that Duncan thinks himself one of the more
+advanced teachers.  He reads the educational journals, and eagerly
+devours the articles about new methods in teaching arithmetic and
+geography.  His school is only a mile and a half away, and I hope that
+he will come over to see Mac a few times while I am here.
+
+I have seen the old type of dominie, and I have seen the new type.  I
+prefer the former.  He had many faults, but he usually managed to do
+something for the human side of the children.  The new type is a danger
+to children.  The old dominie leathered the children so that they might
+make a good show before the inspector; the new dominie leathers them
+because he thinks that children ought to be disciplined so that they
+may be able to fight the battle of life.  He does not see that by using
+authority he is doing the very opposite of what he intends; he is
+making the child dependent on him, and for ever afterwards the child
+will lack initiative, lack self-confidence, lack originality.
+
+What the new dominie does do is to turn out excellent wage-slaves.  The
+discipline of the school gives each child an inner sense of
+inferiority . . . . what the psycho-analysts call an inferiority
+complex.  And the working-classes are suffering from a gigantic
+inferiority complex . . . . otherwise they would not be content to
+remain wage-slaves.  The fear that Duncan inspires in a boy will remain
+in that boy all his life.  When he enters the workshop he will
+unconsciously identify the foreman with Duncan, and fear him and hate
+him.  I believe that many a strike is really a vague insurrection
+against the teacher.  For it is well known that the unconscious mind is
+infantile.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+To-night I dropped in to see my old friend Dauvit Todd the cobbler.
+Many an evening have I spent in his dirty shop.  Dauvit works on after
+teatime, and the village worthies gather round his fire and smoke and
+spit and grunt.  I have sat there for an hour many a night, and not a
+single word was said.  Peter Smith the blacksmith would give a great
+sigh and say: "Imphm!"  There would be silence for ten minutes, and
+then Jake Tosh the roadman would stare at the fire, shake his head, and
+say: "Aye, man!"  Then a ploughman would smack his lips and say: "Man,
+aye!"  A southerner looking in might have jumped to the conclusion that
+the assembly was collectively and individually bored, but boredom never
+enters Dauvit's shop.  We Scots think better in crowds.
+
+To-night the old gang was there.  The hypothetical southerner again
+would have marvelled at the reception I received.  I walked into the
+shop after an absence of five years.
+
+"Weel, Dauvit," I said, and sat down in the basket chair.  Dauvit and I
+have never shaken hands in our lives.  He looked up.
+
+"Back again!" he said, without any evident surprise; then he added:
+"And what like a nicht is 't ootside?"
+
+Gradually other men dropped in, and the same sort of greeting took
+place.  The weather continued to be discussed for a time.  Then the
+blacksmith said: "Auld Tarn Davidson's swine dee'd last nicht."
+
+Dauvit looked up from the boot he was repairing.
+
+"What did it dee o'?" and there followed an argument about the symptoms
+of swine fever.
+
+An English reader of _The House with the Green Shutters_ would have
+concluded that these villagers were deliberately trying to put me in my
+place.  By ignoring me might they not be showing their contempt for
+dominies who have just come from London?  Not they.  They were glad to
+see me again, and their method of showing their gladness was to take up
+our friendship at the point where it left off five years ago.
+
+The only time a Scot distrusts other Scots is when they fuss over him.
+The story goes in Tarbonny that when young Jim Lunan came home
+unexpectedly after a ten years' farming in Canada, his mother was
+washing the kitchen floor.
+
+"Mother!" he cried, "I've come hame!"
+
+She looked over her shoulder.
+
+"Wipe yer feet afore ye come in, ye clorty laddie," she said.
+
+But there is a garrulous type of Scot . . . or rather the type of Scot
+that tries to make the other fellow garrulous.  In our county we call
+them the speerin' bodie.  To speer means to ask questions.  The
+speerin' bodie is common enough in Fife, and I suppose it was a Fifer
+who entered a railway compartment one morning and sat down to study the
+only other occupant--an Englishman.
+
+"It's a fine day," said the Scot, and there was a question in his tone.
+
+The Englishman sighed and laid aside his newspaper.
+
+"Aye, mester," continued the inquisitive Fifer, "and ye'll be----"
+
+The Englishman held up a forbidding hand.
+
+"You needn't go on," he said; "I'll tell you everything about myself.
+I was born in Leeds, the son of poor parents.  I left school at the age
+of twelve, and I became a draper.  I gradually worked my way up, and
+now I am traveller for a Manchester firm.  I married six years ago.
+Three kids.  Wife has rheumatism.  Willie had measles last month.  I
+have a seven room cottage; rent £27.  I vote Tory; go to the Baptist
+church, and keep hens.  Anything else you want to know?"
+
+The Scot had a very dissatisfied look.
+
+"What did yer grandfaither dee o'?" he demanded gruffly.
+
+When the argument about swine fever had died down, Dauvit turned to me.
+
+"Aye, and how is Lunnon lookin'?"
+
+"Same as ever," I answered.
+
+"Ye'll have to tak' Dauvit doon on a trip," laughed the smith.
+
+Dauvit drove in a tacket.
+
+"Man, smith, I was in Lunnon afore you was born," he said.
+
+"Go on, Dauvit," I said encouragingly, "tell us the story."  I had
+heard it before, but I longed to hear it again.  Dauvit brightened up.
+
+"There's no muckle to tell," he said, as he tossed the boot into a
+corner and wiped his face with his apron.  "It'll be ten years come
+Martimas.  Me and Will Tamson gaed up by boat frae Dundee.  Oh! we had
+a graund time.  But there's no muckle to tell."
+
+"What about Dave Brownlee?" I asked.
+
+Dauvit chuckled softly.
+
+"But ye've a' heard the story," he said, but we protested that we
+hadn't.
+
+"Aweel," he began, "some of you will no doubt mind o' Dave Broonlee him
+that stoppit at Millend.  Dave served his time as a draper, and syne he
+got a good job in a Lunnon shop.  Weel, me and Will Tamson was walkin'
+along the Strand when Will he says to me, says he: 'Cud we no pay a
+veesit to Dave Broonlee?'  Then I minded that Dave's father had said
+something aboot payin' him a call, but I didna ken his address.  All I
+kent was that he was in a big shop in Oxford Street.
+
+"Weel, Will and me we goes up to a bobby and speers the way to Oxford
+Street.  When we got there Will he goes up to another bobby and says:
+'Please cud ye tell me whatna shop Dave Broonlee works intil?'  At that
+I started to laugh, and syne the bobby he started to laugh.  He laughed
+a lang time and syne when I telt him that it was a draper's shop he
+directed us to a great big muckle shop wi' a thousand windows.
+
+"'Try there first,' says the bobby.
+
+"Weel, in we goes, and a mannie in a tail coat he comes forart rubbin'
+his hands.
+
+"'And what can I do for you, sir?' he says to Will.
+
+"'Oh,' says Will, 'we want to see Dave Broonlee,' but the man didna ken
+what Will was sayin'.  It took Will and me twenty meenutes to get him
+to onderstand.
+
+"'Oh,' says he, 'I understand now.  You want to see Mr. Brownlee?'
+
+"'Ye're fell quick in the uptak,' says Will, but of coorse the man
+didna ken what he was sayin'.
+
+"He went to the backshop to speer aboot Dave, and when he cam back he
+says, says he: 'I'm sorry, but Mr. Brownlee has gone out to lunch.
+Will you leave a message?'
+
+"Will turned to the door.
+
+"'Never mind,' says he, 'we'll see him doon the toon.'"
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+In reading my _Log_ I am appalled by the amount of lecturing I did in
+school.  Since writing it I have visited most of the best schools in
+England, and I found that I was not the only teacher who lectured.  But
+we are all wrong.  I fancy that the real reason why I lectured so much
+was to indulge my showing-off propensities.  To stand before a class or
+an audience; to be the cynosure of all eyes; to have a crowd hanging on
+your words . . . . all showing off!  Very, very human, but . . . . bad
+for the audience.
+
+When a teacher lectures he is unconsciously giving expression to his
+desire to gain a feeling of superiority.  That, I fancy, is the deepest
+wish of every one of us . . . . to impress others, to be superior.  You
+see it in the smallest child.  Give him an audience, and he will show
+off for hours.  The boy at the top of the class gains his feeling of
+superiority by beating the others at arithmetic, while the dunce at the
+bottom of the class gains his in more original ways . . . punching the
+top boy at playtime, scoring goals at football, spitting farther than
+anyone else in school.  I have seen a boy smash a window merely to draw
+attention to himself, and thus to gain a momentary feeling of
+superiority.
+
+And we grown-ups are boys at heart.  The boy is the father to the man.
+Take, for instance, a childish trait--exhibitionism.  Most children at
+an early age love to run about naked, to show off their bodies.  Later
+the conventions of society make the child repress this wish to exhibit
+himself.  But we know that a repressed wish does not die; it merely
+buries itself in the unconscious.  Many years later the exhibition
+impulse comes out in sublimated form as a desire to show off before the
+public . . . hence our politicians, actors, actresses, street-corner
+revivalists, and--er--dominies.
+
+Now I hasten to add that there is nothing to be ashamed of in being a
+politician or a dominie.  But if I lecture a class I am making the
+affair my show, and I am not the most important actor in the play; I am
+the scene-shifter; the real actors who should be declaiming their lines
+are sitting on hard benches staring at me and wondering what I am
+raving about.  Each little person is thirsting to show his or her
+superiority, and he never gets the chance.  Occasionally I may ask a
+sleepy-looking urchin what are the exports to Canada, and he may gain a
+slight feeling of superiority if he can tell the right answer.  Yet I
+fancy that his unconscious self despises me and my question.  Why in
+all the earth should I ask a question when I know the answer?  The
+whole thing is an absurdity.  The only questions asked in a school
+should be asked by the pupils.
+
+The truth is that our schools do not give education; they give
+instruction.  And it is so very easy to instruct, and so very easy to
+go on talking, and so very easy to whack Tommy when he does not listen.
+Our prosy lectures are wasted time.  The children would be better
+employed playing marbles.
+
+Of course if a child asks for information that is a different story.
+He is obviously interested . . . that is if he isn't trying to tempt
+you into a long explanation so that you will forget to hear his Latin
+verbs.  Children soon understand our little vanities, and they soon
+learn to exploit them.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+"I had a scene in school to-day," remarked Mac while we were at tea
+to-night.
+
+"What happened?" I asked.
+
+"Tom Murray was wrong in all his sums, and he wouldn't hold out his
+hand," and by Mac's grim smile I knew that the bold Tom had been
+conquered.
+
+"What would you have done in a case like that?" asked Mac.
+
+"I would never have a case like that, Mac.  If he had all his sums
+wrong I should sit down and ask myself what was wrong with my teaching."
+
+"I didn't mean that," he said; "what I meant was: what would you do if
+Tom defied you?"
+
+"That wouldn't happen either, Mac.  Tom couldn't defy me because you
+can only defy an authority, and I'm not an authority."
+
+Mac shook his head.
+
+"You won't convince me, old chap.  A boy like Tom has to be dealt with
+with a firm hand."
+
+I studied his face for a time.
+
+"You know, Mac," I said, "you puzzle me.  You're one of the kindest
+decentest chaps in the world, and yet you go leathering poor Tom
+Murray.  Why do you do it?"
+
+"You must keep discipline," he said.
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"Mac, if you knew yourself you wouldn't ever whack a child."
+
+This seemed to tickle him.
+
+"Good Lord!" he laughed, "I could write a book about myself!  I'm one
+of the most introspective chaps ever born."
+
+"And you understand yourself?"
+
+"I have no illusions about myself at all, old chap.  I know my
+limitations."
+
+"Well, would you mind telling me why you are a bit of a nut?" I asked.
+"It isn't usual for a country dominie to wear a wing collar, a bow tie,
+and shot-silk socks."
+
+"That's easy," he said quickly.  "I think that teachers haven't the
+social standing they ought to have, and I dress well to uphold the
+dignity of the profession.  Don't you believe me?" he demanded as I
+smiled.
+
+"Quite!  I believe you're quite honest in your belief, but it's wrong
+you know.  There must be a much more personal reason than that."
+
+"Rot!" he said.  "Anyway, what is the reason?"
+
+"I don't know, Mac; it would take months of research to discover it.  I
+can't explain your psychology, but I'll tell you something about my
+own.  These swagger corduroys I'm wearing . . . when I bought them
+someone asked me why I chose corduroy, and I at once answered:
+'Economy!  They'll last ten years!'  But that wasn't the real reason, I
+bought them because I wanted to have folk stare at me.  I've got an
+inferiority complex, that is an inner feeling of inferiority.  To
+compensate for it I go and order a suit that will make people look at
+me; in short, that I may be the centre of all eyes, and thus gain a
+feeling of outward superiority."
+
+This sent Mac off into a roar of laughter.
+
+"You're daft, man!" he roared.
+
+After a minute or two he said; "But what has all this to do with Tom
+Murray?"
+
+"A lot," I said seriously.  "You think you whack Tom because you must
+have discipline, but you whack him for a different reason.  In your
+deep unconscious mind you are an infant.  You want to show your
+self-assertion just as a kid does.  You leather Tom because you've
+never outgrown your seven-year-old stage.  On market-day, when Tom
+walks behind a drove and whacks the stots over the hips with a stick,
+he is doing exactly what you did this afternoon.  You are both infants."
+
+I have had to give up lecturing Mac, for he always takes me as a huge
+joke.  He is a good fellow, but he has the wonderful gift of being
+blind to anything that might make him reconsider his values.  Many
+people protect themselves in the same way--by laughing.  I have more
+than once seen an alcoholic laugh heartily at his wrecked home and lost
+job.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+What an amount of excellent material Mac and his kind are spoiling.
+Tom Murray is a fine lad, full of energy and initiative, but he has to
+sit passive at a desk doing work that does not interest him.  His
+creative faculties have no outlet at all during the day, and naturally
+when free from authority at nights he expresses his creative interest
+anti-socially.  He nearly wrecked the five-twenty the other night; he
+tied a huge iron bolt to the rails.  Mac called it devilment, but it
+was merely curiosity.  He had had innumerable pins and farthings
+flattened on the line, and he wanted to see what the engine really
+could do.
+
+There is devilment in some of Tom's activities, for example in his
+deliberate destruction of Dauvit's apple tree.  Mac and the law would
+give him the birch for that, but fortunately Mac and the law don't know
+who did it.  Tom's destructiveness is only the direct result of Mac's
+authority.  Suppression always has the same result; it turns a young
+god into a young devil.  Had I Tom in a free school all his activities
+would be social and good.
+
+And yet nearly every teacher believes in Mac's way.  They suppress all
+the time, and what is worst of all they firmly believe they are doing
+the best thing.
+
+"Look at Glasgow!" cried Mac the other night when I was talking about
+the crime of authority.  "Look at Glasgow!  What happened there during
+the war?  Juvenile crime increased.  And why?  Because the fathers were
+in the army and the boys had no control over them; they broke loose.
+That proves that your theories are potty."
+
+I believe that juvenile crime did increase during the war, and I
+believe that Mac's explanation of the phenomenon is correct.  The
+absence of the father gave the boy liberty to be a hooligan.  But no
+boy wants to be a hooligan unless he has a strong rebellion against
+authority.  No boy is destructive if he is free to be constructive.  I
+think that the difference between Mac and myself is this: he believes
+in original sin, while I believe in original virtue.
+
+I wonder why it is so difficult to convert the authority people to the
+new way of thinking.  There must be a deep reason why they want to
+cling to their authority.  Authority gives much power, and love of
+power may be at the root of the desire to retain authority.  Yet I
+fancy that it is deeper than that.  In Mac, for instance, I think that
+his quickness in becoming angry at Tom's insubordination is due to the
+insubordination within himself.  Like most of us Mac has a father
+complex, and he fears and hates any authority exercised over himself.
+So in squashing Tom's rebellion he is unconsciously squashing the
+rebellion in his own soul.  Tom's rebellion could not affect me because
+I have got rid of my father complex, and his rebellion would touch
+nothing in me.
+
+Authority will be long in dying, for too many people cling to it as a
+prop.  Most people like to have their minds made up for them; it is so
+easy to obey orders, and so difficult to live your own life carrying
+your own burden and finding your own path.  To live your own life . . .
+that is the ideal.  To discover yourself bravely, to realise yourself
+fully, to follow truth even if the crowd stone you.  That is
+living . . . but it is dangerous living, for that way lies crucifixion.
+No one in authority has ever been crucified; every martyr dies because
+he challenges authority. . .  Christ, Thomas More, Jim Connolly.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Duncan and McTaggart the minister were in to-night, and we got on to
+the subject of wit and humour.  Having a psycho-analysis complex I
+mentioned the theory that we laugh so as to give release to our
+repressions.  The others shook their heads, and I decided to test my
+theory on them.  I told them the story of the golfer who was driving
+off about a foot in front of the teeing marks.  The club secretary
+happened to come along.
+
+"Here, my man!" cried the indignant secretary, "you're disqualified!"
+
+"What for?" demanded the player.
+
+"You're driving off in front of the teeing mark."
+
+The player looked at him pityingly.
+
+"Away, you bletherin' idiot!" he said tensely, "I'm playing my third!"
+
+"Now," I said to the others, "I'm going to tell you one by one what
+your golf is like.  You, McTaggart, are a scratch man or a plus man.
+Is that so?"
+
+"Plus one," he said in surprise.  "How did you guess?"
+
+"I didn't guess," I said with great superiority.  "I found out by pure
+science.  You didn't laugh at my joke; you merely smiled.  That shows
+that bad golf doesn't touch any complex inside you.  The man who takes
+three strokes to make one foot of ground means nothing to you because,
+as I say, there's nothing in yourself it touches."
+
+"Wonderful!" cried the minister.
+
+"It's quite simple," I crowed, "and now for Mac!  You, Mac, are a
+rotten player; you take sixteen to a hole."
+
+"Only ten," protested Mac hastily.  "How the devil did you know?  I've
+never played with you."
+
+"Deduction, my boy.  You roared at my joke, because it touched your bad
+golf complex.  In fact you were really laughing at yourself and your
+own awful golf."
+
+"What about me?" put in Duncan.
+
+Now there was something in Duncan's eye that should have warned me of
+danger, but I was so proud of my success that I plunged confidently.
+
+"Oh, you don't play golf," I said airily.
+
+"Wrong!" he cried, "I do!  And I'm worse than Mac too!"
+
+I was astounded.
+
+"Impossible!" I cried.  "You never laughed at my story at all; that is
+it touched nothing whatsoever inside you."
+
+Duncan shook his head.
+
+"You're completely wrong this time."
+
+"Well, why _didn't_ you laugh?" I asked.
+
+He grinned.
+
+"I dunno.  Possibly it is because I first heard that joke in my cradle."
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Mac's infant mistress was off duty to-day owing to an attack of
+influenza, and he gladly accepted my offer to take her place.
+
+Half-an-hour after my entry into the room Mac came in to see how I was
+getting on.  Most of the infants were swarming over me, and Mac
+frowned.  At his frown they all crept back silently to their seats.
+
+"You seem to have the fatal gift of demoralising children," he growled.
+
+It hadn't struck me before, but it is a fact; I do demoralise children.
+Not long ago I entered a Montessori school, and I spoke not one word.
+In five minutes the insets and long stairs were lying neglected in the
+middle of the floor, and the kiddies were scrambling over me.  I felt
+very guilty for I feared that if Montessori herself were to walk in she
+would be indignant.  I cannot explain why I affect kiddies in this way.
+It may be that intuitively they know that I do not inspire fear or
+respect; it may be that they unconsciously recognise the baby in me.
+Anyway, as Mac says, it is a fatal gift.
+
+I think Miss Martin the infant mistress is a good teacher.  Her infants
+do not fear her, and I am sure they love her.  The only person they
+fear is Mac, poor dear old Mac, the most lovable soul in the world.  He
+tries hard to show his love for the infants but somehow they know that
+behind his smile is the grim head-master who leathers Tom Murray.  I
+sent wee Mary Smith into Mac's room to fetch some chalk to-day, and she
+wept and feared to enter.  Occasionally, I believe, Mac will enter the
+room, seize a wee mite who is speaking instead of working, and give him
+or her a scud with the tawse.  I wonder how a good soul like Mac can do
+it.
+
+I have an unlovely story of a board school.  An infant mistress lay
+dying, and in her delirium she cried in terror lest her head-master
+should come in again and strap her dear, wee infants.  It is a true
+story, and it is the most damning indictment of board school education
+anyone could wish for.  She was a good woman who loved children, and if
+fear of her head-master brought terror to her on her deathbed, what
+terrors are such men inspiring in poor wee infants?  The men who beat
+children are exactly in the position of the men who stoned Jesus
+Christ; they know not what they do, nor do they know why they do it.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+There was a stranger in Dauvit's shop when I entered to-day, a
+seedy-looking whiskered man with a threadbare coat and extremely dirty
+linen.  Shabby genteel would be the Scots description of him.
+
+Dauvit asked me a casual question about London, and the stranger became
+interested at once.
+
+"Ah," he said, "you're from London, are ye?  Man, yon's a great place,
+a wonderful place!"
+
+I nodded assent.
+
+"Man," he continued, "yon's the place for sichts!  Could anything beat
+the procession at the Lord Mayor's show, eh?"
+
+I meekly admitted that I had never seen the Lord Mayor's show, and he
+raised his eyebrows in surprise.
+
+"But I'll tell ye what's just as good, mister, and that's the King and
+Queen opening Parliament.  Man, yon's a sicht, isn't it?"
+
+"I--er--I haven't had the opportunity of seeing it," I said.
+
+He looked more surprised than ever.
+
+"But, man, I'll tell ye what's just as good, and that's a big London
+fire.  Man, to see the way the firemen go up the ladders like monkeys.
+Yon's a sicht for sair een!"
+
+"I never had the luck to see a fire in London," I said hesitatingly.
+"When were you last in town?"
+
+He did not seem to hear my question; he was evidently thinking of other
+London thrills.
+
+"Man," he said ruminatingly, "often while I sit in the Tarbonny Kirk I
+just sit and think aboot Westminster Abbey.  Man, yon's a kirk!   I
+suppose you'll be there ilka Sunday?"
+
+I found it difficult to tell him that I had never been in the Abbey,
+but I managed to get the words out, and then I avoided his reproachful
+eye.  He knocked out his pipe, and I took the action to be a symbolic
+one meaning: You are an empty sort of person.  He studied me critically
+for a time, then he brightened.
+
+"Aye," he said cheerfully, "London's a graund place, but, for sichts
+give me New York."
+
+I felt more humble than ever, for I had never travelled.  He seemed to
+guess that by the look of me, for he never asked my opinion of New York.
+
+"Man," he said warmly, "yon's a place!  Yon skyscrapers!  Phew!" and he
+whistled his wonder and admiration.  "And the streets!  Man, ye canna
+walk on the sidewalk at the busy times.  A wonderfu' place, New York,
+but, as for me, give me the West, California and Frisco."
+
+"You have travelled much, sir," I said reverently.  The "sir" seemed to
+come naturally; my inferiority complex was touched on the raw.
+
+Again he ignored me.
+
+"To see yon cowboys!  Man, yon's what I call riding!  And the Indians!"
+
+He sighed; it was obvious that he was living over again his life in the
+western wilds.  A wistful look crept into his eyes, and I began to
+construct his sad story.  He loved a maid, but the bruiser of the camp
+loved her also . . . hence the broken-down clothes, the dirty collar.
+But anon he cheered up again.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I love the West, but for colour and climate give me
+Japan."
+
+I was so confused now that I had to blow out my pipe vigorously.  I
+glanced at Dauvit, but he was sharpening his knife on the emery hone,
+and did not appear to be interested.  I felt a vague anger against
+Dauvit; why wasn't he helping me in my trial?
+
+"Japan," continued the irrepressible stranger, "is one of the finest
+countries in the world, but, for climate give me Siberia."
+
+I hastily thought to myself that if I were Lenin I . . . but I did not
+follow out my daydream, for the stranger brought me back to earth by
+inquiring what was my honest and unbiassed opinion of the Peruvians.  I
+very cleverly pretended that I had swallowed some nicotine, and, after
+a polite pause for my answer, he went off to the subject of pearl
+fishing at Thursday Island.  Then he looked at Dauvit's clock.
+
+"Jerusalem!" he gasped, "the pub shuts at twa o'clock!" and he rushed
+out of the shop.  I heaved a great sigh of relief, and then I heaved a
+greater sigh of relief.
+
+I seized Dauvit by the arm.
+
+"Dauvit," I gasped, "who--who is your cosmopolitan friend?"
+
+"My what kind o' a friend?"
+
+"Your world-travelled friend, Dauvit.  Tell me who he is."
+
+Dauvit laughed softly.
+
+"That," he said, "was Joe Mill.  He bides wi' his old mother in that
+cottage at the foot o' the brae.  To the best o' my knowledge he hasna
+been further than Perth in his life."
+
+"But!" I cried in amazement, "he has been everywhere!"
+
+"He hasna," said Dauvit shortly, "but he works the cinema lantern at
+the Farfar picter hoose."
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+I had a long talk to-night with Macdonald about self-government in
+schools, and I told him of my plans for running a self-governing school
+in Highgate.  At the end of the discussion I had the biggest surprise
+of my life.  Mac smoked for a long time in silence, then he turned to
+me suddenly.
+
+"Look here, old chap, I'll have a shot at introducing self-government
+to-morrow," he said with enthusiasm.
+
+I grasped his hand.
+
+"Excellent!  Mac, you're a wonder!  You're a brave man!"
+
+"I don't feel brave," he said nervously.  "It's going to be a very
+difficult job."
+
+"It is," I said grimly, "and the most difficult part is for you to keep
+out of it."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that you have been an authority for so long that you'll find
+yourself issuing orders unthinkingly.  More than that the kiddies are
+so much dependent on you that they will wait to see how you vote."
+
+"What's the best way to begin it?" he asked.
+
+"Simply walk in to-morrow and say: 'Look here, you are going to govern
+yourselves.  I have no power; I won't order anyone to do anything; I
+won't punish anyone.  Now, do what you like'."
+
+Mac looked frightened.
+
+"But, good Lord, man, they'll--they'll wreck the school!"
+
+"Funk!" I laughed.
+
+His eyes were full of excitement.
+
+"It'll be an awful job to keep my hands off them," he said half to
+himself.
+
+"Funk!" I said again.
+
+"It's all very well, but . . . well, I'm rather strict you know."
+
+"So much the better!  All the better a row!"
+
+"You Bolshevist!" he laughed.  He was like a boy divided between two
+desires--to steal the apples and to escape the policeman.  I half
+feared that his courage would desert him.
+
+"Here," he said, "why not come over to school?"
+
+The temptation was great and I wavered.
+
+"No," I said at last, "I can't do it.  My presence would distract the
+children, and . . . they won't smash all the windows in front of a
+stranger.  You want my support, you dodger!"
+
+But I would give ten pounds to be in Mac's schoolroom to-morrow morning.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+I went out this morning and sat on the school wall and smoked my pipe.
+I strained my ears for the first murmur of the approaching storm.  Not
+a sound came from the schoolroom.
+
+"Mac has funked it after all," I groaned, and went in to help Mrs.
+Macdonald to pare the potatoes.
+
+When Mac came over at dinner-time his face wore a thoughtful look.
+
+"You coward!" I cried.
+
+"Coward!" he laughed.  "Why, man, the scheme is in full swing!"
+
+Then I asked him to tell me all about it.
+
+"Your knowledge of children is all bunkum," he began.  "You said there
+would be a row when I announced that I gave up authority."
+
+"And wasn't there?"
+
+"Not a vestige of one.  The kids stared at me with open mouth,
+and . . ."
+
+"And what?"
+
+"Oh, they simply got out their books and began their reading lesson.
+As quiet as mice too."
+
+"And do you mean to tell me that it made no difference?" I asked.
+
+"None whatever.  I tell you they just went on with the timetable as
+usual."
+
+"But didn't they talk to each other more?"
+
+"There wasn't a whisper."
+
+I considered for a minute.
+
+"What exactly did you say to them when you announced that they were to
+have self-government?"
+
+"I just said what you told me last night."
+
+"Did you add anything?"
+
+He avoided my eye.
+
+"Of course I said that I trusted them to carry on the school as usual,"
+he admitted reluctantly.
+
+"Thereby showing them that you didn't trust them at all," I explained.
+"Mac, you must have been a thundering strict disciplinarian.  The
+kiddies are dead afraid of you.  I fear that you'll never manage to
+have self-government.  This fear of you must be broken, and you've got
+to break it."
+
+"But how?" he asked helplessly.
+
+"By coming down off your pedestal.  You must become one of the gang.
+One dramatic exhibition will do it."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Smash a window; chuck books about the room . . . anything to break
+this idea that you are an exalted being whose eye is like God's always
+ready to see evil."
+
+Mac looked annoyed and injured.
+
+"What good will my fooling do?" he asked.
+
+"But," I protested seriously, "it's essential.  You simply must break
+your authority if you are to have a free school.  There can be no real
+self-expression if you are always standing by to stamp out slacking and
+noise."
+
+"But," he protested, "didn't I tell 'em I was giving up my authority?"
+
+"Yes, but they don't believe you.  You've got the eye of an authority."
+
+He was by this time getting rather indignant.
+
+"I can't go the length you do," he said sourly.  "I'm not an anarchist."
+
+"In that case I'd advise you to chuck the experiment, Mac," I said with
+an indifferent shrug of my shoulders.  The shrug nettled Mac; he is one
+of the bull-dog breed, and I saw his lips set.
+
+"I've begun it, and I won't chuck it," he said firmly.  "And I hope to
+prove that your methods are all wrong.  Let it come gradually; that's
+what I say."
+
+When he came over at four o'clock his face glowed with excitement.  He
+slapped me on the back with his heavy hand.
+
+"Man," he cried, "it's going fine!  We had our first trial this
+afternoon."
+
+"Go on," I said.
+
+"Oh, it was a first class start.  Jim Inglis threw his pencil at Peter
+Mackie."
+
+"I hope he didn't miss," I said flippantly.
+
+Mac ignored my levity.
+
+"And then I didn't know what to do.  My first impulse was to haul him
+out and strap him, but of course I didn't.  I just said to the class:
+'You saw what Jim Inglis did?  You have to decide what is to be done
+about it'."
+
+"And they answered: 'Please, sir, give him the tawse'?" I said.
+
+Mac laughed.
+
+"That's exactly what they did say, but I told them that they were
+governing themselves, and suggested that they elect a chairman and
+decide by vote."
+
+"Bad tactics," I commented.  "You should have left them to settle their
+own procedure.  What happened then?"
+
+"They appointed Mary Wilson as chairman, and then John Smith got up and
+proposed that the prisoner get six scuds with the tawse from me.  The
+motion was carried unanimously."
+
+"You refused of course?" I said.
+
+"Man, I couldn't refuse.  I was alarmed, because six scuds are far too
+many for a little offence like chucking a pencil.  I made them as light
+as possible."
+
+I groaned.
+
+"What would you have done?" he asked.
+
+"Taken the prisoner's side," I said promptly, "I should have chucked
+every pencil in the room at the judge and jury.  Then I should have
+pointed out that I refused to do the dirty work of the community."
+
+"But where does the self-government come in there?" he protested.
+"Chucking things at the jury is anarchy, pure anarchy."
+
+"I know," I said simply.  "But then anarchy is necessary in your
+school.  You don't mean to say that the children thought that throwing
+a pencil was a great crime?  What happened was that they projected
+themselves on to you; unconsciously they said: 'The Mester thinks this
+a crime and he would punish it severely.'  They were trying to please
+you.  I say that anarchy is necessary if these children are to get free
+from their dependence on you and their fear of you.  So long as you
+refuse to alter your old values you can't expect the kids to alter
+their old values.  Unless you become as a little child you cannot enter
+the kingdom of--er--self-government."
+
+I know that Mac's experiment will fail, and for this reason; he wants
+his children to run the school themselves, but to run it according to
+his ideas of government.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+I think of an incident that happened when I was teaching in a school in
+London.  I had a drawing lesson, and the children made so much noise
+that the teacher in the adjoining room came in and protested that she
+couldn't make her voice heard.  The noise in my room seemed to
+increase . . . and the lady came in again.  The noise increased.
+
+Next day I went to my class.
+
+"You made such a noise yesterday that the teacher next door had to stop
+teaching.  She rightly complained.  Now I want to ask you what you are
+going to do about it."
+
+"You should keep us in order," said Findlay, a boy of eleven.
+
+"I refuse," I said; "it isn't my job."
+
+This raised a lively discussion; the majority seemed to agree with
+Findlay.
+
+"Anyway," I said doggedly, "I refuse to be your policeman," and I sat
+down.
+
+There was much talking, and then Joy got up.
+
+"I think we ought to settle it by a meeting, and I propose Diana as
+chairman."
+
+The idea was hailed with delight, and Diana was elected chairman and
+she took my desk seat and I went and sat down in her place.
+
+Joy jumped up again.
+
+"I propose that Mr. Neill be put out of the room."
+
+The motion was carried.
+
+"Righto!" I said, as I moved to the door, "I'll go up to the staff-room
+and have a smoke.  Send for me if you want me."
+
+I smoked a cigarette in the staff-room, and as I threw the stump into
+the grate Nancy came in.
+
+"You can come down now."
+
+I went down.
+
+"Well," I said cheerily, "have you decided anything?"
+
+"Yes," said the chairman, "we have decided that----"
+
+Joy was on her feet at once.
+
+"I propose that we don't tell Mr. Neill what we have decided.  We can
+ask him at the end of the week if he notices any difference in our
+behaviour."
+
+Others objected, and the matter was put to the vote.  The voting was a
+draw, and Diana gave the casting vote in favour of my being told.  Then
+she said that the meeting had agreed that if anyone made a row in
+class, he or she was to be sent to Coventry for a whole day.
+
+"What will happen if I speak to the one that has been sent to
+Coventry?" asked Wolodia.
+
+"We'll send you to Coventry too," said Diana, and the meeting murmured
+agreement.
+
+No one was ever sent to Coventry, but I had no further complaints
+against the class.  One interesting feature in the affair was this:
+Violet, a lively girl full of fun, one day got up and, as a joke,
+proposed that Mr. Neill be sent to Coventry.  The others, usually
+willing to laugh with Violet, protested.
+
+"That's just silly, Violet," they said.  "If you propose silly things
+like that we'll send you to Coventry."
+
+Then someone got up and proposed that Violet be sent to Coventry for
+being silly, and Diana at once took the chair.  I got up and moved the
+negative, pointing out that I made no charge against her, and she was
+acquitted by a majority of one.  I mention this to show that children
+of eleven and twelve can take their responsibilities seriously.
+
+When I told the story to Macdonald he said: "But why didn't you join in
+their noise?"
+
+"For two reasons, Mac," I said.  "Firstly these children were not under
+the suppression of government schools; secondly it wasn't my school."
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+The servant girl at the Manse has had an illegitimate child, and Meg
+Caddam, the out-worker at East Mains is cutting her dead.  Thus the
+gossip of Mrs. Macdonald.  Meg Caddam is the unmarried mother of three.
+
+I have noticed again and again that the most severe critic of the
+unmarried mother is the unmarried mother, and I have many a time
+wondered at the fact.  Now I know the explanation; it is the familiar
+Projection of a Reproach.  Meg feels guilty because of her three
+children, but her guilt is repressed, driven down into the unconscious.
+
+She dare not allow her conscious mind to face the truth, for then the
+truth would lower her self-respect; it would be unpleasant, out of
+harmony with her ego-ideal.  But it is easy for her to project this
+inner reproach on to someone else, hence her blaming of the Manse
+lassie.  Meg Caddam is really condemning herself, but she does not know
+it.
+
+I used to despise the Meg Caddams as hypocrites, but, poor souls, they
+are not hypocrites.  Their condemnation of their fallen sisters is
+genuine.  It is wonderful how we all manage to divide our minds into
+compartments.  Sandy Marshall of Brigs Farm is a most religious man,
+yet the other day he was fined for watering his milk.  It is unjust to
+say that his religion is hypocritical.  What happens is that his
+religion is shut up in one compartment of his mind, and his dishonesty
+is shut up in another compartment . . . and there is no direct
+communication between the compartments.
+
+The mind is like one of the older railway carriages; education's task
+is to convert the old carriage into a new corridor carriage with
+communication between the compartments.  Meg Caddam's own transgression
+against current morality is locked up in one compartment; her
+condemnation of the Manse girl is in another compartment.  There is an
+unconscious communication, but there is no conscious communication.  I
+don't know what Meg would say if a cruel friend pointed out to her that
+she also was a fallen woman.
+
+I think that the gossip of this village mostly consists of projected
+reproaches.  Liz Ramsay, an old maid and the super-gossip of Tarbonny,
+came into the schoolhouse this morning.
+
+"Do ye ken this," she said to Mrs. Macdonald, "it's my opeenion that
+Mrs. Broon died o' neglect.  I went to the door the day afore she died
+to speer hoo she was, and her daughter cam to the door, and do ye ken
+this?  That lassie was smiling . . . _smilin'_ . . . and her auld
+mother upstairs at death's door.  Eh, Mrs. Macdonald, she's a heartless
+woman that Mary Broon.  She killed her mother by neglect, that's what
+she did."
+
+After she had gone I said to Mrs. Macdonald: "Who nursed Liz's mother
+when she died last June?"
+
+"Nobody," said Mrs. Macdonald grimly.  "Liz had too much gossip to
+retail in the village, and I'm told that Liz was seldom in the house."
+
+I think I am guessing fairly rightly when I say that Liz feels guilty
+of neglecting her own mother, and like Meg Caddam she projects the
+reproach on to someone else.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Last Friday night I gave a lecture to the literary Society in Tarby,
+our nearest town.  I chose the subject of forgetting, and I told the
+audience of Freud and his great work in connection with the
+unconscious.  To-day's _Tarby Herald_ in reporting the lecture prints
+phonetically the spelling "Froid," but the _Tarby Observer_ goes one
+better when it says: "Mr. Neill is an exponent of the new science of
+Cycloanalysis."
+
+Which reminds me of a painful episode that took place when I was
+eighteen.  I was much enamoured of a young university student, and I
+always strove to gain her favour by being interested in the things she
+liked.  One day she informed me that she intended to take the
+Psychology class at St. Andrews the following session.  I had never
+heard the word before, and I made a bold guess that it had something to
+do with cycles.  In consequence we talked at cross purposes for a while.
+
+"I'd love a subject like that," I said warmly.
+
+"Most of it will be experimental psychology," she said.
+
+My enthusiasm increased.  I thought of the many experiments I had tried
+with my old cushion-tyred cycle.
+
+"Excellent!" I cried.  "A sort of training in inventing.  Cranks, eh?"
+At that time my one ambition in life was to invent a folding crank that
+would give double power on hills.
+
+The lady looked at me sharply.
+
+"Why cranks?" she demanded.  "I don't see it.  Psychology has nothing
+to do with crystal-gazing you know."
+
+I was gravelled.
+
+"But what's the idea?" I asked.  "Improvement of design?"
+
+This made her think hard.
+
+"H'm, yes, I think I know what you mean," she said slowly.  "But
+remember that before you can improve the psyche you must know the
+psyche."
+
+I hastened to agree.
+
+"Certainly, but all the same there is much room for improvement.  You
+don't want to come off at every hill, do you?"
+
+This seemed to make her more thoughtful still.
+
+"No," she said, "but don't you think that the mind makes the hill?"
+
+This staggered me.
+
+"Eh?" I gasped.  "Mean to say that I broke my chain on Logie Brae
+yesterday because----"
+
+"I'm afraid it is too difficult for me," she said apologetically.  "I
+get lost in metaphors."
+
+Then I asked her something about ball bearings, and she threw me a
+grateful smile . . . for changing the subject--as she thought.
+
+The most amusing joke is the joke about the innocent or ignorant.
+Everyone is tickled at the Hamlet joke I referred to in my _Log_.
+
+The school inspector was dining with the local squire.
+
+"Funny thing happened in the village school to-day," he said.  "I was a
+little bit ratty, and I fired a question at a sleepy-looking boy at the
+bottom of the class.
+
+"Here, boy, who wrote _Hamlet_?"
+
+The little chap got very flustered.
+
+"P--please, sir, it wasna me!"
+
+The squire laughed boisterously.
+
+"And I suppose the little devil had done if after all!" he cried.
+
+We laugh at that story because we have all made mistakes owing to
+ignorance, and blushed for them a hundred times later.  When we laugh
+at the squire, we are really laughing at ourselves; we are getting rid
+of our pent-up self-shame.  That's why a good laugh is a medicine; it
+allows us to get rid of psychic poison, just as a good sweat rids us of
+somatic poison.  Charlie Chaplin has possibly cured more people than
+all the psycho-analysts in the world.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Public speaking is a most difficult thing.  It is difficult enough when
+you know your subject, and it is almost impossible if you don't.  At a
+dinner someone asks you to get up and propose the health of the ladies.
+I tried proposing that toast once; luckily most of the diners were
+under the table by that time.  What can one say about the ladies?
+
+When you have a definite subject to talk about, and when you know
+everything about it, even then public speaking is difficult.  You stand
+up before a sea of faces.  You see no one; you dare not catch anyone's
+eye.  The best plan is to fix your eye on the blurred face of the man
+at the back of the hall.  You feel that the audience is vaguely hostile.
+
+At one time I used to go straight into my subject . . .  "Ladies and
+gentlemen, the subject of evolution has occupied the minds of--"  Then
+the audience began to rustle, and the women turned to look at the hats
+behind them.
+
+Nowadays I am more wary.  I stand up and gaze over the sea of faces for
+a full minute.  There is absolute silence.  I put my hands into my
+trouser pockets and gaze at the ceiling, as if I were considering
+whether I should go on or give it up and go home.  Even the boys at the
+back of the hall begin to look towards the platform.
+
+Then I look down and find that my tie is hanging out of my waistcoat,
+and I adjust it.  A girl of ten giggles.
+
+"What can you expect for fivepence half-penny?" I ask, and the audience
+gasps.
+
+"Why doesn't someone invent a long tie that won't come out at the
+ends?" I ask wearily, and there is a laugh.  I go on from ties to
+collars, and there is another laugh.  After that I can speak on
+education for two hours, and everyone in the hall will listen with
+great attention.
+
+The first thing in public speaking is to get on good terms with your
+audience, and I claim that the best way to do this is to show them the
+human side of yourself.  Some of your hearers are agin you; they have
+come out to criticise you.  You disarm them at once by treating
+yourself as a joke.  Of course you must suit your tactics to your
+audience.  The tie remark will put me on good terms with a rural
+audience, but it would fail in a lecture to teachers in the Albert Hall.
+
+An important thing to remember is that crowd humour is quite different
+from individual humour.  A crowd will roar with delight if the lecturer
+accidentally knocks over the drinking glass on the table, but no
+individual ever laughs when a similar accident happens in a private
+room.  Read the reports of speeches in the House of Commons.  You will
+read that Lloyd George, in a speech, says: "And now let us turn to
+Ireland (loud laughter)."  But in cold print it isn't a very good joke.
+
+Quite a good way of commencing a lecture is to tell a short story . . .
+about the chairman if possible.  But you must be careful.  Keep off the
+topic of the chairman's marital affairs; he may have lodged a divorce
+petition the week before.
+
+On second thoughts I think it better not to mention the chairman at
+all.  Last winter the local mayor was presiding at a lecture I gave in
+an English town.  After I had delivered the lecture, he got up.
+
+"I came to this meeting feeling dead tired," he said, "but after Mr.
+Neill's lecture I feel as fresh as a daisy."
+
+I rose in alarm.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," I said hastily, "the mayor has been sitting
+behind me.  Do tell me: has he been asleep?"
+
+In the ante-room afterwards he assured me solemnly that he hadn't been
+asleep.
+
+On Friday night I began thus: "Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I am
+going to talk about Forgetting."  Then I put my hand in my inside coat
+pocket; then I tried another pocket, and got very excited while I
+rummaged every pocket I had.
+
+"I must apologise," I said, "but I have forgotten my notes."
+
+The audience laughed, and we became the best of friends.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Forgetting is very often intentional.  We forget what we do not want to
+remember.  Brown writes to me saying that he is taking the wife and
+kids to the seaside, and would I please pay him the fiver I owe him?  I
+at once sit down and write: "My dear Brown, I enclose a cheque for five
+quid.  Many thanks for the loan.  Hope you all have a good time at the
+sea."
+
+Three days later Brown replies.
+
+"Thanks for your letter, old man, but you forgot to enclose the cheque."
+
+Why did I forget the cheque?  Because I did not want to pay up.
+Consciously I did want to pay, for I wrote out the cheque all right,
+but my unconscious did not want to pay, and it was my unconscious that
+made me slip the cheque under the blotter.
+
+Last summer I was invited to spend the week-end with some people at
+Stanmore.  I did not want to go; a previous week-end with them had been
+most boring.  However, I reluctantly consented to go out on the
+Saturday morning.  When Saturday morning came I was not very much
+surprised to find that I had forgotten to put out my boots to be
+cleaned the night before.
+
+"It looks as if I weren't keen on this trip," I said to myself.
+
+I went down to Baker Street and got into the train.  We stopped at many
+stations, and after an hour's journey I began to wonder what was wrong.
+I asked another man in the compartment when we were due at Stanmore,
+and he looked surprised.
+
+"Why," he said, "you're on the wrong line; you ought to have changed at
+Harrow."
+
+I got out at the next station and found that I had an hour to wait for
+the return train to Harrow.  As I sat on the platform I took from my
+pocket my host's letter.
+
+"Remember," it ran, "to change at Harrow," and the words were
+underlined.
+
+I arrived four hours late . . . and spent a pleasant week-end.
+
+One night I was dining out in London, and I told my host the new theory
+of forgetting.
+
+"That's all bunkum," he said.  "Why, there is a flower growing at the
+front door there, and I can never remember the name of it.  I am fond
+of flowers and never have any difficulty in remembering their names as
+a rule."
+
+"What flower is it?" I asked.
+
+He tried to recall it, and had to give it up.
+
+"It's the joke of the family," said his wife.  "He can never remember
+the name Begonia."
+
+"Begonia!" cried my host, "that's the name!  But surely you don't mean
+to tell me that I want to forget it?  Why should I?"
+
+"It may be associated with something unpleasant in your life," I said.
+
+"Nonsense!" he laughed.  "The name conveys nothing to me."
+
+We began to talk about other things.  Ten minutes later my host
+suddenly exclaimed:
+
+"I've got it!"
+
+"What?" I asked.
+
+"That Begonia business.  When I began business as a chartered
+accountant over twenty years ago, the first books I had to audit were
+the books of a company calling itself The Begonia Furnishing Company.
+I glanced through the books and soon concluded that they were
+swindlers.  I worried over that case for a week; you see it was my
+first case, and I felt a little superstitious about it.  However, at
+the end of a week I sent the books back saying that I couldn't see my
+way to undertake the auditing.  I've never given them a thought since."
+
+I explained the mechanisms to him.  The whole idea of this Begonia
+Company was so painful to him that he repressed it, that is, drove it
+down into the unconscious.  Twenty years later he was unconsciously
+afraid to recall the name of the flower, because the name might have
+brought back the painful memories of the questionable books.
+
+On Friday night during question time one man got up.
+
+"Why is it, then," he asked, "that I cannot forget the painful time
+when my wife died?"
+
+I explained that a big thing like that cannot be forgotten, but pointed
+out that in a case like that the tendency is to forget little things in
+connection with the big pain.  I told him of a case I had myself known.
+A lady of my acquaintance lived for a few years in Glasgow; then she
+moved to Edinburgh, where she lived for almost thirty years.  Now she
+lives in London.  When she talks of her old home in Edinburgh she
+always says: "When we were in Glasgow."  Invariably she makes this
+mistake.  The reason is almost certainly this: just before she left
+Edinburgh she lost the one she loved most in life.  She says: "When we
+were in Glasgow" because the word Edinburgh would at once bring back
+the painful memories connected with her loved one's death.
+
+When I was teaching in Hampstead one of my pupils, a boy of sixteen,
+came to me one day.
+
+"That's all rot, what you say about wanting to forget things," he said.
+"I went and left my walking-stick in a bus yesterday."
+
+"Were you tired of it?" I asked.
+
+"Tired of it?" he said indignantly.  "Why, it was a beauty, a
+silver-topped cane, got it from mother on my birthday.  That proves
+your theory is all wrong."
+
+"Tell me about yesterday," I said.
+
+"Well, I was going to a match at lord's, and it looked rather dull, so
+mother told me I'd better take a gamp.  I said it wasn't going to rain,
+and took my cane, but I had just got on the top of a bus when down came
+the rain in bucketfuls and I tell you I was wet to the skin."
+
+"So you did mean to leave your cane behind?" I asked, with a smile.
+
+"But I tell you I didn't!"
+
+"You did, all the same.  You kicked yourself because you hadn't taken
+your mother's advice and brought a gamp.  You deliberately left your
+cane behind you because it had proved useless."
+
+I must add that I failed to convince him.
+
+Connected with forgetting are what Freud calls symptomatic acts.  I
+leave my stick or gloves behind when I am calling at a house: I
+conclude that I want to go back there.  I go to dinner at the
+Thomsons', and at their front door I absent-mindedly take out my
+latch-key.  This may mean that I feel at home there; on the other hand,
+it may mean that I wish I were at home.  It is dangerous to dogmatise
+about the unconscious.
+
+I was sitting one night with Wilson, an old college friend of mine.  We
+talked of old times, and I remarked that he had been very lucky in his
+lodgings during his college course.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I was in the same digs all the five years.  She was a
+ripping landlady was Mrs.--Mrs.--Good Lord!  I've forgotten her name!"
+
+He tried to recall the name, but had to give it up.  Two hours later,
+as he rose to go, he exclaimed: "I remember the name now!  Mrs. Watson!"
+
+"What are your associations to the name Watson?" I asked.
+
+"Associations?  What do you mean?"
+
+"What's the first thing that comes into your head in connection with
+the name?" I asked.
+
+He made an effort to concentrate his mind, then suddenly he laughed
+shortly.
+
+"Good Lord!" he cried, "that's my wife's name!"
+
+I felt that I could not very well ask him anything further, but I
+suspected that Wilson and his wife were not getting on well together.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Macdonald's self-government scheme has fizzled out.  Yesterday his
+scholars besought him to return to the old way of authority.
+
+"They were fed up with looking after themselves," explained Mac to me.
+"They were always trying each other for misdemeanours, and they got
+sick of it."
+
+I tried to explain to Mac why his attempt had failed.  Self-government
+always fails unless it is complete self-government.  Mac was the
+director and guide; it was he who decided the time-table; it was he who
+rang the bell and decided the length of the intervals.  The children
+had nothing to do but to keep themselves in order, hence they came to
+spy on each other.  All their energies were directed to penal measures.
+Their meeting degenerated into a police court.  That was inevitable;
+Mac, by laying down all the laws, prevented their using their creative
+energy on things and ideas.  Naturally they put all the energy they had
+into the only thing open to them--the trial of offenders.  In short,
+they were employing energy in destruction when they ought to have been
+employing it in construction.  Mac seems indifferent now.  "The thing
+is unworkable," he says.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Duncan came over to-night.  I decided to let him do most of the
+talking, and he did it well.  He has been doing a lot of Regional
+Geography, and I learned much from his conversation.  As the evening
+wore on he became very affable, and he treated me with the greatest
+kindness.  When Mac was seeing him out Duncan remarked to him: "That
+chap Neill isn't such a bad fellow after all."  Now that I have shown
+Duncan that I am his inferior in Geography he will listen to me with
+less irritation.
+
+After supper I went over to see Dauvit.  His shop was crowded.
+Conversation was going slowly, and Dauvit seemed to welcome my entrance.
+
+"Man, Dominie," he said, "I am very glad to see ye, cos the smith here
+has been tellin' his usual lees aboot the ten pund troot that he nearly
+landed in the Kernet."
+
+"I doot ye dreamt it, smith," said the foreman from Hillend.  "I ken
+for mysell that the biggest troot I ever catched were in my dreams."
+
+"Dreams is just a curran blethers," said the smith in scorn.
+
+Dauvit looked at him thoughtfully.
+
+"That's a very ignorant remark, smith," he said gravely.  "There's
+naebody kens what a dream is.  Some o' thae spiritualist lads say that
+when ye are asleep yer spirit goes to the next plane, and that maks yer
+dreams."
+
+The smith laughed loudly.
+
+"Oh, Dauvit!  Why, man, I dreamed last nicht that I was sittin' we a
+great muckle pint o' beer in my hand.  Do ye mean to tell me that there
+is beer in heaven?"
+
+There was a laugh at Dauvit's expense, but the laugh turned against the
+smith when Dauvit remarked dryly: "I didna mention heaven; I said the
+next plane, and onybody that kens you, smith, kens that the plane
+you're gaein' to is the doon plane."
+
+"Naturally, a muckle pint o' beer will be the exact thing ye need doon
+there," he added.
+
+"It's my opeenion," said old John Peters, "that dreams is just like a
+motor car withoot the driver.  Or like a schule withoot the mester; the
+bairns just run aboot whaur they like, nae control as ye micht say.
+Weel, that's jest what happens in dreams; the mester is sleepin' and
+the bairns do all sorts o' mad things."
+
+"Aye, man, John," said Dauvit, who seemed to be struck with the idea,
+"there's maybe something in that.  Just as bairns when they get free do
+a' the things they're no meant to do, we do the same things in oor
+dreams.  Goad, but I've done some awfu' things in my dreams!"
+
+Here Jake Tosh the roadman began to cough, and Jake's cough always
+means that he is about to say something.
+
+"You're just a lot o' haverin' craturs," he said with conviction.  "If
+ye had ony sense ye wud ken that the dream is just cheese and tripe for
+supper."
+
+Dauvit's eyes twinkled.
+
+"And does the cheese wander frae yer stammick up to yer heid, Jake?"
+
+"I wudna go so far as that," said Jake seriously, "but what I say is
+that a' the different parts o' the body work thegether.  If the
+stammick has to work a' nicht to digest the cheese, the heid has to
+keep workin' at the same rate, and that's why ye dream."
+
+"Aye, man, Jake," said Dauvit, "it's a bonny theory, but wud ye jest
+tell me exactly what work yer toes and fingers and hair are doin' a'
+nicht to keep upsides wi' yer stammick?"
+
+Jake dismissed the question with an airy wave of his hand.
+
+"Onybody kens that," he said; "they grow.  Yer hair and yer nails grow
+at nichts, and that's why ye need a shave in the mornin'!"
+
+"What if you don't dream at all, Jake?" I asked.
+
+"Ye're needin' some grub," said Jake shortly.
+
+On thinking it over I feel that Jake's theory throws some light on
+Jung's theory of the libido.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+This morning I had a letter from a friend in London asking when I am
+going to set up my "Crank School" in London.  I began to think about the
+word Crank.  What is a Crank?  Usually the name is applied to people who
+wear long hair, eat vegetarian diet, wear sandals . . . or something in
+that line.  A Crank therefore is someone who differs from the crowd, and
+I am led to conclude that the Crank not only differs from the crowd but
+is usually ahead of the crowd.
+
+According to Sir Martin Conway the crowd has no head; it can only feel.
+Hence it comes that the main feature of a crowd is its emotion.  When we
+study the street crowd, the mob, this fact is evident; but can we say the
+same of other crowds . . . the Public School crowd, the Church, the
+Miners, the Doctors?  I think so.  The anger that Alec Waugh's book, _The
+Loom of Youth_, aroused in the public schools was not a thought-out
+anger; it came from the public school emotion.  So with vivisection; the
+doctors' rage at the anti-vivisectionists is not an intellectual rage; it
+is simply a professional emotion.  Just before I left London I happened
+one night to be in a company of men who were arguing about
+Re-incarnation.  I had no special views on the subject, but I soon found
+myself supporting the crowd that was sceptical about Re-incarnation.  The
+reason was that the leader of the anti-reincarnation crowd happened to be
+a man called Neill.  It is highly probable that if two rag-and-bone men
+got into a scrap in a public house they would support each other simply
+out of a professional crowd emotion.
+
+That the crowd has no head is evident when we read the popular papers or
+see the popular films.  The most successful papers are those that touch
+the passions of the mob.  I proved this one week last spring.  Judges
+were beginning to introduce the "cat" for criminals, as a means to stem
+the crime wave.  I sat down and wrote an article on the subject, pointing
+out that this was a going back to the days of barbarism when lunatics
+were whipped behind the cart's tail.  I made a strong plea for the
+psychological treatment of the criminal, basing my plea on the fact that
+crime is the result of unconscious workings of the mind, and stating that
+instead of sending a poor man to penal servitude we ought to analyse his
+mind and cure him of his anti-social tendencies.
+
+I thought it a jolly good article, and when a prominent Sunday paper
+returned the manuscript to me I was surprised.  My surprise left me on
+the following Sunday when the same paper blared forth an article by
+Horatio Bottomley.  His title was: "Wanted--the Cat!"
+
+My article was more thoughtful, more humane, more scientific.  Why, then,
+was it suppressed?  The answer is simple: it did not fit in with the
+passions of the crowd.  It becomes clear why our best public
+men--editors, cabinet ministers, publicists are not great thinkers.  They
+must keep in touch with the crowd; they must express the emotions of the
+crowd.
+
+The attitude of the crowd to the anti-crowd person, the Crank, is never
+one of contemptuous indifference.  It is always distinctly hostile.  If I
+travel by tube from Hampstead to Piccadilly without a hat the other
+travellers stare at me with mild hostility.  Why?  Conway, in _The Crowd
+in Peace and War_, an excellent book, says that this hostility comes from
+fear.  A crowd is always afraid of another crowd, because the only force
+that can destroy a crowd is a rival crowd.  Every individual who differs
+from the herd is suspect because he is perhaps the nucleus of a rival
+crowd.  That is why the world always crucifies its Christs.
+
+The Crank School, then, is a school where anti-crowd people send their
+children.  It is the school _par excellence_ of the Intelligentsia.  The
+tendency of every Crank School is to exaggerate the difference between
+the crank and the crowd; hence its adoption of an ideal and its
+concomitant crazes.  I cannot for the life of me see why ideals are
+associated with vegetarianism, long hair, Grecian dress, and sandals,
+just as I cannot see why art should attach itself to huge bow-ties, long
+hair, and foot-long cigarette holders.
+
+The Crank School holds up an ideal.  It plasters its walls with busts of
+Walt Whitman and Blake; it hangs bad reproductions of Botticelli round
+the walls; it sings songs to Freedom; it rhapsodises about Beethoven and
+Bach.  The children of the Crank Schools are, I rejoice to say, not
+cranks.  They leave the boredom of Bach and seek the jazz record on the
+gramophone; they ignore the pictures of Whitman and Blake and study _The
+Picture Show_ or _Funny Bits_.  Many of them think more highly of Charlie
+Chaplin than of William Shakespeare.
+
+I say again that I rejoice in this; it serves the Crank School people
+jolly well right.  I cannot see by what right educators force what they
+consider good taste down the children's throats.  That is a return to the
+old way of authority, of treating the child's mind as a blank slate.  If
+the Crank Schools are to improve, they must drop their high moral purpose
+tone and come down to earth.  They must realise that Charlie Chaplin and
+_John Bull_ have their place in education just as Shakespeare and
+Beethoven have their place.  We do not want to turn out cranks who will
+form a new superior crowd; we want to turn out men and women who will
+readily join the conventional crowd and help it to reach better ideals.
+
+This question of good taste is a sore one with me.  I think it fatal to
+impose good taste on any child; the child must form his own taste.  I
+know that it is possible to cultivate good taste and to become a very
+superior cultivated person, but I know that the human, erring, vulgar,
+music-hall, Charlie Chaplin part of such a person's make-up is not
+annihilated; it is merely repressed into the unconscious.
+
+I have a theory that each of us has a definite amount of human nature,
+some of it high, some of it low, or, to phrase it differently, some of it
+animal, some of it spiritual.  We can repress one part, and then we
+become either a saint or a sinner; the better way is to be both saint and
+sinner, to look life straight in the face, condemning no one, judging no
+one.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Macdonald was re-reading _A Dominie Dismissed_ to-night, and he looked up
+and said: "Look here, you've got an awful lot of swear-words in this
+book!"
+
+"That," I said, "has a cause, Mac.  They aren't really swear-words; the
+world has grown out of being shocked at a 'damn,' but I am willing to
+admit that there are more damns and hells than is usual.  They are
+symptomatic; they date back to my early days when swearing was a crime
+punishable with the strap.  They are simply symbols of my freedom.  Most
+bad language is from a like cause.  When you foozle on the first tee
+there is no earthy reason why you should say 'Hell' rather than 'Onions'!
+But if onions had been taboo when you were a child you would find
+yourself using the word as a swear.  The curse word is the link that
+joins your foozle with the nursery; whenever you curse you regress, that
+is, you go back to the infantile."
+
+"But," said Mac, "you don't mean to say that if swearing were permitted
+to children that they wouldn't curse when they were grown up?"
+
+"I don't think they would," I said.  "Nor would there be any unprintable
+stories if we had a frank sex education.  It's a sad fact, Mac, but
+nine-tenths of humour is due to early suppression and repression."
+
+"Seems to me," said Mac with a laugh, "that if everybody were
+psycho-analysed, the world would be a pretty dull place."
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+A few days ago I found a pot of light paint in Mac's workshop, and,
+impelled by heaven only knows what unconscious process, I painted my
+bicycle blue.  This morning, the paint being dry, I rode forth into an
+unsympathetic world.  Women came to their doors to stare at my machine,
+and as they stared they broke into laughter.  When I reached the village
+of Cordyke the school was coming out, and I was greeted with a howl of
+derision.  I thought it a good instance of crowd psychology; I was
+different from the crowd, and I evoked laughter and derision.
+
+After cycling a few miles, I came to an old man breaking stones at the
+bottom of a hill.  On my approaching he threw down his hammer and turned
+to stare at my cycle.  I dismounted.
+
+"Almichty me!" he said with surprise.  "That's a michty colour!"
+
+"It's unusual," I said, as I lit a cigarette.
+
+He fumbled for his clay pipe.
+
+"I've seen black anes, and I wance saw a silver-plated ane, but I never
+heard tell o' a blue bike afore," he said.  "Did you pent it?"
+
+I acknowledged that it was my very own handiwork.
+
+"But," he said in puzzled tones, "what was yer idea?" and he stared at it
+again.  "A michty colour that!"
+
+I threw my bike down on the grass and sat down on the cairn.
+
+"Between you and me," I said mysteriously, "I had to paint it blue."
+
+He raised his eyebrows.
+
+"Yea, man!"
+
+"Government orders," I said carelessly, and began to throw stones at a
+tree trunk at the other side of the road.
+
+"Government orders?"  He looked very much surprised.
+
+"Yes," I said airily.  "You see, it's like this.  The Coalition
+Government isn't very firmly placed these days, and, well, I'm an agent
+for it.  Of course, you know that it is really a Tory government, and my
+bike, as it were, invites the electorate to vote True Blue."
+
+"Yea, man!  I thocht that you was maybe ane o' thae temperance lads frae
+Americky."
+
+"Ah!" I said solemnly, "that reminds me; Pussyfoot tried to induce me to
+make my tour a sort of joint thing.  He suggested that I might carry on
+my Tory work, and at the same time take part in the blue ribbon campaign.
+Of course I refused."
+
+"Of coorse," he nodded.
+
+"Officially I am doing Coalition work," I continued conversationally,
+"but I have motives of my own."
+
+"You don't say!"
+
+"Oh, yes.  I am a great admirer of Lord Fisher and the Blue Water school,
+sometimes spoken of as the Blue Funk school.  Again, I find that the
+Great War has left many people in the blues, and by means of homeopathy I
+cure 'em; I mean to say that they come to their doors and laugh at my
+blue bike.  My blue dispels their blues."
+
+The old man did not seem to follow this.
+
+"Of course," I went on, "the Bluebells of Scotland have something to do
+with my selection of the colour."
+
+"A verra nice sang," he commented.
+
+"An excellent song!  Then there is the well-known phrase 'Once in a Blue
+Moon,' and innumerable songs about the pale moonlight.  Also I once knew
+a man who had the blue devils."
+
+I tried to think of other phases of blueness, but my stock was almost
+exhausted.
+
+"Of course," I added, "I am not forgetting the other blues, the Oxford
+blues, Reckitt's Blue, Blue Coupons, and--and--I'm afraid I can't think
+of any other blues just at the moment."
+
+The old man drew the back of his hand over his mouth.
+
+"There's the 'Blue Bonnets' up at the tap o' the brae," he suggested
+thirstily.
+
+"Good idea!" I cried, "come on!" and together we climbed the brae.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+A friend of mine in London has written me asking if I will write an
+article on Co-education for an educational journal, in which she is
+interested.  I replied: "I can't see where the problem comes in; to a
+Scot co-education is not a thing that has to be supported by argument; he
+accepts it as he accepts the law of gravitation."
+
+I wonder why English people are so afraid of co-education.  To this day
+schools like Bedales, King Alfred's, Harpenden, and Arundale are reckoned
+as crank schools.  The great middle-class of England believes in
+segregation.  Even Dr. Ernest Jones, the most prominent Freudian
+psycho-analyst in England, appears to be afraid of it.
+
+I can only conjecture that Jones agrees with the middle and upper classes
+in associating sex with sin.  I have never tried to think out my reasons
+for believing in co-education; possibly the true reason is that having
+grown up in a co-education atmosphere, co-education has become a part of
+me just as my Scots accent has.  In other words, I may have a
+co-education complex.  If that is so, my arguments will be mere
+rationalisations, but I give them for what they are worth.
+
+We are all born with a strong sex instinct, and this instinct must find
+expression in some way.  We know that the sex energy can be sublimated,
+that is, raised to a higher power.  For instance, the creative sex urge
+may be directed to the making of a bookcase, or the making of a century
+at cricket.  But I know of no evidence to prove that all the instinct can
+be sublimated.  An adolescent may spend his days at craftwork and games,
+but he will have erotic dreams at nights.  All the drawing and painting
+in the world will not prevent his having emotion when he looks at the
+face of a pretty girl.
+
+In our segregation schools boys and girls see nothing of each other.  The
+unsublimated sex instinct finds expression in homosexuality, that is the
+emotion that should go to the opposite sex is fixed on a person of the
+same sex.  I admit that we are all more or less homosexual; otherwise
+there could be no friendship between man and man, or woman and woman.  In
+our boarding schools the sex instinct often takes the road of
+auto-eroticism.
+
+In a co-education school the sex impulse is directed to one of the
+opposite sex.  This attachment is nearly always a romantic ideal
+attachment.  I have never known a case that went the length of kissing;
+among little children at a rural school, yes; at the age of seven I
+kissed my first sweetheart; but among adolescents I find that neither the
+boy nor the girl has the courage to kiss.  Theirs is a sublimated
+courtship; they never use the word Love; they talk about "liking
+So-and-so."
+
+That at many co-education schools this romantic attachment is more or
+less an underground affair is due to the moral attitude of teachers.
+They pride themselves on the beautiful sexless attachments of their
+pupils; they give moral lectures on the subject of kissing, and naturally
+every pupil in school at once becomes painfully self-conscious on the
+subject.  The truth is that many co-educationists do not in their hearts
+believe in the system; they still see sin in sex.
+
+To be a thorough success the co-education school must include sex
+education in its curriculum.  The children of the most advanced parents
+seldom get it at home, and they come to school with the old attitude to
+sex.  Sex education does not mean telling children where babies come
+from; it should dwell mostly on the psychological side of the question.
+The child ought to learn the truth about its sex instinct.  Most
+important of all, the child who has indulged in auto-eroticism ought to
+be helped to get rid of his or her sense of guilt.  This sense of guilt
+is the primary evil of self-abuse; abolish it, and the child is on the
+way to a self-cure.
+
+How many children can go to their teacher and make confession of sex
+troubles?  Very few.  It is the teachers' fault; they set themselves up
+as moralists, and a moralist is a positive danger to any child.
+
+Not long ago I was addressing a meeting of teachers in south London.  At
+question time a woman challenged me.
+
+"You have condemned moralists," she said; "do you mean to say that you
+would never teach a child the difference between right and wrong?"
+
+"Never," I answered, "for I do not know what is right and what is wrong."
+
+"Then I think you ought not to be a teacher," she said.
+
+"I know what is right for me, and wrong for me," I went on to explain,
+"but I do not know what is right and wrong for you.  Nor do I presume to
+know what is right or wrong for a child."
+
+I was pleasingly surprised to find that the meeting roared approval of my
+reply.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Macdonald had to attend a funeral to-day, and he asked me if I would take
+his classes for an hour.  I gladly agreed.
+
+"Give them a lesson on psychology," he said; "it will maybe improve their
+behaviour."
+
+I went over to the school at two o'clock, and Mac introduced me, although
+I had already made friends with most of the children in the playground
+and the fields.  Mac then went away and I sat down at his desk.
+
+"We'll have a talk," I said, "just a little friendly talk between you and
+me.  I want to hear your opinions on some things."
+
+They looked at me with interest.
+
+"Why," I said, "why do you sit quiet in school?"
+
+Andrew Smith put up his hand.
+
+"Please, sir, 'cause if we don't the mester gies us the strap."
+
+"A very sound reason, too," I commented.  "And now I want to ask you why
+you sometimes want to throw papers or slate-pencils about the room."
+
+"Please, sir, we never do that," said little Jeannie Simpson.
+
+"The mester wud punish us," said another girl.
+
+"But," I cried, "surely one of you has thrown things about the room?"
+
+Tom Murray, the bad boy of the school (according to Mac), put up his hand.
+
+"Please, sir, I did it once, but the mester licked me."
+
+"Why did you do it, Tom?"
+
+Tom thought hard.
+
+"I didna like the lesson," he said simply.
+
+I then went on further.
+
+"Now I want you all to think this out: was Tom being selfish when he
+threw paper, or was he unselfish?"
+
+Everyone, Tom included, judged that the paper-throwing was a selfish act.
+
+"I don't agree," I said.  "Tom was trying to do a service to the others;
+you were all bored by a lesson, and Tom stepped in and took your
+attention.  Unfortunately he also attracted the attention of Mr.
+Macdonald, but that has nothing to do with Tom's reason for doing it.
+Tom was the most unselfish of the lot of you; he showed more good than
+any of you."
+
+"The mester didna think that!" said Tom, with a grin.
+
+Peter Wallace carefully rolled a paper pellet and threw it at Tom.
+
+"Now," I said with a smile, "let's think this out; why did Peter throw
+that pellet just now?"
+
+"Because the class is bored," said a little girl, and there was a good
+laugh at my expense.
+
+"Righto!" I laughed, "shall we do something else?" but the class shouted
+"No!" and I proceeded.
+
+"Peter, do tell us why you threw that pellet."
+
+"For fun," said Peter, blushing and smiling.
+
+"He did it so's the class wud look at him," said Tom Murray, and Peter
+hid his diminished head.
+
+"A wise answer, Tom," I said; "but we are all like that; we all like to
+be looked at.  Who is the best at arithmetic?"
+
+"Willie Broon," said the class, and Willie Broon cocked his head proudly.
+
+"And who is the best fighter?"
+
+"Tom Murray," answered the boys, and one little chap added: "Tom cud
+fecht Willie Broon wi' one hand."
+
+Tom tried to look modest.
+
+I went round the class and with one exception every child had at least
+one branch of life in which he or she found a sense of superiority.  The
+exception was Geordie Wylie, a small lad of thirteen with a white face
+and a starved appearance.  The class were unanimous in declaring that
+Geordie had no talent.
+
+"He canna even spit far enough," said one boy.
+
+Geordie's embarrassment made me change the subject quickly, but I made up
+my mind to have a talk with him later.
+
+Some of the reasons for individual pride were strange.  Jake Tosh's
+feeling of superiority lay in the circumstance that his father had laid
+out a gamekeeper while poaching.  Jock Wilson had once found a shilling;
+another boy had seen "fower swine stickit a' in wan day;" another could
+smoke a pipe of Bogie Roll without sickening (but I had to promise not to
+tell the Mester).  The girls seemed to find their superiority mostly in
+lessons, although a few were proud of their needle-work.
+
+I then went on to ask them what their highest ambition in life was.  The
+boys showed less imagination than the girls.  Six of them wanted to be
+ploughmen like their fathers.  To a townsman this might appear to be a
+very modest ambition, but to a boy it means power and position; to drive
+a pair of horses tandem fashion as they do on the East Coast, with the
+tracer prancing on the braes; that is what being a ploughman means to a
+village lad.  One boy wanted to be an engineer, another a clerk ("'cos he
+doesna need to tak' aff his jaicket to work!"), another a soldier.
+
+"Not a single teacher!" I said.
+
+"We're no clever enough," said Tom Murray.
+
+I turned to the girls.
+
+"Now, let's see what ambition you have," I said hopefully.  The result
+was good; three teachers, two nurses, one typist, one lady doctor,
+one . . . lady.  This was Maggie Clark.  She just wanted to be like one
+of thae ladies in the picters with a motor car.
+
+"And husband?" I asked.
+
+"No, I dinna want a man, but I wud like a lot of bairns," she said, and
+there was a snigger from the boys who had got their sex education from
+the ploughmen at the Brig of evenings.
+
+Another girl remarked that Maggie's ambition was a selfish one.
+
+"But are you not all selfish?" I asked.
+
+The class indignantly denied it.
+
+"Right," I said, "what do you say to a composition exercise?"
+
+They obediently got out their composition books, but I told them that my
+exercise was an easy one.  I tore up a few pages into slips and
+distributed them.
+
+"Now," I said, "suppose I give you five pounds to do what you like with.
+Write down what you would do with it, fold the paper, and hand it in to
+me."
+
+They eagerly agreed, and at the end of five minutes I had a hatful of
+slips.  I then drew a line down the centre of the blackboard.  On one
+side I wrote the word Selfish; on the other Unselfish.  The class groaned
+and laughed.
+
+"Now," I said cheerfully, "this will prove whether the class is unselfish
+or not," and I unfolded the first slip.
+
+"But you'll say we are selfish!" said a boy.
+
+"I have nothing to do with it," I said; "you are to decide by vote.
+First person . . . 'I would buy a bicycle': selfish or unselfish?"
+
+"Selfish!" roared the class, and I put a mark in the first column.
+
+"Next paper . . . 'Scooter, knife, and the rest on ice-cream.'"
+
+"Selfish!" and I put down another mark.
+
+"Next: . . . 'Buy a pair of boots' . . . selfish or unselfish?"
+
+The class had to stop and think here.
+
+"Selfish!" said a few.
+
+"Unselfish," said others, "'cos he wud be helpin' his mother."
+
+"Then we'll vote on it," I said, and by a majority of two the act was
+declared to be unselfish.
+
+We then had a run of knives, tops, candy, cycles, and no vote was
+necessary.  Then came a puzzler.
+
+"I would send every penny to the starving babies of Germany."
+
+"Unselfish!" cried the class in one voice.  I was just about to put the
+mark in the unselfish column when a boy said: "That's selfish, cos she'd
+feel proud of being so--so unselfish."
+
+"How do you know it is a she?" I asked.
+
+"'Cause I ken it's Jean Wilson," he answered promptly; "she has took a
+reid face."
+
+There followed a breezy debate on Jean's act.
+
+"It is selfish," said Mary, "because when you do a kind action you feel
+pleased with yourself, and it was selfish because if it hadna pleased her
+she wud never ha' done it."
+
+I asked for a vote and to my astonishment the act was declared selfish by
+a majority of three.  I suspect that conventional Hun Hatred had
+something to do with the voting.
+
+The voting over I totted up the marks.
+
+"You have judged yourselves," I said, "and according to your own showing
+you as a class are 87 per cent. selfish and 13 per cent. unselfish."
+
+This essay in composition was not original; I got the idea from Homer
+Lane, who claimed that it was the best introduction to school psychology.
+"It is the best way to make children think of their own behaviour," he
+said, and my experiment has shown this.
+
+When Mac came back I said to him; "You've got a fine lot of bairns, Mac."
+
+"Had you any difficulty?" he asked.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, I half thought they would try to pull your leg, especially a boy
+like Tom Murray.  He is a most difficult chap, you know."
+
+"Tom's a saint," I said; "every child is a saint if you treat him as an
+equal.  No, I had no difficulty, but I want you to send over Geordie
+Wylie to me this afternoon.  There is something wrong with that boy; he
+has no ambition and he has one of the worst inferiority complexes I have
+ever struck.  I want to have a quiet talk with him."
+
+Mac promised, and at three o'clock Geordie came over to the schoolhouse.
+I took him into the parlour, and he sat nervously on the edge of a chair.
+
+"Tell me about yourself, Geordie," I said, but he did not answer.
+
+"Do you keep rabbits?"
+
+"Aye."
+
+"What kind?"
+
+"Twa Himalayas and a half Patty."
+
+"Keep doos?"
+
+"No."
+
+It was like drawing blood from a milestone.
+
+"What do you do when you go home at nights?"
+
+It was a long difficult task to get anything out of him.  The only fact
+of value I got was that he was a great reader of Wild West stories.  I
+asked him to come to me again, and he said he would.
+
+To-night I asked Mac about him.
+
+"He's a dreamer," said Mac, "and he's lazy.  I am always strapping him
+for inattention.  He's not a manly boy, never plays games, always stands
+in a corner of the playground."
+
+"Does he ever fight?" I asked.
+
+"He's a great coward, but there's one queer thing about him; when any boy
+challenges him to fight he goes white about the gills but he always
+fights . . . and gets licked."
+
+"Mac," I said, "will you do me a favour?  Don't whack him again; it is
+the worst treatment you can give him.  He is a poor wee chap, and he is
+badly in need of real help."
+
+"All right," said the kindly Mac, "I'll try not to touch him, but he
+irritates me many a time."
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+I had Geordie for an hour this morning.  He was taciturn at first, but
+later he talked freely.  He is very much afraid of his father, and he
+weeps when his father scolds him.  This makes the father angrier and he
+calls Geordie a lassie, a greetin' lassie.  This jeer wounds the boy
+deeply.  He is afraid in the dark.  He told me that he was puzzled about
+one thing; when he goes for his milk at night he is never afraid on the
+outward journey, but when he leaves the dairy to come home he is always
+in terror.  I asked him what he was afraid of and he told me that he
+always imagined that there was a man in a cheese-cutter cap waiting to
+murder him.
+
+"What is a cheese-cutter?" I asked.
+
+"It is a bonnet with a big snout, something like a railway porter's.  My
+father's a porter and he has ane."
+
+Evidently the man he is afraid of is his father.  This may account for
+his lack of fear when he is walking from his home to the dairy.  Then he
+is leaving his father; when he starts to return he is going back to his
+father and is afraid.
+
+I asked him about his fights with other boys.  He always feared a fight
+but he went through with it so that the other boys should not call him a
+coward.  Naturally he always lost the battle; he fought with a divided
+mind; while his less imaginative opponent thought only of hitting and
+winning, Geordie was picturing the end of the fight.
+
+I asked him if he had a sweetheart, and he blushed deeply.  He told me
+that he often took fancies for girls, but they would not have him.  Frank
+Murray always cut him out; Frank was a big hefty lad and the girls like
+the beefy manly boy.
+
+He does much day-dreaming, phantasying it is called in analysis.  His
+dreams always take the form of conquests; in his day-dream he is the best
+fighter in the school, the best scholar, the most loved of the girls.
+His night dreams are often terrifying, and he has more than once dreamt
+that his father and Macdonald were dead.  He finds compensation for his
+weaknesses in his day-dreams and his reading.  He likes tales of heroes
+who always kill the villians and carry off the heroines.
+
+It is difficult to know what to do in a case like this.  The best way
+would be to change the boy's environment, but that is out of the
+question.  Even then the early fears would go with him; he would transfer
+his father-complex to another man.
+
+I tried to explain to Mac the condition of Geordie.  The boy is all
+bottled up; his energy should be going into play and work, but instead it
+is regressing, going back to early ways of adaptation to environment.
+
+"But what can I do with him?" asked Mac.
+
+"Give him your love," I said.  "He fears you now, and your attitude to
+him makes him worse.  You must never punish him again, Mac."
+
+"That's all very well," said Mac ruefully, "but what am I to do?  Suppose
+Tom Murray and he talk during a lesson, am I to whack Tom and allow
+Geordie to get off?"
+
+"Chuck punishment altogether," I said.  "You don't need it; it is always
+the resort of a weak teacher."
+
+"I couldn't do without it," he said.
+
+"All right then," I said wearily, "but I want you to realise that your
+punishments are making Geordie a cripple for life."
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+I went down and had a talk with Geordie's father.  He was not very
+pleasant about it; indeed he was almost unpleasant.
+
+"There's nothing wrong wi' the laddie," he said aggressively.  "He's a
+wee bit lassie-like and he has no pluck."
+
+Here Geordie entered the kitchen, and his father turned on him harshly.
+
+"Started to yer lessons yet?" he demanded.
+
+Geordie muttered something about having had to feed his rabbits.
+
+"I'll rabbit ye!  Get yer books oot this minute!" and Geordie crept to a
+corner and rummaged among some old clothes for his school-bag.
+
+I tried to be as amiable as I could, and avoided controversy.  I soon saw
+that father and mother were not pulling well together, and I suspected
+that the father's harshness to Geordie was often a weapon to wound the
+fond mother.  I saw that nothing I could say would do any good, and I
+took my departure.
+
+Later I went to see Dauvit, and found him alone.  I asked him to tell me
+about the Wylies.
+
+"Tarn Wylie is wan o' the stupidest men in a ten mile radius," said
+Dauvit.  "But he's no stupid whaur money is concerned; they tell me that
+he drinks aboot half his week's wages, and his puir wife has to suffer.
+That laddie o' theirs, he was born afore the marriage, and they tell me
+that Tarn wud never ha' married her if he hadna been fell drunk the nicht
+he put in the banns."
+
+This case of poor Geordie shows what a complexity there is in human
+affairs.  His father has a mental conflict, and he drinks so that he may
+get away from reality.  The father's drinking and the son's reading of
+romances are fundamentally the same thing; each is trying to get away
+from a reality he dare not face.  No treatment of Geordie could be
+satisfactory unless at the same time the parents were being treated.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+Carrotty Broon, one of my old scholars, came to Dauvit's shop to-night,
+and he talked about his pigeons . . . his doos he calls them.  He keeps
+a pigeon loft of homers, and he spends a considerable amount in
+training them.
+
+"Some fowk think," he said, "that a homer will flee hame if ye throw it
+up five hunder miles awa."
+
+"I've read of flights of seven hundred miles," I said.
+
+Carrotty Broon chuckled.
+
+"I mind o' a homer I had," he went on.  "He was a beauty, a reid
+chequer.  His father had flown frae London to Glasgow, and his mither
+was a flier too.  Weel, I took him doon to Monibreck on my bike, and
+let him off.  I never saw him again; five mile, and he cudna find his
+way hame!"
+
+"He must ha' been shot," said Dauvit, "for thae homers find their way
+hame by instinct."
+
+"Na, na, Dauvit," said Broon, "they flee by sicht.  When ye train a
+homer ye tak it a mile the first day, syne three miles, syne maybe
+seven, ten, twenty, fifty, and so on.  Send the purest bred homer fower
+mile without trainin' and ye'll never see him again."
+
+Carrotty Broon told us many interesting things about doos and their
+ways.  We listened to him because he was an authority and we knew
+little about the subject.
+
+"The only thing I ken aboot doos," said Dauvit with a laugh, "is that
+when I was a laddie auld Peter Smith and John Wylie keepit homers and
+they were aye trying compeetitions in fleein'.  John was gaein' to
+London for his summer holiday, and so him and Peter made a bargain that
+they wud flee twa homers from London.  Weel, John he got to London, and
+he thocht to himsell that seein' they had a bet o' twa pund on the
+race, he wud mak sure o' winnin', and so what does he do but tak a pair
+o' shears and cut the wing o' Peter's doo.
+
+"When John cam hame after a fortnight's trip he met auld Peter at the
+station.
+
+"'Weel, Peter,' says he, 'wha won the race?'
+
+"'You,' said Peter; 'your doo cam hame the next day, but mine only got
+hame this mornin'.  And it has corns on its feet like tatties.'"
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+To-day was Macdonald's Inspection Day, and at dinner time he brought
+over Mr. J. F. Mackenzie, H.M.I.S., a middle-aged man and Mr. L. P.
+Smart, assistant I.S., a cheery youth fresh from Oxford.  When
+inspectors dine with the village dominie they never mention the word
+education.  These two talked a lot, and all their conversation was
+about mountain-climbing in Switzerland.  They swopped long prosy yarns
+about dull incidents, and I was very much bored.  So was Mac, but he
+pretended to be interested, but then he was to see them again, and I
+wasn't . . . at least I prayed that I might not.  After a time I began
+to feel that I was being left out of the conversation, and I waited
+until Mackenzie paused for a breath.
+
+"Switzerland is very beautiful," I remarked, "but you should see the
+Andes."
+
+Mackenzie looked at me coldly.
+
+"I haven't been to South America," he said.
+
+"Same here," said I cheerfully, "but I remember seeing pictures of them
+in the geography book at school."
+
+Mackenzie looked at me more coldly than before.  I don't think he liked
+me, and when the younger man chuckled Mackenzie glared at him.  Smart
+had a sense of humour.
+
+"I'm afraid we have been boring you," he said to me with a smile.
+
+"I'd rather listen to you two talking education," I confessed.
+
+Mackenzie waved the suggestion away.
+
+"I leave education behind when I walk out of the school," he said in
+grand manner.  "Most excellent rhubarb, Mrs. Macdonald.  Home grown?"
+And then we had ten minutes of garden products versus shop greens.  I
+admit that this inspector had a genius for small talk.  We dismissed
+greens and I led the conversation to hens and ducks.  Mackenzie did not
+know much about them, and he confirmed my opinion of his genius for
+small talk by saying: "Buff Orpingtons!  They are named after Orpington
+in Kent.  I remember staying a night there before I went to Switzerland
+. . ." and the dirty dog took the conversation back to his mountain
+climbing.
+
+I made a gesture to the younger man and got him out into the garden.
+
+"Why does he waste precious time talking about cabbages and dreary
+Swiss inns?" I asked.
+
+Smart laughed shortly.
+
+"You know how rich folk talk at table when the servants are present?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Well, that's the Chief's attitude to teachers; he never says anything
+of any importance whatever."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"He is of the old school.  He has been inspecting schools for forty
+years.  In the olden days an inspector was a sort of Almighty; teachers
+quaked before him because with a stroke of his pen he could reduce
+their money grant.  To this day the old man treats teachers as a king
+treats his subjects--with kindness but with distance."
+
+"Has he any views on education?" I asked.
+
+Smart shook his head.
+
+"None, but he has heaps of views on instruction and discipline.  By the
+way, he thinks that Macdonald's discipline is very good."
+
+"And you?"
+
+"I think it rotten," he said ruefully, "but what can I do?  A junior
+inspector is a nobody; if he has any views of his own he has to pocket
+them.  I would chuck out all this discipline rot and go in for the
+Montessori stunt.  Take my tip and never accept an inspectorship."
+
+"I won't," I said hastily.
+
+I liked Smart, and I wish we had more of his stamp in the inspectorate.
+
+When we returned to the dining-room Mackenzie looked at me with
+interest.
+
+"I didn't know that you were the _Dominie's Log_ man till Mr. Macdonald
+told me two minutes ago," he said.  "I am delighted to meet you.  I
+enjoyed your book very much indeed.  Very amusing."
+
+He was quite affable now.  Writing a book gives a man a certain
+standing.  I fancy it is the dignity of print that does it, and we all
+have the print superstition.  I find myself accepting statements in
+books, whereas if someone said the same things to me over a
+dinner-table I should refute them with scorn.  "If it is in _John Bull_
+it is so!"  Mr. Bottomley is a sound psychologist.
+
+When they were departing I said to Smart: "Yes, he's very amiable and
+all that, but I am jolly glad I had Frank Michie and not him as my
+chief inspector when I wrote my _Log_."
+
+Smart laughed.
+
+"My dear chap, Mackenzie would have let you run your school in your own
+way."
+
+"But," I cried, "he doesn't believe in freedom!"
+
+"He doesn't, but don't you see that he simply couldn't have jumped on
+you?  He would have thought you either a lunatic or a genius, and he
+would have feared to condemn you in case you might turn out to be the
+latter.  I know an art critic in London, and, believe me, the poor
+devil lives in terror lest he should damn the work of a new Augustus
+John.  The Futurists aren't flourishing on their merits; they are
+flourishing because the critics are in a holy funk to condemn them in
+case they might be artists after all."
+
+I want to meet Smart again.  I like his style.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+I am indeed a Dominie in Doubt.  What is education striving after?  I
+cannot say, for education is life and what the aim of life is no one
+knows.  Psycho-analysis can clear up a life; it can release bottled up
+energy, but it cannot say how the released energy is to be used.  The
+analyst cannot advise, because no man can tell another how to live his
+life.  Freud clears up the past, but he cannot clear up the future.
+
+Is there such a thing as Re-incarnation?  I wonder.  Am I living the
+life that my past lives on earth fitted me for?  If so analysis is
+wrong.  If I am suffering from a severe neurosis it is because I earned
+this punishment in my past lives, and Freud has no right to cure me.
+He is interfering with the plans of the Almighty.  If, as I have heard
+a Theosophist declare, the children in the slums are miserable because
+they failed to learn their lesson in previous lives, then the people
+who try to abolish slums are all wrong.  I think my Theosophist would
+argue that the charitable person is growing in grace, thereby rising
+above his previous lives.  And thus one soul helps another to rise to
+perfection.  It may be, and I hope it is so, for then life would have a
+meaning.  Pain and war would then be less terrible, for they would be
+but incidents in the eternal unfolding of perfection.
+
+Yet I find myself doubting.  If I am William Shakespeare born again I
+do not know it, and I am left in doubt as to whether I may not have
+been Charles Peace instead.  Possibly I was both.
+
+Then there is psychical research.  I have been to a medium and have
+heard things that all the psycho-analysis in the world cannot account
+for.  I want to believe that the dead can speak to us, but where are
+the dead?  I have read Sir Oliver Lodge's _Raymond_, and the
+description of the next world given there.  Frankly I don't fancy it,
+and I have no desire to go there.
+
+How then can I attempt to educate children when the ultimate solution
+of life is denied me?  I can only stand by and give them freedom to
+unfold.  I do not know whither they are going, but that is all the more
+a reason why I ought not to try to guide their footsteps.  This is the
+final argument for the abolition of authority.  We may beat and break a
+horse because we selfishly require a horse's service, and according to
+the accepted view a horse has no immortal soul.  We dare not beat and
+break a child, for a child is going to an end that we cannot know.
+
+I like the Theosophist schools, although I do not like all
+Theosophists.  Some of them seem to be living the higher life
+consciously, and repressing their lower natures.  Most of them do not
+smoke or drink or eat meat or swear or go to music-halls.  That may be
+living on a higher plane, but it is not living fully.  Still, in many
+ways they are broad-minded.  In their schools they do not force
+Theosophy down the children's throats; they allow a great amount of
+freedom, but their schools are not free schools.  There is a definite
+attempt to mould character chiefly by insisting on good taste.  I am
+quite sure that no head-master of a Theosophical School would take his
+children to see a Charlie Chaplin film.  Charlie is not obviously
+living the higher life; he stands for the vulgar side of life; he picks
+up girls and gets drunk (in the play) and is sea-sick and very vulgar
+about soda-water.
+
+I find myself insisting on the inclusion of Charlie in any scheme of
+education because no one ought to be taught to be shocked at
+sea-sickness and soda-water squirting.  Charlie to me is the antidote
+to the higher-plane crowd; he and his kind are as essential as Shelley.
+I admit that reading Shelley is a higher kind of pleasure than watching
+"Champion Charlie," but no human being can safely live on the higher
+plane, and no child wants to.  Education must deal with _all_ life; a
+higher plane diet will produce hot-house plants, beautiful perhaps, but
+delicate and artificial.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Old Willie Murray the cobbler had been bed-ridden for over a year, and
+when I dropped into Dauvit's shop this morning Mary Rickart was telling
+Dauvit that his old master was dead.
+
+"Aye, Dauvit," she was saying when I entered, "I'm no the kind that
+speaks ill o' the deid, but I will say this, that Wull Murray had his
+faults.  Aye, and though he's a corp the day, I canna pertend that he
+was ony freend o' mine."
+
+When Mary had gone Dauvit turned to me with a queer smile.
+
+"Dominie, you tell me that you have studied the science o' the mind,
+psy--what is't you call it?"
+
+"Psychology," I said.
+
+"That's the word.  Weel then, dominie, just tell me why Mary Rickart
+had sic a pick at auld Willie Murray."
+
+I smoked for a time thoughtfully.
+
+"It's difficult, Dauvit.  I haven't got enough evidence.  However I
+think I can make a good guess."
+
+"Weel?"
+
+"Mary and Willie sat in the same class at school?"
+
+"Good!" said Dauvit, "they did."
+
+"And Mary was Willie's first sweetheart?"
+
+"Imphm!"
+
+"Mary loved Willie and he loved her.  They were sweethearts for a long
+time, but another damsel came and stole Willie's heart away.  Mary wept
+bitter tears, but in time she repressed her love . . . and it changed
+into hate."
+
+Dauvit chuckled.
+
+"A very nice story," he said, "but, ye ken, it's just a story.  You
+cudna guess the real reason why Mary hated him so much."
+
+"Then what was the real reason, Dauvit?"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Mary hated Willie Murray because he aince telt her that she was a
+silly woman to think that she cud wear a number fower shoe on a number
+acht foot."
+
+We laughed together, and then I said:
+
+"Dauvit, why did you never marry?  You like women I fancy."
+
+My remark made him thoughtful.
+
+"Man," he said, "I've often speered the same question o' mysel.  As a
+young man I was gye fond o' the lassies, but . . .  I dinna ken!" and
+he broke off suddenly and took up a boot.  "Thae soles are just paper
+noo-a-days," he growled.
+
+I refused to let him run away from the subject.
+
+"Had you a sweetheart?" I asked.
+
+He laughed boisterously to hide his confusion.
+
+"Dozens o' them!" he cried.
+
+"Then why didn't you marry one of them?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Dominie, that's the question."  He stared at the grate for a while.
+"There was Maggie Adams, a bonny lassie she was.  Man, I mind when I
+took her to Kirriemair Market . . ."  He sighed.  "Aye, man, dominie, I
+liked Maggie mair than ony o' the others."
+
+"Did she love someone else?" I asked softly.
+
+Dauvit took some time to reply.
+
+"No, man, Maggie wanted me."
+
+"Then the fault lay on your side?  You didn't love her!"
+
+Dauvit brought his hand down on the board.
+
+"Goad, man, but I did!"
+
+I could not understand.
+
+"Man, on the road hame frae Kirrie Market I was to speer if she wud
+marry me . . . but I didna."
+
+We smoked silently for a long minute.
+
+"Ye see," he went on slowly, "Maggie was a bonny lassie and I liked to
+kiss and cuddle her, but kissin' and cuddlin' are a very sma' part o'
+marriage, dominie.  There was something in Maggie that I was aye
+lookin' for, but cud never find.  Aye, I tried to find it in other
+lassies, but I never fund it."
+
+"What was it you wanted to find, Dauvit?"
+
+Dauvit paused.
+
+"Ye micht call it a soul," he said.  "Oh, aye," he went on, "Maggie was
+a bonny lassie wi' a heart o' gold, but she hadna a soul.  Wud ye like
+to ken what stoppit me speerin' her that nicht as we cam through Zoar?
+Man, I said to mysel: When we come to the toll bar I'll tak Maggie in
+my arms and say: 'Maggie, I want ye, lassie!'"
+
+He had to light his pipe here.
+
+"Weelaweel, we got to the toll bar and I said: 'Maggie, we'll sit doon
+on the bank for a while.'  So we sat doon, and I was just tryin' to
+screw up my courage when she pointed to the settin' sun.  'I'd like a
+dress like that, only bonnier,' she said.  Man, dominie, I looked at
+that sunset wi' its gold and purple . . . and syne I kent that Maggie
+was nae wife for me.  I kent that she had nae soul."
+
+After a time I remarked: "And so, Dauvit, you are a bachelor because
+you were a poet!"
+
+He busied himself with the paper sole.
+
+"Maggie married Bob Wilson the farmer o' East Mains.  Aye, and the
+marriage turned oot a happy one, for Bob never rose abune neeps and
+tatties in his life."  Dauvit sighed.  "But I sometimes used to look at
+the twa o' them when their bairns were roond their knees, and syne I
+used to gie a big _Dawm!_ and ging back to my wee hoose and mak my ain
+tea."
+
+"It doesna pay to hae a soul, dominie," he added with a short laugh.
+
+"Perhaps you could have given her a soul, Dauvit," I said.
+
+He shook his head with decision.
+
+"Na, dominie, a soul is something ye're born wi'; if it isna there it
+canna be put there.  You say that I'm a poet, and you may be richt;
+there may be a wee bit o' the artist in me, and ye never heard o' an
+artist that was happily married.  Wumman and art are opposites, and a
+man canna marry both."
+
+"That is true, Dauvit.  But art is the feminine side of a man's nature;
+it is the woman in him . . . and the woman is superfluous to him, for
+she becomes the rival of the woman in himself."
+
+This thought impressed Dauvit.
+
+"Noo I understand Rabbie Burns," he cried.  "Rabbie cudna love a wumman
+because he loved the wumman in himsel.  She was the wife that bore his
+bairns--his poems."  He paused, and a pained look came to his face.
+"There may be a poet in me, dominie," he said ruefully, "but she has
+borne me nae bairns.  I am ane o' the mute inglorious Miltons . . . and
+I wud ha' been better if I had married Maggie and talked aboot neeps
+and tatties a' my life."
+
+"You couldn't have done it, Dauvit," I said as I rose to go.
+
+From the door I looked back at the old man as he stared at the fender.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+One of the analysts says that the flirt is suffering from a mother
+complex.  He has never got over his infantile love for his mother, and
+he is always trying to find the mother again in women.  Hence he is
+like a bee, sipping at one flower and then flying on to another.
+
+I suspect that many a bachelor is a bachelor because his early love is
+fixed on the mother.  Few mothers realise the danger of coddling their
+children.  I have heard grown men dying in pain call on their mothers.
+It is a hard task for parents, but they must always try to break their
+children's fixation upon them.
+
+Women having father-complexes are common.  The other day I met a girl
+who had no interest in young men; all her interest was in men with
+beards.  No matter what the conversation was about she managed to
+mention her father. . .  "Father says!"  She will probably marry a man
+twice her age.  It is well-known that boys of seventeen often fall in
+love with women of thirty, while adolescent girls usually fall in love
+with men of thirty.  They are not really in love; they are looking for
+a substitute for the mother or father.
+
+The psychology of the man of forty who falls in love with the girl of
+sixteen is more difficult to grasp.  I think that in most cases the
+man's love interest is fixed away back in childhood; often the girl of
+sixteen is a substitute for a beloved sister.  Perhaps on the other
+hand, a man of forty's paternal instinct has been starved so long that
+he wants to find at once a wife and a child.
+
+Few of us realise how much of our love interest is fixed in the past.
+Think of the men who want to be mothered by their wives . . . they
+generally address their wives as "Mother."  I know happily married men
+who are psychically children; "mother" won't allow them to carry coals
+or wash dishes or brush clothes; she treats them as they unconsciously
+desire to be treated--as babes.
+
+It may be that Dauvit has a strong mother complex.  He often talks of
+his mother, and more than once I have heard him say that she was the
+best woman he had ever known.  It may be that he was unconsciously
+looking for the mother in Maggie and the other girls, and failed to
+find her.  Maggie's remark about the sunset and the dress was not
+enough to stifle his love declaration.  The soul he longed to find in
+Maggie may have been the soul of the mother he knew as an infant . . .
+the soul of his ideal woman.
+
+The more I see of men the less importance I pay to their conscious
+reasons for attitudes.  "I hate Brown; he never washes"; "I dislike
+Mrs. Smith; she uses bad language."  "Murphy is a rotter; he has no
+manners."  Statements like these are rationalisations; the real reason
+for the dislike lies deeper in every case.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+The law courts have re-introduced flogging for criminals.  To the best
+of my knowledge no member of the law profession has protested.  If
+there is a reform movement within the law I never heard of it.
+
+The curse of law is that it works according to precedent, and it is
+therefore conservative.  Our judges hand out sentences in blissful
+ignorance of later psychology.  Last week a boy of eleven was birched
+for holding up another boy of nine on the highway and demanding
+tuppence or his life.  The attitude of the bench is that fear of
+another flogging will prevent that boy from turning highwayman again.
+I admit that fear will cure him of that special vice, but what the
+bench does not know is that the boy's anti-social energy will take
+another form.  Every act of man is prompted by a wish, and very often
+this wish is unconscious.  And all the birching in the world will not
+destroy a wish; the most it can do is to change its form.
+
+Without an analysis of the boy no one can tell what unconscious wish
+impelled him to turn highwayman, but speaking generally a boy expresses
+his self-assertion in terms of anti-social behaviour only when his
+education has been bad.  I believe that all juvenile delinquency is due
+to bad education.  Our schools enforce passivity on the child; his
+creative energy is bottled up.  No boy who has tools and a bench to
+work with will express himself by smashing windows.  Delinquency is
+merely displaced social conduct; the motive of the little boy who
+turned highwayman was essentially the motive of the boy who builds a
+boat.
+
+Ah! but we have Industrial Schools for bad boys!
+
+I spent an evening with an Industrial School boy of thirteen not long
+ago.  It was an unlovely tale he told me of his life in school.  I got
+the impression of a building half-prison, half-barracks.  No one was
+allowed to go out unless to football matches when the school team was
+playing.  Punishment was stern and frequent.
+
+"One old guy, 'e sends you to the boss for punishment and says you gave
+'im an insubordinate look, and you ain't allowed to deny wot 'e says."
+
+"Look here, Jim," I said, "suppose I took you to a free school
+to-morrow, a school where you could do what you liked, what's the first
+thing you would do?"
+
+A wild look came into his eyes.
+
+"I'd lay out the blarsted staff," he said tensely.
+
+"But," I laughed, "what would be the point of laying me out if I gave
+you freedom?  What have you got against _me_?"
+
+"Oh," he said, "I thought you meant if I got freedom in the Industrial
+School!"
+
+That school is condemned; if a school produces one boy who hates and
+fears its teachers, it is a bad school.
+
+I think of the other way, the Homer Lane way.
+
+Homer Lane was superintendent of the little Commonwealth in Dorset.  He
+attended the juvenile courts and begged the magistrates to hand over to
+him the worst cases they had.  He took the children down to Dorset and
+gave them freedom.  He refused to lay down any laws, and naturally the
+beginning of the Commonwealth was chaos.  Lane joined in the
+anti-social behaviour; he became one of the gang.  When the citizens
+thought that their best way of expressing themselves was to smash
+windows, Lane helped them to smash them.  His marvellous psychological
+insight will best be illustrated by the story of Jabez.
+
+Jabez was a thoroughly bad character; he had been thief and highwayman,
+a bully who could fight with science.  He came to the Commonwealth and
+was astonished.  He found boys and girls working hard all day, and
+making their own laws at their citizen meetings at night.  Jabez could
+not understand it, and not understanding he felt hostile.
+
+The citizens lived in cottages, and one night Lane went over to the
+cottage in which Jabez lived.  They were having tea, and Lane sat down
+beside Jabez.
+
+"What are you always grousing about, Jabez?" he asked.  "Don't you like
+the Commonwealth?"
+
+"No," said Jabez viciously.
+
+"What's wrong with it?"
+
+"It's too respectable for me," said Jabez, and his eyes wandered to the
+table.  "Them fancy cups and saucers!  Wot's the good o' things like
+that to me?  I'd like to smash the whole lot o' them."
+
+Lane rose from the table, walked to the fireplace, took up the poker
+and handed it to Jabez.
+
+"Smash them," he said.
+
+Jabez had all eyes turned towards him.  He seized the poker and smashed
+his cup and saucer.
+
+"Excellent!" cried Lane, "Jabez is making the Commonwealth a better
+place," and he pushed forward another cup and saucer.  These were at
+once smashed, and Lane proceeded to shove forward the other dishes.
+But by this time Jabez was beginning to feel queer.  Breaking dishes
+was good fun when you were breaking laws, but here there was no law to
+break, and Jabez felt that he was doing a foolish thing.  He wanted to
+stop, but he could not see how he was to stop with dignity.
+Fortunately one of the other inmates of the cottage came to his aid.
+
+"It's all very well for you, Mr. Lane," she said, "but this isn't your
+cottage, and you are making Jabez break our dishes."
+
+Jabez hailed the idea with delight; he now had an excellent excuse for
+stopping.
+
+"Right you are!" cried Lane cheerfully, "Jabez will break something
+else," and he took out his gold watch and placed it on the table.
+
+"Smash that, Jabez."
+
+"No," said Jabez, "I won't smash your watch."
+
+Now Jabez had a saying that if a man were dared to do a thing and he
+didn't do it he was a coward.
+
+"I dare you to smash the watch."
+
+Jabez seized the poker again.
+
+"What!  You dare me!"
+
+"Yes, I dare you."
+
+He looked at the watch for a few seconds; then he threw down the poker
+and rushed from the room.
+
+Poor Jabez was killed in France.  I saw the letters that he wrote to
+Lane from the front, and they were the letters of a decent, good boy.
+
+The early history of Jabez was one of constant suppression.  Authority
+was always stepping in and saying: "Don't do that!"  As a result Jabez
+at the age of seventeen was psychically an infant.  The infantile
+desire to break things was suppressed, but it lived on in the
+unconscious, and years later Jabez found himself behaving like a child
+of three.  The cure was to encourage him to act in his infantile way;
+by smashing a few cups Jabez got rid of his long pent up infantile wish
+to destroy.  Discipline would have kept the childish wish underground;
+freedom led to the expression of the wish.
+
+Homer Lane is the apostle of Release.  He holds that Authority is fatal
+for the child; suppression is bad; the only way is to allow the child
+freedom to express itself in the way it wants to.  And because I count
+among my friends boys and girls who once went to the Little
+Commonwealth as criminals, I believe that Lane is right.  I also
+believe that the schools will come to see that he was right . . .
+somewhere about the year 2500.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Conversation to-night in Dauvit's shop turned on Spiritualism.  Dauvit
+is a firm believer, and he often goes to Dundee and Aberdeen to attend
+séances.
+
+"It's just a lot o' blethers," said Jake Tosh contemptuously.  "When
+ye're deid ye're deid, and that's a' aboot it.  Na, na, Dauvit, them
+that sees ghosts is either drunk or daft."
+
+"That's just yer ignorance, Jake," said Dauvit.  "Do ye ken whaur
+Brazil is?"
+
+"Wha is he?" asked Jake puzzled.
+
+"It's no a he; it's a place.  I asked ye that question just to prove
+that a man that doesna ken his ain world canna speak wi' ony authority
+o' the next world.  Yer mind's ower narrow, Jake; ye've no vision."
+
+"Na, na, Dauvit," laughed Jake, "it winna do.  Spooks and things is
+just a curran nonsense, and no sane man wud believe in them.  What do
+you say, dominie?"
+
+"I am willing to believe that the dead do communicate," I said.
+
+Jake was thoroughly amused.
+
+"It's a queer thing," he said musingly, "that the more eddication a man
+has the more he believes in rubbish.  Here's Dauvit here, a man that
+reads Shakespeare and Burns and Carlyle, and the dominie there that
+went through a college, and the both o' you believe things that I
+stoppit believin' when I was sax year auld.  Then there's Sir Oliver
+Lodge, and Conan Doyle.  Oh, aye, the Bible was quite richt when it
+said: Much learning hath made them mad."
+
+"What do you think happens to the dead, Jake?" I asked.
+
+"As the tree falleth so it lies," quoted Jake.  "There's only the twa
+places after death; if ye're good ye go to Heaven; if ye're bad ye go
+to Hell.  And that's why I say that thae messages from the deid are
+rubbish, cos if a man's in Heaven he's no going to leave a place like
+that to come doon to speak to a daft auld cobbler like Dauvit in a wee
+room doon in Dundee.  And if a man's in Hell the Devil will tak good
+care that he doesna get oot."
+
+I wondered to find that Dauvit had no answer to this.  I guessed that
+Dauvit's silence was due to his early training.  He was brought up in
+the old stern Scots way, and although he has now rejected the old
+beliefs intellectually, his unconscious still clings to them
+emotionally.  I fancy that if I were very very ill I might go back to
+my childish fear of Hell-fire, for, in illness old emotions return, and
+intellect flees.  Dauvit would no doubt react in the same way.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Many people seem to have a decided fear of psycho-analysis.  A mother
+writes me from London saying that she would like to send her girl to my
+new school, only she is afraid that I shall attempt to analyse the
+children.
+
+The fear of psycho-analysis comes from the general belief that Freud
+traces every neurosis to early sex experiences.  Whether Freud is right
+or not does not concern the teacher; he deals with normal children, and
+to try to analyse a normal child appears to me to be unnecessary.  The
+teacher's job is to see that the children are free from fear and free
+to create; if he does his task well he is preventing neurosis.
+
+A neurosis is the outcome of repression; the neurotic is a person whose
+libido or life force is bottled up; he can be cured only by letting his
+pent up emotions free.  The aim of education is to allow emotional
+release, so that there will be no bottling up, and no future neurosis;
+and this release comes through interest.  The boy who hates algebra and
+has to work examples is getting no release whatever, for his mind is
+divided; his attention goes to his quadratic equations, but his
+interest is elsewhere.
+
+Hence I do not think analysis is necessary when children are being
+freely educated.  In an exceptional case a little analysis will do
+good.  If I see a child unhappy, moody, anti-social, a thief, a bully,
+I consider it my job to make an attempt to find out what is at the back
+of his mind.  With a young boy it is not advisable to tell him the
+whole truth about himself; the teacher discovers the truth by watching
+the child at play, by studying his wishes as expressed in his writing,
+by noting his attitude to his playmates.  When he has made his
+diagnosis the teacher can then make the necessary changes in the boy's
+environment.
+
+I recall the case of Tommy, aged ten.  His class was constructing a
+Play Town after the fashion set by Caldwell Cook in his delightful book
+_The Play Way_.  Tommy worked with enthusiasm, too much enthusiasm, for
+he pinched the girls' sand for his railway track.  The girls objected,
+and a regular wordy battle took place.  Tommy felt that he was beaten,
+and he ceased work.
+
+I was not very much surprised when the girls came and told me that
+Tommy was shying bricks at the railway line he had been so keen on
+constructing.  Tommy was brought up before the assembled class, and
+they voted unanimously that he be forbidden to approach within ten
+yards of Play Town.  Tommy grinned maliciously.  That night the town
+appeared to have been the victim of an earthquake.
+
+I went to Tommy.
+
+"Why don't you like the Play Town?" I asked.
+
+"Because the girls are too bossy," he said.  "It was my town; I began
+it, and I don't see why they should be in it at all."
+
+"And you want a Play Town all to yourself?" I asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Right ho," I said easily.  "Why not start to build one?"
+
+His eyes lit up, and away he ran to lay his foundations.  He worked
+eagerly all day, but at night he seemed dissatisfied.
+
+"I haven't got any railway or houses; Christo won't lend me a bit of
+his railway, and Gerda has all the houses."
+
+I left him to work out his problem.  In the morning he solved it;
+Christo wouldn't lend him any rails, but if Tommy liked he, Christo,
+would run his line up to Tommy's town from the class town.  Tommy
+readily agreed.  In a week's time Tommy's town was a suburb of the
+bigger town, and Tommy was appointed President of the whole state.  He
+spent many an hour building his bridges and digging his tunnels.  At
+first he would allow no one to enter his suburb, but in a few days he
+ceased to claim it as his own, and he worked as a member of the gang.
+
+I think that most anti-social children are like Tommy: when their
+self-assertion is threatened they react with hostility.  The cure for
+them is to direct their self-assertion to things instead of people.  No
+boy will try to break up a ball game if he has a rabbit hutch to
+construct.
+
+The danger is that the teacher will often step in when the boy ought to
+be left to his companions.  The gang is the best disciplinarian.
+
+One day a class and I were writing five-minute essays.  I would call
+out a word or a phrase, and we would all start to write.  The children
+loved the method; it allowed so much play for originality.  For
+example, when I gave the word "broken" one girl wrote of her broken
+doll, another of a broken tramp, another of a broken heart; a boy wrote
+a witty essay on being stoney broke, another wrote of a broken window.
+
+On this day Wolodia, a boy of eleven, did not want to write essays.  I
+called out a word, and we started to write.  Wolodia began to talk
+loudly.
+
+"Stop it, man," I said impatiently, "you're spoiling our essay."
+
+He grinned and went on talking.
+
+"Oh, shut up!" cried Joy.
+
+"Shan't!" he snapped, and he went on talking.
+
+Diana rose with a determined air.
+
+"We'll chuck him out," she said grimly, and the class seized him and
+heaved him out.  Then they barricaded the door with desks.  Wolodia
+made a big row by hammering on the door, and as a result we could not
+proceed with our writing.
+
+"Let him in," I suggested.
+
+The class protested.
+
+"He'll sit like a lamb for the rest of the period," I said.
+
+They took away the desk and Wolodia came in.  He went to his seat . . .
+and not a sound came from him during the rest of the period.  This
+incident impressed me greatly; my complaint, Joy's complaint did not
+affect him, but when the gang was against him he was defeated.  It was
+a beautiful instance of the force of public opinion.
+
+Cases of stealing should be treated by analysis.  Moral lectures are
+useless; the cause lies in the unconscious, and the moral lecture does
+not touch the unconscious.  Nor does punishment affect the root cause
+of the delinquency.  The teacher must dig down into the child's
+unconscious in order to find the cause.
+
+An illuminating book for all teachers and parents to read is Healy's
+_Mental Disorders and Misconduct_.  He shows that stealing is very
+often a symptomatic act.  The mechanism of many cases is something like
+this: a child has been punished for sexual activities; later he breaks
+into a store and steals an article.  Sex activities and thieving have
+this in common, that they are both forbidden, but the boy has found
+that much more ado is made about sex activities than about stealing.
+So when he is actuated by a sexual urge he dare not indulge it; but his
+sexual wish finds a substitute; it goes out to the associated forbidden
+thing . . . the article on the store counter.
+
+We see the same sort of mechanism in the neurotic patient; she fears
+her own sex impulses, and because she dare not admit her sex wishes
+into consciousness she projects her fear on to dogs or mice or rats.
+All phobias--fear of closed places, fear of open places, fear of
+heights--are displaced fears; the sufferer is really afraid of his own
+unconscious wishes.
+
+I do not say that all juvenile stealing is due to repressed sex.
+Stealing may mean to a boy a method of self-assertion; it may mean that
+thus he rebels against authority of father and teacher; it may be the
+result of any one of a dozen causes.  But whatever the cause stealing
+is always associated with unhappiness, and the teacher must try to cure
+the unhappiness.
+
+In my _Dominie's Log_ I confessed that I liked to cheat the railway
+company, and I excused it on the ground that "a ten-mile journey
+without a ticket is the only romantic experience left in a drab world."
+That was a delightful bit of rationalisation.  The real reason for my
+delinquency lay in my unconscious.  As a child I impotently rebelled
+against the authority of parents and teachers.  Later in life I
+unconsciously identified the railway company with the authorities of my
+infancy.  Authority said: "Don't do that or you will be smacked"; the
+railway company put up a notice saying: "Don't travel without a ticket
+or you'll be fined forty shillings."
+
+My rebellion was really a rebellion against authority.  This may seem
+to be a far-fetched explanation, but the fact remains that now that I
+have discovered the reason I have no more desire to cheat the railway
+company.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Old Jeems Broon was buried to-day, and Dauvit went to the funeral.  He
+came back chuckling.
+
+"What's the joke, Dauvit?" I asked.
+
+"The burial service," laughed Dauvit.  "You ken what sort o' a man
+Jeems was; an auld sinner if there ever was a sinner in Tarbonny, a bad
+auld scoondrel.  Weel, Jeems hadna been at the kirk for twenty years,
+and of coorse the minister didna ken ony thing aboot him.  So when he
+gave the funeral prayer he referred to auld Jeems as 'this holy man
+whose life stands as an example to those still tarrying in the flesh.'
+Goad, but I burst oot laughin'!  I did that!"
+
+"Had I been the minister," said I, "I should certainly have made a few
+inquiries about Jeems."
+
+"But there's a better story than that aboot the minister," went on
+Dauvit with a laugh.  "Mag Currie's little lassie had the diphtheria,
+and at the end o' the week the minister was asked to come oot to tak' a
+burial service in Mag's bed room.  Man, he was eloquent!  He spoke
+earnestly aboot this flower plucked before it had reached its full
+bloom, this innocent life so sadly cut off; he was most touchin' when
+he turned to Mag and her man and said: 'Mourn not for those hands that
+never did wrong, the lisping tongue that never spoke evil, the wide
+pure eyes that looked their love for you.'"
+
+"I suppose the parents broke down at that," I said.
+
+"Not they!" chuckled Dauvit, "for the corpse wasna their lassie ava; it
+was auld Drucken Findlay the lodger."
+
+I always like to hear Dauvit talk about ministers, and I encouraged him
+to go on.
+
+"It's a very queer thing, dominie, that a body ay wants to laugh at the
+wrong time.  In the kirk and at a funeral--that's when I want to laugh.
+
+"I mind when the minister was awa' for his holidays, and there was an
+auld minister frae the Heelands cam' to tak' his place.  This auld man
+had a habit o' readin' a verse and syne stoppin' to explain it to the
+congregation.
+
+"Weel aweel, wan Sunday he was readin' a chapter frae the Auld
+Testament, and he cam' to the words: 'And the Angel of the Lord
+appeared unto Hosea.'  So he looks at the congregation ower his specs
+and he says: 'The Angel of the Lord appeared unto Hosea.'  Now,
+prethren, we must ask ourselves this important question: Was Hosea
+afraid?  No, Hosea was not afraid.  _You_ would have been afraid,
+prethren; I would have been afraid.  You and I would have begun to
+quake and tremble, but Hosea was not afraid; he was a prave man, a pold
+man.  When we are in trouble let us remember that Hosea was not afraid.'
+
+"So the auld man he turns ower the page and reads the next verse: 'And
+Hosea was sore afraid.'"
+
+"What did he say then?" I asked.
+
+"He was a cunnin' auld deevil," said Dauvit, "for he gave a bit cough
+and says: 'Prethren, that is a wrong translation from the original
+Hebrew.'"
+
+"I don't think you like ministers, Dauvit," I said.
+
+He paused in his efforts to place a new needle in his sewing-machine.
+
+"No, man, I do not," he said slowly.  "Nowadays the kirk is just a job
+like anything else; men go in for it for the loaves and fishes mostly,
+and their prayers never get past the roof.  And as for the
+congregation, the kirk is just a respectable sort o' society.  I tell
+ye, dominie, that releegion is deid.  At least, Christianity is deid.
+That was bound to come; flowers, folk, hooses, trees, horses, aye, and
+nations, have a birth, a youth, middle age, auld age, and then death.
+It's the law o' nature, and a religion is no exception."
+
+"True, O philosopher!" I said, "but there is always new life, and new
+life comes from the old.  The flower dies and its seed lives; man dies
+and his seed inherit the earth.  Christianity dies and--and what?"
+
+"That may be," he said thoughtfully.  "It may be that the new religion
+will grow from the seed o' the deid Christianity; that I canna say.
+What I do say is that ministers are oot-o'-date; they are doin' useless
+labour . . . when they're no fishin' and curlin'."
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+Duncan came over to-night, and he asked my advice about books.
+
+"What books would you advise a teacher to buy?" he asked.
+
+"There are scores of good books," I replied, "but no teacher can afford
+to buy them."
+
+"I know," he said crossly; "I've had a row with the Income Tax people.  I
+asked for a rebate of ten pounds for necessary school books, and they
+wouldn't allow it, although I'm told that if a London merchant buys a
+London Directory he gets a rebate for the amount."
+
+"I agree that it is unjust," I said, "but the new Income Tax proposals
+allow twenty pounds a year for teachers' books."
+
+"Just tell us what you would advise a teacher to spend his twenty quid
+on," said Macdonald.
+
+"It depends on his tastes," I said.  "If his subject is History he will
+buy history books; if his subject is behaviour, he'll buy psychology
+books."
+
+"Give us an idea of your own library," said Duncan.
+
+I sat down and wrote out a list from memory.
+
+It ran as follows:--
+
+BOOKS ON EDUCATION:--
+  _The Play Way_, by Caldwell Cook.
+  _The Path to Freedom in the School_, by Norman MacMunn.
+  _What Is and What Might Be_, by Edmond Holmes.
+  Montessori's three volumes.
+  _An Adventure in Education_, by J. H. Simpson.
+
+BOOKS ON PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND PSYCHOLOGY:
+  Freud's _Interpretation of Dreams, Psychopathology
+    of Everyday Life, Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory_.
+  Jung's _Psychology of the Unconscious, Studies
+    in Word Association, Analytical Psychology_.
+  Frink's _Morbid Fears and Compulsions_.
+  Maurice Nicoll's _Dream Psychology_.
+  Morton Prince's _The Unconscious_.
+  Pfister's _The Psycho-analytic Method_.
+  Ernest Jones' _Psycho-analysis_.
+  Ferenczi's _Contributions to Psycho-analysis_.
+  Wilfred Lay's _The Child's Unconscious Mind_.
+  Moll's _The Sexual Life of the Child_.
+  Adler's _The Neurotic Constitution_.
+  Bernard Hart's _The Psychology of Insanity_.
+
+CROWD PSYCHOLOGY:--
+  _The Crowd in Peace and War_, Martin Conway.
+  _Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War_, Trotter.
+  _The Crowd_, Gustave le Bon.
+
+GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY:--
+  _Psychology and Everyday Life_, Swift.
+  _Textbook of Psychology_, James.
+  _The Boy and His Gang_, Puffer.
+  _Mental Conflicts and Misconduct_, Healy.
+  _The Individual Delinquent_, Healy.
+  _Rational Sex Ethics_, Robie.
+  _Social Psychology_, McDougall.
+  _The Play of Man_, Groos.
+
+"That's too much for me," said Duncan.  "I couldn't afford a quarter of
+these books.  What books would you recommend if you had to choose half a
+dozen for a hard-up dominie?"
+
+I thought for a little, and then I replied: "Bernard Hart's _The
+Psychology of Insanity_, two bob; Frink's _Morbid Fears and Compulsions_,
+a first-rate book on analysis, a guinea; _The Crowd in Peace and War_, by
+Sir Martin Conway, eight and six; Healy's _Mental Conflicts and
+Misconduct_, ten and six; and Wilfred Lay's _The Child's Unconscious
+Mind_, ten and six."
+
+"But," cried Duncan, "I don't want to set up an asylum!  What's the good
+of books on insanity and morbid fears to a teacher?"
+
+I explained that the titles of Hart's and Frink's books were misleading,
+although the difference between the mind of the lunatic and the mind of
+the average man is merely one of degree.  Bernard Hart shows that the
+lunatic has the same faults as we have, only more so.  Frink's book is
+badly named; it is an excellent work on mind mechanisms.  Any teacher who
+reads these six books with understanding will never again use a strap on
+a pupil.  If I were Education Minister, I should present every school in
+Britain with a copy of each of the six.
+
+Macdonald asked if I had any books on hypnotism and suggestion.
+
+"No," I said, "but I have read them through a library.  I don't believe
+in either because they do not touch root causes.  We are all suffering
+from bottled up infantile emotion, and analysis goes to the root of the
+matter; it makes what is unconscious conscious, and enables the patient
+to re-educate himself, to use the old repressed emotion up in his daily
+life.  Analysis means release.  Suggestion does not touch the root
+repressed emotion, and I fancy that after suggestion the symptom merely
+changes.  A man has a phobia of cats.  By suggestion I can dispel his
+fear of cats, but the fear is transferred to something else, and he then
+has an exaggerated fear of catching tuberculosis.  Unless the ancient
+cause becomes conscious it is not released.
+
+"We see suggestion working in our schools daily.  By suggestion parents
+and teachers force the child to inhibit his gross sexual wishes, and in a
+short time the child accepts the ideals of his masters.  At first he
+inhibits a desire because father thinks it naughty; later he inhibits it
+because he himself thinks it naughty.  But the gross sexual wish lives on
+in the unconscious . . . hence the neurosis, hence the respectable old
+men who are imprisoned for showing gross pictures to children, hence the
+frequent indecent assaults on children.  All these unfortunate people are
+suffering from the results of early suggestion--the suggestion that sex
+is sin.  That primitive sex impulses can be sublimated I admit, but the
+teacher's job is not to preach that sex activities are evil; his job is
+to help the child to use up his primitive sex energy in creative work."
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+What is education's chief aim?  The reply generally given is that
+education's aim is to help a child to live its life fully.  Yet it seems
+to me that that reply does not go far enough; I think that the aim should
+be to help a child to live its cosmic life fully, to live for others.
+Every human is egocentric, selfish.  No human ever rises above
+selfishness, only there are degrees of selfishness.  I buy a motor-cycle
+because I am selfish; and you found a hospital for orphans because you
+are selfish.  It is my pleasure to have a Sunbeam; it is yours to help
+the poor.  Your selfishness has become altruism; that is, in pleasing
+yourself you have managed to please others.  The aim in education is not
+to abolish selfishness; it is to educe the selfishness that is
+altruistic.  Hence it may be said that education's chief aim is to teach
+one how to love.  No, that won't do; no one can teach another how to
+love; the teacher's job is to evoke love.  This he can do only by loving.
+If I hate my pupils I evoke hate from them; if I love them I evoke love
+from them in return.
+
+Is it possible to love your neighbour as yourself?  It is when you know
+yourself.  You hate in others what you hate in yourself, and you love in
+others what is lovable in yourself.  So that in loving your neighbour you
+are loving yourself.
+
+If, then, the teacher's first aim is to evoke the love of his pupils, he
+must know himself, and knowing must love himself.  Every day pupils are
+suffering because of the teacher's hatred of himself.
+
+Dominie Brown rises in the morning surly and unhappy.  He complains about
+the bacon and eggs at breakfast . . . no, the red herring; dominies
+cannot afford bacon and eggs . . . and Mrs. Brown makes unpleasant
+remarks.  Brown crosses the road to school with thunder on his face, and
+the children shiver in terror all morning.
+
+If Brown could sit down calmly to think out his bad mood, he would
+realise that he was punishing the children because he was worsted in his
+word battle with his wife.  And _he would be quite wrong_.  The truth
+would be that he was punishing the children because he was at war with
+himself.  His early morning ugly mood betrayed a mental conflict.  Hating
+himself, he hated his wife; his hate evoked her hate . . . and thus the
+circle was completed.
+
+We might trace all the futilities, all the stupidities of mankind, all
+the wars and crimes and injustices to man's ignorance of self.  To know
+all is to forgive all.  Christ condemned no one because he was at peace
+with himself.  Yet, I suddenly remember that He whipped the
+money-changers out of the Temple.  This incident is comforting, for it
+shows that the most lovable man who ever lived betrayed one human frailty
+on one occasion at least.  But now I am preaching again.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+I went to see Charlie Chaplin in "Shoulder Arms" last night.  Charlie is
+an artist of high quality; for once I think as the crowd thinks.  But I
+leave the crowd when it comes to appreciating the "moving human dramas"
+in five parts.
+
+The cinema must be reckoned with in any educational scheme.  One may
+learn more about crowd psychology from attendance at cinemas than from
+reading books on crowd psychology.  The cinema is popular because it
+encourages day-dreaming or phantasy.  There are two kinds of thinking,
+reality thinking and phantasy or day-dreaming.  Phantasying is the easier
+of the two; I can sit for hours building castles in Spain, and I never
+grow tired; but if I have to sit down and think out the Theory of
+Quadratics I soon become weary.  In reality thinking the intellect is
+active, but in day-dreaming emotion is in control.  Day-dreaming gets
+nowhere; the asylums are full of day-dreamers who spend their hours
+constructing beautiful phantasies.  In childhood phantasy is supreme.
+Bobby turns the nursery into a jungle; the sofa is a tiger, the chairs
+are lions, the rocking-horse is an elephant.  It is all real to him.  And
+in later years Bobby often returns to his childish phantasying.  We all
+do.  What young lover has not phantasied a burning mansion where his lady
+love is imprisoned?  Have we not all clambered up the water pipes and
+rescued her from the flames?
+
+The world of the theatre is a phantasy world.  With the rising of the
+curtain we forget our outside life; we live the part of the hero or the
+heroine.  To this day I always leave a theatre with a vague depression of
+spirits; everyday humdrum life chills me when I come out to the street.
+Reality is always difficult to face.  The great popularity of the cinema
+is due to this human desire for make-believe.  Cinema-going is a
+regression to the infantile; we return to the childish phase where the
+wish was all powerful.  In the cinema the villain is always worsted; the
+wronged heroine always falls into the hero's arms at the end.  Life for
+most of us means trials and sorrows and conflicts, and we long to return
+to the nursery phase where life was what we wished it to be.  The cinema
+and the public-house are the most convenient doors by which we can
+regress.
+
+The "moving drama" is the other side of the industrial picture.  Life for
+the masses means dirt and disease, ugly factories, sordid homes, mean
+streets.  The moving drama takes the masses away from grim reality; they
+see beautifully gowned women in drawing-rooms; they see the King
+reviewing his regiments; they see wild and free cowboys chasing Red
+Indians.  For two hours they live . . . and then they go out again into
+their world of mere existence.  And it is all wrong, tragically wrong.
+The cinema craze means that life is too ugly to face; it means that the
+masses are fleeing from reality and to flee from reality is fatal.
+Day-dreams are laudable only when they come true.  If the masses
+day-dreamed of an economic Utopia and forthwith set about building a New
+Jerusalem, their phantasies would become realities; but the moving human
+drama never leads to building; it is raw whisky swallowed to bring
+oblivion.  The moving human drama will live and flourish so long as
+mankind tolerates the slavery of industrialism.  It is a powerful weapon
+for capitalism; like the church and the public-house, it keeps the
+wage-slaves quiet.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+To-night the conversation in Dauvit's shop turned to the subject of
+honours.
+
+"They tell me," said Jake Tosh, "that you can buy a knighthood, or a
+peerage for that matter."
+
+"Yea, man!" said Willie Simpson, the joiner and undertaker from
+Tillymains.
+
+"So there's no muckle chance o' you getting ane, Willie," said Dauvit.
+
+The joiner smoked thoughtfully for a while.
+
+"Na, Dauvit," he said, "there's little chance o' an undertaker gettin' a
+title.  You would think na that the man that coffined the likes o' Lloyd
+George wud get a knighthood."
+
+Dauvit cackled.
+
+"Honours are sold, as Jake says; they are never given for public
+services."
+
+I am afraid the joke was lost on most of the assembly.  Jake failed to
+see it.  It is said that Jake has been known to laugh at a joke only
+once, and that was when the earth gave way beneath the minister's feet
+when he was conducting a service at a grave-side, and he fell into the
+open grave.
+
+"Undertakin'," continued the joiner, "is a verra queer trade."
+
+Jake shivered.
+
+"I dinna ken how ye can do it," he said; "man, it wud gie me the
+scunners."
+
+"Man, ye soon get accustomed to it," said the joiner.  "Of course, it has
+its limitations; ye canna verra weel advertise in the front page o' _The
+Daily Mail_, but, man, it's what ye micht call a safe trade."
+
+"How safe?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, ye never need to worry aboot yer custom; it's aye there.  Noo in
+other lines the laws o' supply and demand are tricky.  I mind a gey
+puckle years syne there was a craze for walkin'-sticks wi' ebony handles.
+Weel, I went doon to Dundee and bocht ten pund worth o' ebony, and afore
+the wood was delivered the fashion had changed, and the men were all
+buyin' cheese-cutter bonnets, so here was I left wi' ten pund worth o'
+ebony on my hands . . . and if I hadna sold it to Davie Lamb the
+cabinet-maker for thirteen pund I micht ha' lost the money.  Noo, in my
+trade there's no sudden change o' fashion as ye micht say; the demand is
+what ye micht call constant, and that's what makes me say it is a safe
+trade."
+
+Dauvit winked to me surreptitiously.
+
+"Noo, joiner," he said, "will ye tell me wan thing?  I want to ken the
+inner workin's o' an undertakker's mind.  When somebody is verra ill,
+what's your attitude?  I mean to say, do ye sort o' look on the illness
+wi' hope or what?  When ye see a fine set-up man on the road, do ye look
+at him wi' a professional eye and say to yersell: 'Sax feet by twa; a
+bonny corp!'?"
+
+"I'm no so bad as that, Dauvit," he laughed, "though I dinna mind sayin'
+that I've sometimes been a wee bit disappointed when somebody got better.
+On the other hand, when big Tamson was badly, I keepit prayin' that he
+wud get better."
+
+"An unbusinesslike thing to do," I laughed.
+
+"Aweel," said the joiner, "big Tamson weighed aboot saxteen stone, and at
+the time I hadna the wood."
+
+"I dinna like to hear aboot things like that," said Jake Tosh nervously;
+"things like that give me the creeps, and besides it's no a proper way to
+speak."
+
+Dauvit turned to me.
+
+"Man, dominie, it's a queer thing, but the more religious a man is the
+less he likes to hear aboot death.  Jake here is an elder o' the auld
+kirk; he's on the straight and narrow path; he's going straight to heaven
+when he dees . . . and I never saw onybody so feared o' death as Jake is.
+How wud ye explain that?"
+
+"I think," I replied, "that it is due to the fact that Jake has been
+brought up in the fear of the Lord."
+
+"Exactly," nodded Dauvit.  "It's my belief that most religious fowk are
+religious not becos they want specially to play harps in the next world,
+but becos they dinna want to be roasted."
+
+Dauvit's philosophy comes pretty near that of Edmond Holmes.  In _What Is
+and What Might Be_ Holmes argues that our education system is founded on
+the Old Testament.  Man is a sinner, prone to evil; a stern angry God
+chastises him when he transgresses.  Education treats children as
+sinners; it punishes the wrongdoer.  I believe Holmes is right, only he
+does not trace back education far enough.  The God of the Old Testament
+was a man-made God (Jung says that man makes his God in his own image;
+his God is his ego-ideal).
+
+The genesis of education is not the God of the Old Testament; it is the
+unconscious wish of the primitive men who invented that God.  The
+religion of the Old Testament is a father complex religion; God is the
+hated and feared father, the authority who punishes, the provider of food
+and clothing, the maker of laws.  Authority always makes the governed
+inferior and dependent; the man with a father complex cannot stand alone;
+he must always flee to his father or father substitute when he meets a
+difficulty.  Thus does the Christian act; he seeks the Father; he places
+his burden on the Lord; he avoids responsibility.  The Hebraic religion
+and our modern education both demand that the individual shall avoid
+responsibility; the good Christian and the good schoolboy must obey the
+Law.  I think that if the world is to be free the church and the school
+must aim at breaking the power of the Father.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+"Look here, Mac," I said last night, "I am going to pay you for my board."
+
+Mac protested vigorously.
+
+"You'll do nothing of the kind," he said firmly.
+
+I went to the kitchen and made the offer to his wife, and she also
+protested.
+
+This morning I cycled to Dundee and bought a knife-cleaner and a vacuum
+cleaner.  They arrived to-night, and Mrs. Mac gave a gasp of delight.
+Mac tried to frown, but he could not manage it.  Both protested against
+what they called my idiotic kindness, but their protests were
+half-hearted.
+
+It is a strange thing that money itself is considered a sordid thing.
+Why should Mac refuse five pounds with anger, and accept a ten pound gift
+with pleasure?  If anyone wants to study the psychological meaning of
+money I recommend Chapter XL. in Dr. Ernest Jones' _Psycho-analysis_.  In
+the unconscious, at any rate, money is assuredly "filthy lucre."
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+A teacher should know very little about the subject he professes to
+teach.  In my London school I succeeded a line of excellent teachers of
+drawing.  I had not been long in the school when Di, aged 15, looked over
+my shoulder one day and said: "Rotten!  You can't draw for nuts!"
+
+A week later Malcolm looked at a water colour of mine.
+
+"You've got a horrible sense of colour," he said brightly.
+
+Then I began to wonder why everyone in school was much more keen on
+drawing and painting than they had ever been in the days of the skilled
+teachers.  The conclusion I came to was that my bad drawing encouraged
+the children.  I remembered the beautiful copy-book headlines of my
+boyhood, and I recalled the hopelessness of ever reaching the standard
+set by the lithographers.  No child should have perfection put before
+him.  The teacher should never try to teach; he should work alongside the
+children; he should be a co-worker, not a model.
+
+Most teachers set themselves on a pedestal.  They think that they lose
+dignity if they are not able to answer every question that a child puts
+to them.  One result is that the child develops a dangerous inferiority
+complex.  I knew one boy who was a duffer at mathematics.  His weakness
+was due to the inferiority he felt when he saw the learned mathematical
+master juggle with figures as easily as a conjurer juggles with billiard
+balls.  The little chap lost all hope, and when he worked problems he
+worked solely to escape punishment.
+
+The difficulty is that if a teacher works at a subject year after year he
+is bound to become an expert.  The only remedy I can think of is to make
+each teacher take up a new subject at the beginning of every school year.
+By the time that he had been master of Mathematics, History, Drawing,
+English, French, German, Latin, Geography, Chemistry, Physics,
+Psychology, Physiology, Eurhythmics, Music, Woodwork, it would be time to
+retire . . . with a pension or a psychosis.  The late Sir William Osier
+said that a man was too old at forty; my experience leads me to conclude
+that many a teacher is too old at twenty.
+
+I sometimes think that every man has a certain definite psychic age fixed
+for him by the Almighty before he is born.  I know a man of seventy who
+is psychically five years old, and he will never grow older.  I know a
+boy of ten who is psychically sixty years old, and he will never grow
+younger.
+
+Psycho-analysis is doing a lot of good, but I fear that it may do a lot
+of harm, for, one fine day Professor Freud or Dr. Jung will get hold of
+Peter Pan, take him by the back of the neck, and say: "My lad, you've got
+a fixation somewhere; you are the super-regression-to-the-infantile
+specimen; you've got to be analysed."  And then Peter will grow up and
+read _The Daily News_ and own an allotment and a season ticket.
+
+When we know all about psychology, the world will be rather dull.  The
+Freudians have said that the play of _Hamlet_ is the result of
+Shakespeare's Oedipus Complex.  If Shakespeare had not had an unconscious
+hatred of his father, _Hamlet_ would never have been written.  In other
+words, if Bacon had discovered the psychology of the unconscious,
+Shakespeare might have been analysed and forthwith might have gone in for
+keeping bees instead of writing plays.
+
+It is the neurotic who leads the world; he is a rebel and he is an
+idealist.  Yet when you analyse him you find what a poor devil he is.
+His noble crusade against vivisection is due to the abnormal strain of
+cruelty he is repressing in himself; his passion for Socialism comes from
+his infant fear of and rebellion against his father.  The ardent
+suffragette who smashes windows in a just cause is merely doing so
+because the vote is a symbol of freedom from an arrogant husband.
+
+What I want to know is this: In the year 5000, when everyone is free from
+repressions and suppressions, will there be any rebels to spur humanity
+on?  But then if humanity is free from unconscious urges there will be no
+need for rebels, for there will be no crime or prison or wars or
+politicians.  Every man will be a superman.
+
+I firmly believe that Freud's discovery will have a greater influence on
+the evolution of humanity than any discovery of the last ten centuries.
+Freud has begun the road that leads to superman, and, although Jung and
+Adler and others have begun to lead sideroads off the main track, the
+sideroads are all leading forward.  Theirs is a great message of hope.
+
+And yet, nineteen hundred years ago Jesus Christ gave the world a New
+Psychology . . . and none of us have tried to apply it to our souls.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+Mac came across a vulgar word in a composition he was correcting
+to-night, and it seemed to alarm him.  He could not understand why I
+laughed, and I explained to him that I liked vulgarity.
+
+I remember when a high-minded mother came into my class-room in
+Hampstead.  The highest class was writing essays.  On her asking what
+the subject was, I replied that each pupil had a different subject.
+She walked round and looked over their shoulders.  I saw the lady's
+eyebrows go up as she read titles such as these:--"I Grow Forty Feet
+high in One Night"; "I Edit the Greenland _Morning Frost_" (the news
+this boy gave was delightful); "I Interview Noah for the _Daily Mail_"
+(photos on back page).  She nodded approvingly when she read the titles
+of the more serious essays.  Then I saw her adjust her spectacles in
+great haste; she was looking over Muriel's shoulder.
+
+"Mr. Neill," she gasped, "do you think this a suitable subject for a
+girl?"
+
+I glanced at the title; it was; "Autobiography of My Nose."
+
+"Er--what's wrong with it?" I said falteringly.
+
+"It lends itself too readily to vulgarity," she said.
+
+I picked up the book, and together we read the opening words.
+
+"When first I began to run . . . ."
+
+The high-minded lady left the room hurriedly.
+
+I loved that class.  Often I wish that I had kept their essays.  One
+day we had a five minute essay on the subject: Waiting for My Cue.
+Lawrence wrote of standing on the steps in a cold sweat of fear.  He
+had only five words to say--"The carriage waits, my lord," but he had
+never acted before.  His cue was: "Ho!  Who comes here?"
+
+"At last," he wrote, "I heard the fateful words: 'Ho!  Who comes
+here?'  I could not move; I stood trembling on the stairs.
+
+"'Get on, you idiot!' whispered the stage manager savagely, but still I
+could not move.
+
+"'Ho!  Who comes here?' repeated the fool on the stage.  Still I could
+not move a step.
+
+"'Ho!  Who comes here?'
+
+"Suddenly I became aware of a disturbance in the auditorium.  The noise
+increased, and then I heard the agonising words: 'Fire!  Fire!'  Panic
+followed, and cries of terror rang out.
+
+"But I . . . I jumped on the stage and cried: 'Hurrah!
+Hoo-blinking-rah!'  It was the happiest moment of my life."
+
+Sydney took a different line.  Her cue was the sound of a stage kiss.
+Boldly she walked on, and the stage lovers glared at her, for she
+arrived before the kiss was finished or rather properly begun.  The
+audience chuckled.  At the next performance she determined to be less
+punctual.  She heard the smack of the kiss, but she did not move.  As
+she waited she heard the audience roaring with laughter, and then she
+realised that the poor lovers had been standing kissing each other for
+a full five minutes.
+
+I must write to these dear old children to ask if they kept their
+essays.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Duncan was in to-night, and he told a school story that was new to me.
+
+In a certain council school it was the custom for teachers to write
+down on the blackboard any instructions they might have for the janitor
+before they left at night.  One night he came in and read the words:
+Find the L.C.M.
+
+"Good gracious!" he growled, "has that dam thing gone and got lost
+again?"
+
+That version was new to me.  My own version ran thus:--
+
+Little Willie is doing his home lessons, and he asks his father to help
+him with a sum.  The father takes the slate in his hand and reads the
+words:  Find the G.C.M.
+
+"Good heavens!" he cries, "haven't they found that blamed thing yet?
+They were hunting for it when I was at school."
+
+I think both versions are very good.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+I have a strong Montessori complex.  I find myself being critical of
+her system, and I have often wondered why.  I used to think that my
+dislike of Montessori was a projection: I disliked a lady who raved
+about Montessori, and I fancied that I had transferred my dislike of
+the lady to poor Montessori.  But now I refuse to accept that
+explanation; it is not good enough for me; there must be something
+deeper.  I shall try to discover that something deeper.
+
+When I first read Montessori's books I said to myself: "She is devoid
+of humour."  This to me suggests a limitation in art, and I feel that
+Montessori is always a scientist but never an artist.  Her system is
+highly intellectual, but sadly lacking in emotionalism.  This is seen
+in her attitude to phantasy.  She would probably argue that phantasy is
+bad for a child, but it is a fact that much of a child's life is lived
+in phantasy.  Phantasy is a means of gratifying an unfulfilled wish.
+The kitchen-maid in her day-dream marries a prince, and, as Maurice
+Nicoll says in his _Dream Psychology_, to destroy her phantasy without
+putting something in its place is dangerous.
+
+To a child, as to Cinderella, phantasy is a means of overcoming
+reality.  Father bullies Willie and the boy retires into a day-dream
+world where he becomes an all-powerful person . . . hence the fairy
+tales of giants (fathers) killed by little Jacks.  In later life Willie
+takes to drink or identifies himself with the hero of a cinema drama.
+
+The extreme form of phantasy is insanity, where the patient completely
+goes over to the unreal world and becomes the Queen of the World.  And
+it might be objected that phantasying is the first stage of insanity.
+Yes, but it is the last stage of poetry.  Coleridge's _Kubla Khan_, one
+of the most glorious poems in the language, is pure phantasy.  I rather
+fear that one day a grown-up Montessori child will prove conclusively
+that the feet of Maud did not, when they touched the meadows, leave the
+daisies rosy.
+
+No, the Montessori world is too scientific for me; it is too orderly,
+too didactic.  The name "didactic apparatus" frightens me.
+
+I quote a sentence from _The New Children_, by Mrs. Radice.
+
+"'Per carita!  Get up at once!' she (Montessori) has exclaimed before
+now to a conscientious teacher found dishevelled on the ground with a
+class of little Bolshevists sitting on top of her."
+
+In heaven's name, I ask, why get up?  Life is more than meat, and
+education is more than matching colours and fitting cylinders into
+holes.
+
+Montessori was thinking of the conscious mind of the child when she
+evolved her system, and the apparatus does not satisfy the whole of the
+child's unconscious mind.  Noise is suppressed in a Montessori school,
+but every child should be allowed to make a noise, for noise means
+power to him, and he will use it only as long as it means power to him.
+I have watched Norman MacMunn's war orphans at Tiptree Hall at work.
+MacMunn, the author of _A Path to Freedom in the School_, did not say
+"Hush!"; his boys filled the room with noisy talk as they worked, and
+never have I seen children do more work with so much joy.
+
+The Montessori teacher, when she finds that Jimmy is interfering with
+the work of Alice, segregates the bad Jimmy, and treats him as a sick
+person.  But the right thing to do is to solve Jimmy's problem as well
+as Alice's.  What is behind Jimmy's aggressiveness?  Jimmy does not
+know, nor does the Montessori teacher, because she has been trained in
+the psychology of the conscious only.
+
+Another reason why I am not wholly on the side of Montessori is, I
+fancy, that her religious attitude repels me.  She is a church woman;
+she has a definite idea of right and wrong.  Thus, although she allows
+children freedom to choose their own occupations, she allows them no
+freedom to challenge adult morality.  But for a child to accept a
+ready-made code of morals is dangerous; education in morality is a
+thousand times more important than intellectual education with a
+didactic apparatus.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+To-night Duncan came in, and as usual we talked education.  I took up
+the subject of punishment, and condemned it on the ground that it
+treats effect instead of cause.  After a little persuasion Duncan
+seemed inclined to agree with me.
+
+"I see what you mean," he said, "but what I say is that if you abolish
+punishment you must also abolish reward."
+
+"Why not?" I said.  "The case against rewards is just as simple.  A
+child should do a lesson for the joy of doing it.  Milton certainly did
+not write _Paradise Lost_ for the five pounds he got for it."
+
+"Yes, I see that," said Duncan thoughtfully, "but what about
+competition?  The prize at the end introduces a breezy struggle for
+place."
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"No competition!  I won't have it.  It makes the chap at the top of the
+class a prig, and gives the poor chap at the bottom an inferiority
+complex.  No, we want to encourage not competition but co-operation.
+Competition leads naturally to another world war, as competition
+between British and American capital is doing now."
+
+Then Duncan floored me.
+
+"And would you discourage football because it introduces the idea of
+competition?" he asked.
+
+"Of course not," I replied
+
+"Then why discourage it in arithmetic?" he asked.
+
+It was an arresting question, and I had to grope for an answer that
+would convince not only Duncan but myself.  That every healthy boy
+likes to try his strength against his fellows is a fact that we cannot
+ignore.  Mr. Arthur Balfour's desire to beat his golfing partner and
+Jock Broon's desire to spit farther than Jake Tosh are fundamentally
+the same desire, the desire for self-assertion.  And I see that the man
+who comes in last in the quarter-mile race is in the same position of
+inferiority as the boy who is always at the bottom of the class.  Yet I
+condemn competition in school-work while I appreciate competition in
+games.  Why?
+
+I think I should leave it to the children.  Obviously they like to
+compete in games and races, but they have no natural desire to compete
+in lessons.  It appears that some things naturally lend themselves to
+competition--racing, boxing, billiards, jumping, football and so on.
+Other things do not encourage competition.  Bernard Shaw and G. K.
+Chesterton do not compete in the output of books; Freud and Jung do not
+struggle to publish the record number of analysis cases; George Robey
+and Little Tich do not appear together on the stage of the Palladium
+and try to prove which is the funnier.  Rivalry there always is, but it
+remains only rivalry until _The Daily Mail_ offers a prize for the
+biggest cabbage or sweet-pea, and then competition seizes suburbia.
+
+I should therefore leave the children to discover for themselves what
+interests lend themselves to competition, and what interests do not.  I
+know beforehand that of their own accord they will not introduce it
+into school subjects.  This is in accord with my views on the authority
+question.  I insist that the teacher will impose nothing; that his task
+is to watch the children find their own solution.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+I must write down a wise saying that came from Dauvit.  A rambling and
+ill-informed discussion of Bolshevism arose in his shop to-night.
+Dauvit took no part in it, but when we rose to go he said: "Tak' my
+word for it, Bolshevism is wrong."
+
+"How do you make that out, Dauvit?" I asked.
+
+"Because it's a success," he said shortly.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+To-night the Rev. Mr. Smith, the U.F. minister, came in.  He is one of
+the unco' guid, and to him all pleasures are sinful.  It happened that
+I was telling Macdonald the Freudian theory of dreams when he entered,
+and when Mac told him what the conversation had been about, he begged
+me to continue.  It was evident that he had never heard of dream
+interpretation, and he was surprised.
+
+"And every dream has a meaning?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," I said.
+
+"I had a dream last night," he began, but I held up a warning hand.
+
+"You shouldn't tell your dreams in public," I said hastily; "they may
+give things away that you don't want others to know."
+
+He laughed.
+
+"I don't mind that," he said, "I'll take the risk.  Last night I dreamt
+that I was in a public-house among a lot of men who were telling most
+obscene stories.  According to Freud every dream is the fulfilment of a
+wish.  Do you mean to tell me that I wish to be in such a company?"
+
+I explained that the dream as told is not the dream in reality, the
+meaning lies behind the symbolism, and it can be got at by the method
+of free association.  I also explained that I did not believe the Freud
+theory, that the dream is always a wish, and suggested that Jung was a
+surer guide.
+
+"According to Jung," I said, "the dream is often compensatory.  In your
+own case you are consciously living the higher life, but there is
+another side of life that you are ignoring, and that is the vulgar pub
+side.  Your dream is a hint that the vulgar side of life cannot be
+ignored.  You may ignore it consciously, but your unconscious will seek
+the other side in your dreams."
+
+This seemed to make him think.
+
+"But the saints and martyrs!" he cried.  "Think of the thousands who
+crucified the flesh so that they might win the everlasting crown!  Do
+you tell me that they were all wrong?"
+
+I lit my pipe.
+
+"I think they were," I said, "for they merely repressed their animal
+life.  They thought that they had conquered it, but they only buried
+it.  The real saint is the man who faces his flesh boldly and loves it
+too, just as much as he loves his God."
+
+Then the minister fled.
+
+The interpretation of dreams is one of the most fascinating studies in
+the world.  The method as evolved by Freud is simple, although the
+interpretation is anything but simple.  Obviously the average dream has
+no meaning.  You dream that a horse speaks to you, and then it turns
+into your brother.  It is all nonsense, yet behind the nonsense is a
+serious meaning.  Not long ago I was analysing a girl of sixteen.
+About a week after the analysis began she brought a dream which began
+thus: "I am invisible, and I have a tail that I can take off or put on."
+
+Following the method of free association I said to her: "What comes
+into your mind about being invisible?"
+
+"Oh, I've often wanted to be invisible, for then I could do what I
+liked; then I would be free."
+
+Being invisible therefore meant being free.
+
+Then I asked her associations to the tail part.
+
+"Tail . . . monkeys at the Zoo; they are poor things always kept behind
+bars.  Just like me.  I forgot to say that my tail wasn't on in the
+dream."
+
+Tail therefore meant something associated with confinement and
+restriction.  It is significant that her tail was unattached.  I took
+it to mean a wish-fulfilment dream; in it she got free from her
+neurosis.
+
+The following night she dreamt that she was being driven in a motor car
+by a swanky chauffeur.  They came to the bottom of a hill, and the car
+stopped, and she got out and walked.  Her first association was: "The
+chauffeur had a big green coat on, one just like the coat you wear."
+
+"So I was the chauffeur?" I asked.
+
+She brightened at once.
+
+"I see it!" she cried.  "The car is the analysis; you are driving me
+away from my old life!"
+
+"Excellent!" I said, "but don't forget that the car stopped at the
+bottom of the hill.  What does the word hill give you?"
+
+"Something difficult to climb.  I hated climbing it and thought it a
+shame that the motor didn't take me up."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I've got to climb to get better, haven't I?"
+
+"That's right," I said.  "I told you the other night that no analyst
+should give advice, and I refused when you asked me for it.  In your
+unconscious you realise that the chauffeur is not going to take you up
+the hill; in other words you've got to do most of the work."
+
+Freud holds that there is a censor standing between the conscious and
+the unconscious.  Primitive wishes seek to come from the unconscious,
+but the censor holds up his hand.  "No," he says, "that's too
+disgusting; the conscious mind couldn't stand that; it would be
+shocked.  You must disguise yourself in harmless form!"  And so the
+infantile sex wish is changed into a harmless dog or cycle.  But if
+this is the case why should my little girl dream of me as a chauffeur?
+There was nothing disgusting about me, nothing that her conscious mind
+could not face.
+
+I prefer Jung's theory.  He says that we dream in symbols because
+symbolism is the oldest language in the world, and, as the unconscious
+is primitive it uses this language.  We all dream of shocking things,
+and if the endopsychic censor were really on duty he would never allow
+these disgusting dreams to get through.
+
+If I dream that my father is dead the Freudians declare that I either
+wish or, in the past, have wished unconsciously for my father's death.
+But surely so alarming a wish would be changed into a harmless form if
+there were a censor.  One night I dreamt that an acquaintance, Murray,
+was dead.  The first association to Murray was: "He's a lazy sort of
+chap."  I think that all he stood for was laziness, and he was merely
+my own laziness symbolised.  The dream was a hint to me to be up and
+doing, for I had been neglecting a task that I should have undertaken.
+
+There is what might be called the cheese-and-tripe supper theory of the
+dream held by many people.
+
+"There's nothing in dreams," they say, "nothing but the disorders
+following late supper."
+
+A cheese-and-tripe supper will cause queer dreams, but the advocates of
+this theory cannot explain why a tripe supper should make me dream
+of--say--a tiger.  Why not a lion or a mouse?
+
+It is an accepted fact now in psychology that the dream is the working
+of the unconscious.  Some theosophists claim that during sleep your
+spirit leaves your body and seeks the astral plane, but I have never
+seen anything resembling evidence of this.  It may be a fact for all
+that.
+
+Concerning the prophetic aspect of dreams I know nothing.  I have heard
+that the night before the Tay Bridge disaster a woman dreamt that it
+was to take place, and she persuaded her husband not to travel by that
+ill-fated train, but I cannot vouch for the story.  I believe, however,
+that the dream is prophetic in that the unconscious during the night is
+working out the problems of the next day.  The popular saying about
+sleeping over a problem shows that there is a real belief in this
+aspect.  I know a lady who was undergoing analysis.  She was suffering
+from a father complex, that is, her infantile fixation on the father
+had remained with her, and unconsciously she was approving or
+disapproving of every man she met according as he did or did not in
+some way resemble her father.
+
+For a few weeks after the analysis began she was always dreaming that
+she was back in her childhood home, and in her dreams she was always
+trying to get away from home and her father was always restraining her
+from going.  Often the figure in the dream was not the father, but the
+associations always showed that the figure was standing for the father.
+One night the figure was the King, and her first association was: "The
+King's name is George. . . .  That's father's name too."
+
+This seems to be a case where the unconscious is striving to find a
+solution.
+
+The way the unconscious does things is wonderful.  I remember one night
+listening to a lecture by Homer Lane.  He brought forward a new theory
+about education, and it was so deep that I did not quite grasp its
+meaning.  At the time Alan, Homer Lane's youngest child, was one of the
+pupils in the school in which I taught.  That night I dreamt that I was
+standing before a class.  Alan was sitting in the front seat, and
+behind him was a boy whom in the dream I called "Homer Lane's youngest
+child."  The new theory had become in the language of symbolism Alan's
+younger brother . . . in short, Lane's latest.  Here again I cannot see
+why any censor should change a theory into a child.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+In my _Log_ I make a very, very poor statement about sex instruction.
+I say that children should be encouraged to believe in the stork theory
+of birth until the age of nine.  That was a wrong belief, but then at
+that time I had not read Freud or Bloch or Moll.  I see now that the
+child should be told the truth about sex whenever he asks for
+information.  But I fear, that many modern mothers think that they have
+sexually educated their child when they tell him where babies come
+from.  The physiological side of sex is the less important; you can
+take a child through all the usual stages--pollination of plants,
+fertilisation of eggs, right up to human birth, but the child will find
+no help in these informations when he faces his sex instinct at
+adolescence.  Sex instruction should be psychological; it should deal
+with the sex instinct as one form of life force or libido.  The child
+should be led to face it openly.  It should be entirely dissociated
+from sin, and moral lectures should not be given.
+
+Who is to give the instruction?  That is the difficulty.  Most parents
+and teachers cannot do it because their own sex instinct is all wrong.
+Make a remark about sex in the company of adults, and it will be
+reacted to in two ways; some will grin and laugh; others will be
+shocked.  I hasten to add that the shocked ones are worse than the
+laughers.  The laugh is a release of sex repressions; the shocked
+appearance is a compensation for an unconscious over-interest in sex.
+Anyway neither type is capable of talking about sex to children, and
+since humanity is roughly divided into prudes and sinners (not saints
+and sinners), there is little hope of a frank sex education for kiddies.
+
+Many people say: "Oh, leave it to the doctors," but personally I
+haven't enough faith in doctors.  Their attitude to sex is usually no
+better than the attitude of the layman.  I know doctors who could give
+excellent instruction to children on the physiology of sex, but the
+only doctors of my acquaintance who could teach the psychological side
+are psycho-analysts or psycho-therapists of some sort.
+
+Teachers can tackle the sex problem negatively.  Sex activity is a form
+of life force or interest, and if a child is not finding life
+interesting enough there is a danger that he will regress to what is
+called auto-eroticism.  When we remember that the sexual instinct is
+the creative instinct, and that creation in dancing or music or poetry
+or art of any kind is sublimated sex, that is sex raised to a higher
+power, we can readily see that one of the most important parts of a
+teacher's job is to provide ways and means for creation.  I realise
+that this is not enough, but, as I say, I cannot see the way to a good
+sex education, until every teacher and parent has discovered his or her
+own sex complexes.  Co-education helps, for then the commingling of the
+sexes affords a harmless and unconscious outlet for sex interest.  But
+co-education is no panacea, for the sex problems of the individual
+child in a co-educational school are almost as immediate as those of
+the child from the segregated school.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+This morning I was setting off for Dundee when Willie Marshall entered
+the compartment.  He was dressed in his Sunday best, and I wondered why
+he was going to Dundee on a Wednesday.
+
+"Hullo, Willie!" I cried, "what's on to-day?"
+
+He looked troubled and angry.
+
+"I've been summoned to serve on the jury that's tryin' that dawmed rat
+that stailt ten pund frae the minister," he said viciously, "and I had
+little need to lose a day, for I hae far mair work than I can dae.
+Mossbank's twa cairts cam in yestreen, and he's swearin' like onything
+that he maun hae them by the nicht."  Willie is a joiner, and most of
+his work is building and repairing carts.
+
+"So you think that Nosie Broon is guilty?" I said with a smile.
+
+"Of coorse he is," he cried with emphasis.
+
+"But," I said seriously, "you'll maybe alter your mind when you hear
+the evidence."
+
+He grunted.
+
+"Dawn nae fear!  I'll show him that he's no to drag me awa frae ma work
+for nothing!"
+
+He opened his _Dundee Courier_, and I sat and thought of the trial by
+jury method.  I would not condemn it on the strength of Willie's
+dangerous misunderstanding of what it means, but I do condemn it on
+other grounds.  Weighing evidence is a difficult enough business even
+for the specialist, for it is almost impossible to eliminate emotion in
+forming a judgment.  With a jury of citizens, some of them possibly
+illiterate, too much depends on the advocates, or on outside causes.
+
+During the war there was a glaring instance of this.  A soldier shot
+the man who had been trying to steal his wife's love . . . and the
+verdict of the jury was Not Guilty.  The emotional factor in this case
+was that the dead man was a German.  I am not arguing that the prisoner
+should have been hanged or imprisoned, for I think both procedures are
+bad; I merely point out that in the eyes of legalism the soldier was
+guilty, yet the jury threw legalism overboard.
+
+Another instance of the emotional factor over-ruling legalism is seen
+in the trial of the man who shot Jaures.  He was acquitted. . . .  Not
+Guilty . . . the man who slew one of the best men in Europe.  On the
+other hand the youth who attempted to assassinate Clemenceau was
+sentenced to death, pardoned, and sent to penal servitude.  In France
+therefore it is a crime to kill a politician of the right, but a virtue
+to kill one of the Socialist left.
+
+Abstract justice is a figment.  No jury and no judge can be impartial.
+The other day a man was charged with striking a Socialist orator with
+an ice-pick.  The judge lectured the orator on his Bolshevism, and then
+gave the accused imprisonment for a short term in the second division.
+Suppose that the Bolshevist had used an ice-pick on a Cabinet Minister!
+
+I do not think that our judges and magistrates ever consciously show
+partiality.  They are an upright class of men, men above suspicion.  It
+is their unconscious that shows partiality just as mine does.  The army
+colonels who tried Conscientious Objectors were upright men, but it was
+wrong to imagine that they could possibly see the C.O.'s point of view.
+So it was with the regular R.A.M.C. doctors.  To some of them the
+neurotic patient was a swinger of the lead, a malingerer.  They had
+never heard of the new psychiatry, and the neurotic was a strange
+creature to them.  Their ignorance supplemented their prejudice, and
+they could not possibly have treated these men with justice.
+
+The truth is that we all make up our minds according as our buried
+complexes impel us.  If I saw a Frenchman fighting a Scot I should take
+the Scot's side, because I have a Scot complex.  Occasionally our
+complexes work in the opposite way.  I fancy that the few people who
+sided with the Germans in the war were suffering from an "agin the
+government" complex, which, if you trace it deep enough is usually
+found to be an infantile rebellion against the father.  In this case
+the State represented the father, and Germany was the outside helper
+who should conquer the father (or mother) country.  Had Germany won,
+the unpatriotic man would immediately have turned his hate against
+Prussia, for then Prussia would have been the father substitute.
+
+Our loves and hates and fears are within ourselves.  I know a man who
+has a nagging wife; she has a constant wish for new things.  He bought
+her a hat, and for two days she was happy; then she nagged, and he
+bought her a dress.  Three days later she demanded a necklace, and he
+gave her a necklace.  He may continue giving her everything she asks
+for, but if he buys her a Rolls Royce and a house in Park Lane she will
+be a dissatisfied woman, for "the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our
+stars but in ourselves."  I advised him to spend his money on having
+her psycho-analysed.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+To-night Tammas Lownie the joiner came into Dauvit's shop.  He is an
+infrequent attender at Dauvit's parliament, and Dauvit seemed slightly
+surprised at his entry.
+
+"Weel, Tammas," he said, "it's no often that we see you here.  What's
+brocht ye here the nicht?"
+
+Tammas spat in the grate.
+
+"Oh, it was a fine nicht, and I thought I'd just tak a daunder yont,"
+he said easily.
+
+Dauvit looked at him searchingly.
+
+"Na, na, Tammas, it winna dae!  It wasna the fine nicht that brocht ye
+yont.  Ye've got some news I'm thinkin'."
+
+Tammas laughed loudly.
+
+"Dauvit, ye're oncanny!" he cried.  "Ye seem to read what's at the back
+o' a man's held.  But I have nae news to gie ye."
+
+Dauvit chuckled.
+
+"I wudna wonder if ye didna come yont to tell me aboot the eldership,"
+he said slowly.
+
+The expression on Tammas's face showed that he _had_ come to tell us
+that the minister had asked him to become an elder.
+
+"'Od, Dauvit, noo that ye come to mention it I wud like to hear yer
+advice aboot the matter.  I dinna see how I can tak an eldership,
+Dauvit."
+
+"How no?" asked Dauvit in surprise.
+
+Then he added: "But maybe ye ken whether ye've got a sinfu' heart or
+no."
+
+"It's no that," said Tammas hastily, "I'm nae worse than some other
+elders I ken," and he glanced at Jake Tosh.  "No, it's no the sin I'm
+thinkin' o'; it's my trade."
+
+"But," I put in, "why shouldn't a joiner be an elder?"
+
+Tammas bit off a chunk of Bogie Roll.
+
+"That may as may be, dominie, but I'm mair than a joiner; I'm an
+undertakker."
+
+"Weel," said Dauvit, "what aboot that?"
+
+Tammas shook his head sadly.
+
+"An undertakker canna be an elder, Dauvit.  Suppose the minister was
+awa preachin' or at the Assembly, and ane o' his congregation was
+deein', me as an elder micht hae to ging to the bedside and offer up a
+bit prayer."
+
+"There's nothing in that," said Jake proudly; "I've offered up a bit
+prayer afore noo when the minister was awa."
+
+"Aye, Jake," said Tammas, "but ye see you're a roadman.  But an
+undertakker is a different matter.  Goad, lads, I canna gie a man a bit
+prayer at sax o'clock and syne measure him for his coffin at acht.
+That wud look like mixin' religion wi' business."
+
+The assembly thought over this aspect.
+
+"All the same," said the smith, "Dr. Hall is an elder, and naebody ever
+thinks o' accusin' him o' mixin' religion wi' his business."
+
+We all considered this statement.
+
+"Tammas," said Dauvit, "if ye want to be an elder tak it, and never
+mind the undertakkin'.  But if ever ye have to gie a prayer just get
+Jake here to tak on the job."
+
+He began to laugh here.
+
+"I mind o' Jeemie Ritchie when he got his eldership.  The minister gaed
+awa to the Assembly in Edinbro, and as it happened auld Jess Tosh was
+deein', so Jeemie was asked to come up and gie her a prayer.  Jeemie
+was in my shop when the lassie Tosh cam for him, and I never saw a man
+in sic a state.
+
+"'Dauvit,' he cries, 'I canna dae it!  I never offered up a prayer in
+my life!'
+
+"'Hoots, Jeemie,' says I, 'it's easy; just bring in a few bitties frae
+the Bible.'
+
+"Auld Jeemie he scarted his heid.
+
+"'Man, Dauvit,' says he, 'I cudna say twa words o' the Bible.'
+
+"Weel-a-weel, I had to shove him oot o' the shop, and I tell ye, boys,
+he was shakin' like a shakky-trummly.
+
+"Weel, in aboot half-an-hour Jeemie cam back, and he was smilin' like
+onything.
+
+"'Hoo did ye get on?' I speered.
+
+"'Graund!' he cried, '. . . she was deid afore I got there!'"
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+When I published my _Log_ a correspondent wrote accusing me of being
+disloyal to my colleagues in the teaching profession.
+
+"Where is your professional etiquette?" he wrote.
+
+I had lots of letters from teachers, some flattering, some not.  One
+man wrote me from Croydon:--
+
+"Dear Sir,--Are you a fool or merely a silly ass?"
+
+"Both," I replied, "else I should not have paid 2d. for your letter."
+
+In haste the poor man hastened to forward two penny stamps, and to
+apologise for not having stamped the letter he sent me.
+
+"I really thought that I had stamped it," he wrote.
+
+Then I wrote him a nice letter telling him that the mistake was mine,
+for his first letter had had a stamp on it after all.  He never replied
+to that, and I suppose that now he goes about telling his friends that
+I am a fool, a silly ass, and a typical Scot.
+
+Authors hear queer things about themselves.  The other day a friend of
+mine asked for my _Log_ in a West End library.  As the librarian handed
+over the book she shook her head sadly.
+
+"Isn't it sad about the man who wrote that book?" she said.
+
+My friend was startled.
+
+"Sad!  What do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, haven't you heard?" asked the librarian in surprise; "he's a
+confirmed drunkard now."
+
+"Impossible!" cried my friend, "with whisky at ten and six a bottle!"
+
+But I meant to write about colleagues.  One day a class was holding a
+self-government meeting, and they sent for me.  I was annoyed because I
+was having my after-dinner smoke in the staff-room.  However I went up.
+
+"Hullo!" I said as I entered, "what do you want?"
+
+Eglantine the chairman said: "A member of this class has insulted you."
+
+"Impossible!" I cried.
+
+Then Mary got up.
+
+"I did," she blurted out nervously; "I said you were just a silly ass."
+
+"That's all right!" I said cheerfully, "I am," and I made for the door.
+Then the class got excited.
+
+"Aren't you going to do anything?" asked Ian in surprise.
+
+"Good Lord, no!" I cried.  "Why should I?"
+
+"You're on the staff," said Ian.
+
+"Look here," I said impatiently, "I hereby authorise the crowd of you
+to call me any name you like."
+
+The class became indignant.
+
+"You can't criticise the staff," said one.
+
+"Why not?" I asked, and they looked at each other in alarm.  This was
+carrying self-government too far.
+
+Suddenly Mary jumped up.
+
+"Then if we can criticise the staff here goes!  I accuse Miss Brown of
+favouritism."
+
+It was a bombshell.  Everyone jumped up, and some cried: "Shame!
+Withdraw!"  The chairman appealed to me.
+
+"I have nothing to do with it," I protested.
+
+Then bitter words flew.  They told me that I, as a member of the staff,
+should squash Mary.  Voices became louder, but then the bell rang and
+the class had to go to its own class-room to work.
+
+My colleagues when they heard the story agreed with the children; they
+held that I acted wrongly in listening to an accusation against a
+colleague.  My argument was that I was a guest at a meeting; I had no
+vote, nor would I have interfered had I been a member of the meeting.
+I was quite sure that if the bell had not broken up the meeting
+somebody would have made the discovery that Miss Brown was the proper
+person to make the accusation to.  When they thought that Mary insulted
+me they sent for me, and I fully expected they would send for Miss
+Brown.  Again I argued that if Miss Brown had favourites the class had
+a right to criticise her.  If she had no favourites let her arraign the
+class before a meeting of the whole school and accuse them of libel.
+
+Looking back I still think my attitude was right, for unless the staff
+can lay aside all dignity and become members of the gang education is
+not free.  Yet I see now that I was secretly exulting in the
+discomfiture of a colleague . . . a common human failing which none of
+us care to recognise in ourselves.  It is a sad fact but a true one
+that however much Dr. A. protests when a patient tells him that Dr. B.
+is a clumsy fool, unconsciously at least Dr. A. is gratified at the
+criticism of his rival.  Psycho-analysts, that is people who are
+supposed to know the contents of their unconscious, are just as guilty
+in this respect as other doctors, and if anyone doubts this let him ask
+a Freudian what he thinks of the Jungian in the next street.
+
+My earliest memory of professional jealousy goes back to the age of
+seven.  I lived next door to a dentist, a real qualified L.D.S.  Across
+the street lived a quack dental surgeon.  When trade was dull these two
+used to come to their respective doors and converse with each other in
+the good old simple way of putting the fingers to the nose.  They never
+spoke to each other.  Life in a northern town was simple in these days.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Helen Macdonald is four years old, and her mother and I have some
+breezy discussions about her upbringing.  Mrs. Mac has a great
+admiration for her own mother, and she is bent on bringing up her
+daughter in the way that she was brought up.
+
+"Mother made me obey and I'll make Helen obey," she said to-day with
+decision.
+
+"It's dangerous," I said.
+
+"No it isn't; it worked well enough in my case anyway."
+
+"Don't blow your own trumpet, madam!"
+
+She smiled.
+
+"I don't think I am a bad product of the good old way," she said with a
+self-satisfied air.
+
+"Madam, shall I tell you the truth about yourself?"
+
+She bubbled and drew her chair closer to mine.
+
+"Do!" she cried, and then added: "But I won't believe the nasty bits."
+
+Mac chuckled.
+
+"To begin with," I said pompously, "you are an awful example of a bad
+education."
+
+She bowed mockingly and Mac guffawed.  He is a wee bit afraid of his
+wife and he marvels at my courage in ragging her.
+
+"You," I continued, "were made to obey as a child, and as a result you
+became dependent on your mother.  In short you are your own mother."
+
+"Don't be silly," she said with a frown; "I want your serious opinion."
+
+"And you are getting it," I replied.  "Because you had to obey you
+never lived your own life, and naturally you never had a mind of your
+own.  To this day you act as your mother acted.  She made her daughter
+obey; you follow her example; she made scones in such and such a way;
+you make scones in exactly the same way."
+
+"That's right!" laughed Mac.
+
+Mrs. Mac looked thoughtful.
+
+"Anyway," she said quickly, "they are excellent scones."
+
+"Most excellent scones," I hastened to add, "but my point is that if we
+all follow our parents there will be no progress."
+
+"Progress will never bring better scones," said Mac and he patted his
+wife's cheek.
+
+"Mac," I said gallantly, "your wife has brought scones to their perfect
+and utmost evolution.  She has made the super-scone.  Only, Helen isn't
+a scone you know."
+
+At this point Helen was found trying to pull the marble clock down from
+the mantlepiece.  Her mother rescued the clock as it was falling, and
+she scolded the fair Helen.
+
+"You are all theory," she cried to me.  "What would you do in a case
+like this?"
+
+"Same as you did," I answered hastily, and then added: "Only I would
+try to give her so many interesting things to play with that she'd
+forget to want the clock."
+
+Then Mrs. Mac indignantly dragged out Helen's toys from a cupboard.
+
+"Dozens of them!" she cried, "and she is tired of every one."
+
+Then I discoursed on toys.  The toys of the world are nearly all bad.
+Helen has a beautiful sleeping doll that cost five pounds; rather I
+should say that Helen _had_ a beautiful sleeping doll that cost five
+pounds.  On the one occasion that Helen was allowed to play with it she
+made a careful attempt to open the head with a pair of scissors to see
+what made the eyes close and open.  Then her mother put the doll in a
+box, packed the box in a trunk, and explained to Helen that the doll
+was to lie in that trunk until Helen had a little baby girl of her own.
+
+I explained to Mrs. Mac that the toy a child needs is one that will
+take to pieces.  Every toy should be a mine of discovery.  The only
+good toys that I know of are Meccano and Primus, but there is much need
+for constructive toys for younger children.
+
+"Mac," I said, "if you were even a passably good husband you would be
+making Montessori apparatus for your offspring."
+
+We have many arguments like this.  Mrs. Mac's problem is that of a
+million mothers; she has to fit the child into an adult environment.
+Yesterday she was painting in oils.  The baker whistled outside and she
+ran out to get the bread.  On her return she found that Helen was
+busily painting the pink wall-paper a prussian blue.
+
+Wealthy mothers solve the problem by employing nurses, but the solution
+is a poor one.  Few nurses know enough about children, and many do
+positive harm by frightening the child.  Nor can the hired nurse give
+the infinite amount of love that a child demands.  If she could it is
+probable that she would be sacked, for no mother likes to see her child
+lavish his love on another.  On more than one occasion I have
+discovered that the parents of children who loved me were hostile to
+me.  That is natural.  If a father is continually hearing his daughter
+say: "Mr. Neill says this; Mr. Neill says that," I have every sympathy
+with him when he growls: "Damn this Neill blighter!"  On the other hand
+I have no sympathy with him if he expects me to ask his little Ada how
+her dear charming papa is.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+A book of ten volumes might well be written on the subject of parents
+and teachers.  If a teacher were the author no publisher would look at
+it, for the language would be unprintable.
+
+To the teacher the parent is an enemy.  When Mrs. Brown comes to school
+she and the dominie chat pleasantly about the weather, while the
+children look on and marvel.  Little Willie is amazed to see his mother
+smile as she talks, for it was only last night that he heard her say:
+"That Mr. Smith is by no means a gentleman.  Did you see his nails?"
+Poor little Willie does not know that his mother and the dominie are
+using fair smiles to cover a real hostility.  Mrs. Brown will talk
+agreeably all through her visit, but as she is shaking hands on the
+doorstep she will say, "Oh, by the way, Mr. Smith, Willie came home
+last night saying that he wasn't allowed to play hockey yesterday.  I
+want him to play every Wednesday."
+
+"But," says Mr. Smith deferentially, "I--er--well, Wednesday is the day
+when the Seniors play, and--er--since Willie is a Junior I--er--I--"
+
+"Oh, thank you so much," she gushes, "I knew that you would arrange
+that he will play on Wednesdays," and she sails away.
+
+Or perhaps Mrs. Brown will put it on to her husband.
+
+"The way things are done at that school are disgraceful, Tom.  You must
+go and see Smith and insist that the boy has his hockey."
+
+Well, the poor father comes up to school, and he and the dominie
+discuss the weather and Lloyd George.  All the time Brown is trying to
+muster up enough courage to tackle the hockey question.
+
+"Er," he begins after clearing his throat, "my wife was saying
+something about--er--what a splendid view you have from here!"
+
+"First rate," nods the dominie.  "Your wife was saying?"
+
+"Er--something about hockey."  He coughs.  "Splendid game!  I--er--I
+must go . . . er--good-bye."
+
+No mere man can badger a dominie.
+
+From the parent's point of view a teacher is a rival when he isn't a
+sort of under-gardener.  The parent would never think of arguing with
+the doctor when he says that Willie has measles; the doctor is a
+specialist in disease, and the parent is not.  But it is different with
+the dominie.  He is a specialist in education, but then so is the
+parent.  That is possibly one of the reasons that the teaching
+profession is such a low-class one, for a teacher is merely a
+specialist in a world of specialists.  Everybody knows how a child
+ought to be brought up.  In justice to parents I must confess that
+there are only two teachers in Britain to whom I should trust the
+education of any child of mine.  Most teachers are instructionists
+only, and the parent has some ground for suspicion.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+Duncan was talking about awkward moments to-night, and he told of the
+shock he got when he joined the army and found that the sergeant of his
+squad was an old pupil of his.
+
+"I think I can beat that, Duncan," I said, and told him the story of an
+army lecture.  I had a commission in the R.G.A. for a short time, and
+one morning I had to give a lecture to the men of the battery on lines
+of fire.  They were mostly miners, and I tried to make the lecture as
+simple as possible.  I began with the definition of an angle and went
+on to circular measurement.  I noticed that one man stared at the
+blackboard in bewilderment, a very stupid looking fellow he was.  When
+the lecture was over I approached him.
+
+"I don't think you understood what I was trying to tell you," I said.
+
+"I did have some difficulty in following it, sir," he said.
+
+"H'm!  What were you in civil life?"
+
+"Mathematical master in a secondary school, sir."
+
+I could not rise to the occasion.  I fled to the mess and ordered a
+brandy and soda.
+
+Speaking about rising to the occasion brings to my mind another army
+incident in which I did not shine.  I was a recruit in the infantry,
+and a gym sergeant was putting us through physical jerks.  He told us
+the familiar tale that although we had broken our mothers' hearts we
+wouldn't break his; in short he put the wind up us.  I got very nervous.
+
+"Right turn!" he roared, and I thought he said "Right about turn."
+
+He told the squad to stand easy, and then he eyed me curiously.
+
+"You!  Big fellow!  Take that smile off your face!"
+
+I don't know why he said that for I couldn't have smiled at that moment
+for anything less than my ticket.  He studied me carefully for a bit,
+then enlightenment seemed to dawn on him.
+
+"I got it!" he exclaimed triumphantly.
+
+"I know wot's wrong with you!  You've got a stupid face; you can't
+think; you never thought in yer life."
+
+I looked on the ground.
+
+"_Did_ yer ever think in yer life?"
+
+"No, sergeant," I said humbly.
+
+"I blinkin' well thought so!" he said and moved away.
+
+Then the worm turned.  Who was he that he should bully a scholar and a
+gentleman?  I would lower him to the dust.
+
+"Sergeant!"
+
+He turned quickly.
+
+"Wot d'ye want?" and he tried to freeze me with his look.
+
+"It isn't my fault I can't think, sergeant; I was unfortunate enough to
+spend five years at a university."
+
+His mouth gaped, and his eyes stared, but only for a moment.  Then he
+rose to the occasion.
+
+"I blinkin' well thought so!" he cried.  "Squad! . . . .  Tshun!"
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+It is Sunday night, and I have just been to town.  At the Cross I stood
+and listened to a revivalist bellowing from a soap-box.  His message
+was Salvation but I was more interested in the man than his message.
+Consciously he is out to save sinners, but I suspect that unconsciously
+he is out to draw attention to himself.  I do not blame him.  I do the
+same thing when I publish a book; Lloyd George and George Robey and the
+revivalist and I are all striving each in his little corner to draw
+attention to ourselves.
+
+The exhibition impulse is in every child.  A child loves to run about
+naked, but then society in the form of the mother steps in and says:
+"You must not do that!"  But we know that every wish lives on in the
+depths of the mind, and the childish wish to exhibit the body appears
+in later years as a desire to preach or sing or act or lecture.
+
+This is the psychology of the testimonials for liver pills which appear
+in every local paper.  It is the psychology of much crime.  Many a slum
+youth glories in having been birched, simply because his gang looks on
+him as a hero.
+
+I hasten to state that exhibitionism alone does not make a Cabinet
+Minister or a comedian.  There are other motives from infancy, an
+important one being the desire for power.  I recall that as a boy I
+delighted in following a drove of cattle and smiting the poor creatures
+hard with a cudgel.  Freud would say that in this way I was releasing
+sex energy, but I think that the infantile sense of power was at the
+root of my cruelty; here was I, a wee boy, controlling a big heavy
+stot.  It is love of power that makes little boys want to be
+engine-drivers.
+
+To the teacher this love of power is the most vital thing in a child's
+make-up.  Discipline thwarts the boy at every turn, and our adult
+authority is fatally injuring the boy's character.  Our task is to
+provide the child with opportunity to wield his power.  We suppress it
+and the lad shows his power in destructive instead of constructive
+activities.  I find that I keep returning to this subject of
+suppression, but it is the most important evil in education.  It does
+not matter how perfect a teacher makes his instruction in arithmetic;
+if he has not come to see that suppression of a child is a tragedy, his
+instruction is of no value.  From an examination point of view, yes;
+from a spiritual point of view, no.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Parents and teachers fail because they cannot see the world as the
+child sees it.  The child of three is a frank egoist.  He cares for no
+one but himself, and the world is his.  Anger him and he would have you
+drawn and quartered if he had the power.  His instincts prompt him to
+master his environment, and to begin with, when he is a few weeks old,
+his environment and his own person are indistinguishable.
+
+Homer Lane gives a delightful description of the child's first efforts
+and how they are frustrated by ignorant adults.
+
+"At a very early age the child becomes aware through various processes
+that his own hand which he has seen moving across his line of vision is
+a part of himself, and that he can move it himself.  He has discovered
+power.  He then enters upon his career.  The same motive that will
+govern his behaviour for the rest of his life comes into operation, and
+he wants to use this new-found power for some purpose that will
+increase his enjoyment of life.  Up to this time he has had only one
+pleasure, and that was to do with the commissariat.  Having discovered
+power over his fist he therefore wants to put it in his mouth . . . a
+difficult task requiring much practice and patient perseverance.
+
+"As he goes on working he learns that his power increases with effort,
+and now his motive is modified.  At first it was purely materialistic;
+he wanted to have his fist in his mouth.  Now he wants to put it there.
+His interest is in doing the thing rather than in having it.
+
+"This is the spiritual element in his present desire, and now comes the
+first mistake in education.  The mother, analysing the behaviour of the
+child, has noticed his complaint at the difficulty of the task as
+fatigue sets in, and, misunderstanding the motive of the child she
+helps him to put his fist in his mouth.  But that is just what the
+child did not want, and he protests violently against this interference
+with his purpose in life.
+
+"The mother again makes a false analysis of the situation, and
+concludes that his protest is the result of his disappointment that
+there is no nourishment in the fist.  She then gives him food or
+paregoric, whatever may be her method of dealing with the spiritual
+unrest of her child, and thus drugs his creative faculties."
+
+I have said that the infant is an egoist.  If his egoism is allowed
+full scope he will enter upon the next stage of life, the
+self-assertive stage, with a huge capacity for being altruistic.  This
+stage comes on about the age of six or seven.  But if the child has had
+parents who believe in moulding character he will have had many severe
+lectures about his selfishness.  These lectures will not have cured his
+selfishness; they will have driven it underground for the moment.  The
+selfishness of adults is one result of the moral lecture in childhood,
+for no wish or emotion will remain buried for ever.
+
+The age of self-assertion is the rowdy age, and naturally it is now
+that father uses his authority.  The child is still ego-centric, but in
+a different way.  At the age of three he was the king of the world; at
+the age of seven he is the king of the other boys who play with him.
+He is now reckoning with society, and he uses society as a background
+against which he may play the hero.  Thus be bleeds Jack's nose for no
+reason in the world other than that he thus asserts himself.  If he
+plays horses with the boy next door he insists upon being the driver.
+
+It is at this period that he should be free from authority.  If
+authority in the shape of father or teacher or policeman steps in to
+suppress his self-assertion the boy becomes an enemy of all authority
+and very often anti-social.  The "rebel" in the Socialist camp is a
+good specimen of the man whose self-assertive period was injured by
+authority, and I suspect that the truculent drunk is letting off the
+steam that he should have let off at the age of eight.
+
+The third stage in the evolution of a child is the adolescent stage.
+For the first time the boy becomes a unit in society.  Hitherto he has
+played for his own hand; his games have been games in which personal
+prowess was the desired aim.  Now he feels that he is one of a team.
+Even before puberty the team-forming impulse is seen; Putter, for
+instance, in _The Boy and his Gang_, gives ten to sixteen as the gang
+age.
+
+These divisions are purely arbitrary, and children differ much in
+evolution.  The teacher, however, should have a general knowledge of
+these three phases.  I have often seen a school prescribe cricket or
+hockey for boys who are still in the self-assertive stage.  The result
+was that, having no team impulse, each boy had no further interest in
+the game when the umpire shouted: "Out!"
+
+I used to umpire for boys and girls of eight to eleven, and it was a
+tiresome business.  Quite often when a boy had been bowled with the
+first ball, he would throw down the bat in disgust and refuse to give
+the other side an innings.  There was nothing wrong with the children;
+what was wrong was that a team phase game was being forced on a
+self-assertive phase group.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Duncan and two other dominies were in to-night and we got on to golf
+yarns.  I remarked that there were very few good ones, and they all
+trotted out their favourites.  I liked Duncan's best.
+
+An oldish man was ploughing his way to the tenth hole at St. Andrews,
+and, when he ultimately holed out in nineteen, he turned to his caddie.
+
+"Caddie," he cried in disgust, "this is the worst game I ever played."
+
+The caddie stared at him open-mouthed.
+
+"So ye _have_ played afore, have ye?" he gasped in amazement.
+
+Why are there no cricket or football stories, I wonder?  Possibly
+because they are team games; a team is a crowd, and I never heard of a
+joke against a crowd.  A crowd is an impersonal thing, and no one can
+joke about an impersonal thing.  I never heard of a joke about the moon
+or a turnip.  Yet are there not jokes against a nation, and a nation is
+a crowd?  Take the joke about the Scot who was brought up at Bow Street
+for being drunk and disorderly.  The magistrate, before passing
+sentence, asked the accused if he had anything to say for himself.
+
+"Weel, ma lord, it was like this.  I travelled frae Glesga to London
+yesterday, and I got into bad company in the train."
+
+"Bad company?"
+
+"Aye, ma lord.  When I got into the train at Glesga Central I had twa
+bottles o' whuskey in my bag, and . . . a' the other men in my
+compartment was teetotal."
+
+That looks like a joke against a long-suffering race, but is it so in
+reality?  Make the traveller an 'Oodersfield' man on his way to see the
+Cup-tie Final at Chelsea, and it is not changed in essence.  Only it
+has become a convention that the Scot is a hard drinker.  It is the
+personal touch that makes the joke, and it is the individual that we
+laugh at.
+
+I presume that the typical joke about Scots' meanness appeals to
+Englishmen because Englishmen are mean themselves.  No joke appeals to
+a man unless it releases some repressed wish of his own.  No one
+expects a devout Roman Catholic to see the point of a joke about
+extreme unction.  The professional comedian to be a success must know
+what the crowd repressions are.  Dickens is a great humorist because he
+knew by intuition what the crowd would laugh at.  And that brings me to
+the subject of human types.
+
+Broadly speaking there are two types of man.  One is called an
+extrovert (Latin, to turn outwards); he identifies himself with the
+crowd, and he lives the life of the crowd.  Lloyd George and Horatio
+Bottomley are typical extroverts; they seem to know instinctively what
+the crowd is thinking, and unconsciously they speak and act as the
+crowd wants them to speak and act.  Dickens was another, and that is
+why he has so universal an appeal.
+
+The other type, the introvert type, turns inward.  They do not identify
+themselves with the crowd.  What the public wants does not concern
+them; they give the crowd what they think it ought to want.  This class
+includes the thinkers, the men who are in advance of their time.  An
+introvert is never popular with the crowd because the crowd never
+understands him.  He can never get away from himself, and he sums up
+events according to the personal effect they have on himself.  Yet to
+the unconscious of the introvert crowd opinion is of the greatest
+importance.
+
+In the realm of humour the extrovert is a success; what amuses him
+amuses the crowds.  But the introvert laughs alone, and in some cases
+he decides that the crowd has no sense of humour, and he becomes a
+cynic.
+
+It is necessary that the teacher should be able to recognise the
+different types.  The extrovert is popular; he it is who leads the
+gang.  Doubts and fears do not trouble him; life is pleasant and he
+laughs his way through it.  But the introvert is the boy who stands
+apart in a corner of the playground; he is timid and fears the rough
+and tumble of team games.  He feels inferior and he turns in upon
+himself to find superiority.  Thus he will day-dream of situations in
+which he is a hero like David Copperfield when he stood at Dora's
+garden gate and saw himself rescuing her from the burning house.
+
+I think that the job of the teacher is to help each type to a position
+midway between introversion and extroversion.  The boy who lives in the
+crowd might well be tempted to take more interest in his own
+individuality, and the introvert might well be encouraged to project
+his emotions outward.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+To-night Mac told me a story about old Simpson the dominie over at
+Pikerton.  Last summer an English bishop was touring Scotland, and one
+morning he drove up to Simpson's school in a big car, flung open the
+door and walked in.
+
+"Good morning, children," he cried.
+
+The bairns sat gazing at him in awe.  He turned to Simpson.
+
+"My good sir," he protested, "when I enter a village school in England,
+the children all rise and say: 'Good morning, sir'!"
+
+"Possibly," said Simpson dryly, "but in Scotland children are not
+accustomed to see strangers walk into a school.  Scots visitors always
+knock at the door and await the headmaster's invitation to enter."
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Mac and I were talking about education to-night.
+
+"I never heard you mention the teaching side of education," he
+remarked.  "Giving a child freedom isn't enough, you know.  What about
+History and Geography and so on?"
+
+"I think they are jolly well taught in many schools, Mac," I said.  "It
+is the psychological side of education that is a thousand years behind
+the times."
+
+"Yes," said Mac doubtfully, "but suppose you have a school of your own,
+I presume you'd teach the English yourself?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"How would you do it?"
+
+I thought for a while.
+
+"I'd reverse the usual process, Mac," I said.  "Usually the teacher
+begins with Chaucer and works forward to Dickens; I would begin with
+_Comic Cuts_ and _Dead-wood Dick_ and work back to Chaucer."
+
+"Oh, do be serious for once," he said impatiently.
+
+"I am quite serious, Mac," I said.  "The only thing that matters in
+school work is interest, and I know from experience that the child is
+interested in _Comic Cuts_ but not in the _Canterbury Tales_.  My job
+is to encourage the boy's interest in _Comic Cuts_."
+
+I ignored Macdonald's reference to idiocy, and went on.
+
+"You see, Mac, what you do is this: you see a boy reading _Dead-wood
+Dick_, and you take his paper away from him and possibly whack the
+little chap for wasting his time.  But you don't kill his interest in
+penny dreadfuls, and the result is that in later years he reads the
+Sunday paper that supplies the most lurid details of murders and
+outrages.  My way is to encourage the lad to devour tales of blood and
+thunder so that in a short time blood and thunder have no more interest
+for him.  The reason why most of the literature published to-day is
+tripe is that the public likes tripe, and it likes tripe because its
+infantile interest in tripe was suppressed in favour of Chaucer and
+Shakespeare."
+
+"But," cried Mac, "isn't Shakespeare better for him than tripe?"
+
+"Yes and no.  If every poet were a Shakespeare the world would be a
+dull place; you need the tripe to form a contrast.  The best way to
+enjoy the quintessence of roses, Mac, is to take a walk through the
+dung-heaps first."
+
+"What books would you advise your pupils to read?" asked Mac.
+
+"In their proper sequence . . .  _Comic Cuts, Deadwood Dick, John Bull,
+Answers, Pearson's Weekly, Boy's Own Paper, Scout, Treasure Island,
+King Solomon's Mines, White Fang, The Call of the Wild, The Invisible
+Man,_ practically anything of Jack London, Rider Haggard, Conan Doyle,
+Kipling."
+
+"And serious literature?"
+
+"All literature is serious, Mac."
+
+"I mean Dr. Johnson, Swift, Bunyan, Milton, Dryden, and that lot," said
+Mac.
+
+I smiled.
+
+"Mac, I want you to answer this question: have you read Boswell's _Life
+of Johnson_?"
+
+"Extracts," he admitted awkwardly.
+
+"Bunyan's _Life and Death of Mr. Badman_?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Milton's _Areopagitica_?"
+
+"Er--no."
+
+"Swift's _Tale of a Tub_?"
+
+"No."
+
+I sighed.
+
+"Would you like to read them?" I asked.
+
+"I don't think they would interest me," he admitted.
+
+"Then in heaven's name, why expect children to have any interest in
+them?  If these classics weren't shoved down children's throats the
+adult population of this country would be sitting of an evening reading
+and enjoying Milton instead of _John Bull_."
+
+Mac would not have this.
+
+"Children must read the classics so that they may get a good style," he
+said.
+
+"Style be blowed!" I cried.  "The only way to get a style is by
+writing.  Mac, I should cut out all the lectures about Chaucer and
+Spenser and Shakespeare, and let the children write during the English
+period . . . if I had periods, which I wouldn't.  I don't want style
+from kiddies; I want to see them create in their own way.  If they are
+free to create they will form their own style."
+
+In a conversation one always has a tendency to overstate a case, and as
+the argument went on I found myself saying wild things.  Writing calmly
+now I still hold to my attitude concerning style.  I love a book
+written in fine style, but I refuse to impose style on children.  In
+every child there is a gigantic protest.  Thus the son of praying
+parents often turns out to be a scoffer.  I had a good instance of the
+danger of superimposition of style.
+
+I had a class of boys and girls of fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen
+years of age.  For one period a week we all wrote five minute essays,
+and then we read them out.  Sometimes we would make criticisms; for
+instance one girl used the word "beastly" in a serious essay, and we
+all protested against it.  Then one day the head-master decided that
+they should write essays for him.  He set a serious subject--The
+Function of Authority, I think it was--and then he went over their
+books with a blue pencil and corrected their spelling and style.
+
+Three days later my English period came round.  I entered the room and
+found the class sitting round the fire.
+
+"Hullo!" I said, "aren't you going to write?"
+
+"No," growled the class.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Fed up with writing.  We want to talk about economics or psychology."
+
+A fortnight later they made an attempt to write short essays, but it
+was a miserable failure; all the joy in creation had been killed by
+that blue pencil.
+
+I can give an example of the other way, the only way.  One boy of
+fifteen hated writing essays, and when I began the five minute essay
+game he sat and read a book.  After a time I gave out the subject
+"Mystery," and I saw him look up quickly with flashing eyes.
+
+"Phew!  What a ripping subject!" he cried, "I must have a shot at that!"
+
+His shot was promising, and he continued to make shots, until some of
+his essays were praised by the class.  Then one day he came to me.
+
+"I don't know anything about stops and things," he said, "and I want
+you to tell me about them."
+
+This is my ideal of education; no child ever learns a thing until he
+wants to learn it.  That lad picked up all he wanted to know about
+stops in half-an-hour.  He was interested in stops because he wanted to
+write better essays.  I need hardly say that he had listened to
+hundreds of lessons on stops during his school career.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+To-morrow I return to London, and to-night I went over to say good-bye
+to Dauvit.
+
+"Aye, dominie, and so ye're gaein' back to London!" he said.
+
+"I don't want to leave this lazy life, Dauvit," I said, "but I must go
+back and start my school."
+
+"It'll cost ye some bawbees to gang to London," put in Jake Tosh.
+"Penny three ha'pennies a mile noo-a-days I onderstand."
+
+"A shullin' a mile for corps," remarked the undertaker.
+
+Dauvit chuckled.
+
+"So ye'll better no dee in London, dominie," he laughed.
+
+"And that reminds me of Peter Wilson, him that passed into the Civil
+Service and gaed to London.  He came hame onexpectedly wan mornin' and
+his father he says: 'What in a' the earth brocht ye hame in the month
+o' February, Peter?  Surely ye dinna hae a holiday the noo?'
+
+"'No,' says Peter, 'but I had a cauld and I thocht I was maybe takkin'
+pewmonia, and, weel father, corpses is a bob a mile on the railway.'"
+
+"Dauvit," I said, "I don't care where I am buried."
+
+"Is that so?" asked Jake in surprise.  "What's become o' yer
+patriotism, dominie?  I canna onderstand a man no wanting to be buried
+in his ain country.  For my pairt I wudna like to be buried ony place
+but the wee kirkyaird up the brae there."
+
+Dauvit grunted.
+
+"What does it matter, Jake, whaur ye're buried?"
+
+"Goad," said Jake, "it matters a lot.  The grund up in the kirkyaird is
+the best grund in Scotland.  It's a' sand, and they tell me that yer
+corp will keep for years in that grund."
+
+Dauvit laughed, but the others seemed to take Jake's preservation
+argument seriously.
+
+"Jake," said Dauvit, "does it no strike ye that to be buried in yer
+native place is a disgrace?"
+
+"Hoo that, na?" said Jake.
+
+"Because the man that bides in the place he was born in is of nae
+importance.  A' the best men leave their native village, aye, and their
+native country.  Aye, lads, the best men and the worst women leave
+their native country."
+
+"I sincerely trust that you are not insinuating that they leave
+together, Dauvit," I put in hastily.
+
+"No, they dinna do that, dominie; but whether they meet in London I
+dinna ken," and he smiled wickedly.
+
+Jake spat in the grate.
+
+"I dinna see what the attraction o' London is," he said with a touch of
+contempt.
+
+"It is rather difficult to describe," I said.  "For one thing you feel
+that you are in the centre of things.  You are in the midst of all the
+best plays and concerts and processions . . . and you never think of
+going to see them.  Then all the important people are there, the King
+and Lloyd George and Bernard Shaw . . . but you never see them
+anywhere.  Then there are the places of historic interest, the Tower,
+Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's . . . and you don't know where they are
+until your cousins come up for a week's trip, and then you ask a
+policeman where the Tower is.  And the strange thing is that you get to
+love London."
+
+"There will be a fell puckle funerals I daresay," said the undertaker.
+
+"To tell the truth," I answered, "I have never seen a funeral in
+London.  In the suburbs, yes, but never in the centre of the West End.
+I've often seen them at the crematorium in Golders Green."
+
+The undertaker frowned.
+
+"That crematin' business shud be abolished by act o' Parliament," he
+said gruffly.  "It's just a waste o' guid wood and coal.  They tell me
+it taks twa ton o' coal ilka time."
+
+I was surprised to find that the broad-minded Dauvit agreed with the
+undertaker in condemning cremation.  I suspect that early training has
+something to do with it, and there may be an unconscious connecting of
+cremation with hell-fire.  Dauvit's argument that cremation would
+destroy the evidence in poisoning cases was a pure rationalisation.
+
+I wondered why the topic of funerals kept coming up, and I laughingly
+put the matter to Dauvit.
+
+"Maybe it's because we're sad because ye're gaein' awa," he said
+half-seriously.  "We'll miss yer crack at nichts."
+
+At last I got up to go.
+
+"Aweel, Dauvit, I'll be going," I said.
+
+"Aweel, so long," said Dauvit without looking up.  The others said
+"Guidnicht" or "So Long," and I went out.  I was sorry to leave these
+good friends, and they were sorry to lose me; yet we parted, it may be,
+for years, just as if we were to see each other to-morrow.  We are a
+queer race.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+When I arrived in London to-night I received a blow.  A letter awaited
+me saying that the landlord of the school I was taking over had decided
+to sell the property.  Thus all my dreams of a free school vanished in
+smoke.  There isn't a house to rent in London; thousands are for sale,
+but I have no money to buy.  If I had money I should hesitate to buy,
+for if a school is a success it expands, and the ideal thing to do is
+to take it out to the country where there is fresh air and space to
+grow.
+
+To-night I feel pessimistic; it is difficult to be an optimist when a
+long-planned scheme suddenly falls to pieces.
+
+I think of my capitalist friend Lindsay.  He could buy me a school
+to-morrow, and never miss the money, but I don't think I should accept
+it.  He would always have a big say in the running of it, and his
+ideals are not mine.  I know other people with money, but I fancy that
+they have no faith in me.  That is one of the disadvantages of writing
+light books like _A Dominie's Log_.  The adult reads it and says:
+"Funny chap this!"  But people have little faith in funny chaps.  You
+can be a funny chap if you are a magistrate or a cabinet minister, but
+a teacher must be a staid dignified person.  He must be a man who by
+his serious demeanour will impress the children and lead them out of
+the morass of original sin in which they were born.  Montessori is
+catching on in the educational world not entirely because of her
+excellent system; part of her success is due to the fact that she never
+makes a joke; she is always the dignified moral model teacher.
+
+Poor Montessori!  Here I am transferring my irritation at the landlord
+who sold my school to her.  I beg her pardon.  Nor am I really annoyed
+with the landlord; the person I am annoyed with is myself.  I bungled
+that school business.
+
+Now I feel better.  When I am irritated I always think of the traveller
+from St. Andrews.  He arrived at Leuchars Junction and had five minutes
+to wait for the Edinburgh train.  He entered the bar and had a drink.
+He had a second drink, and then awoke to the fact that he had missed
+the train.  The next train was due in two hours.  The barmaid shut the
+bar between trains and the traveller went out on the platform.  It was
+a cold rainy November night.  He went to the waiting room, but there
+was no fire there.
+
+"Anyway," he said, "I'll have a smoke," and he filled his pipe.  Then
+he found that he had but one match left.  He struck it, and it went
+out.  He went out to the platform and found an old porter screwing down
+the lamps.  The porter knelt down to tie his lace and the traveller
+approached him.
+
+"Could you oblige me with a match?"
+
+The old porter eyed him dispassionately.
+
+"I dinna smoke.  I dinna believe in smokin'.  I dinna hae a match."
+
+The traveller walked wearily forward to an automatic machine and
+inserted his last penny . . . and drew out a bar of butterscotch.  He
+tossed it over the line, and then he threw his pipe after it.  He
+walked along the platform, and then he came back.  The old porter was
+again tying his lace.  The traveller suddenly rushed at him and kicked
+him as hard as he could.
+
+"What did ye do that for?" demanded the poor old man when he picked
+himself up.
+
+The traveller turned away in disgust.
+
+"Och, to hell wi' you; ye're ay tying your lace!" he said.
+
+Lots of people cannot see the joke in this yarn, and I challenge anyone
+to explain the point.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Good fortune came to rescue me from sorrowing over my lost school.  It
+sent me to Holland thuswise: about five hundred Famine Area children
+were coming from Vienna to England, and I was invited to become one of
+the escort.  Then it struck me that I might go over earlier and have a
+look at the Dutch schools.  I hastened to get a few passport
+photographs; I looked at them . . . and then I thought I shouldn't risk
+going.  However, on second thoughts, I decided to risk it, and went to
+the passport office.  There a gentleman with a big cigar looked at the
+photograph; then he looked at me.
+
+"The face of a criminal," his eyes seemed to say as he studied the
+photo.
+
+"Isn't it like me?" I asked in alarm.
+
+"Quite a good likeness," he said brusquely, and passed me on to the
+next pigeon-hole.
+
+At last I landed in Flushing, and a kind guard found me a carriage.
+There I began to learn the Dutch language.  "Niet rooken."  Scots
+_reek_ means _smoke_: hurrah! "do not smoke!"
+
+"Verbodden te spuwen."  "It is forbidden to----" no, that wouldn't be
+nice!  Got it!  "Do not spit!"
+
+At this juncture a pretty Scheveningen lassie entered and greeted me.
+Alas!  I knew but five words of Dutch, and when I thought the matter
+over I concluded that they were not very appropriate for carrying on a
+mild flirtation.  Still, it's wonderful how much you can do with facial
+expression.  Just before the train started a man entered.  He knew
+English, and with more kindness than knowledge of humanity he offered
+to act as interpreter.  The ass! as if a fellow can tell a girl through
+an interpreter that her hair is just the shade he admires.  This fisher
+lassie was the only pretty girl I saw in Holland in ten days.
+
+Rotterdam.  My first and abiding impression was that never before had I
+seen so many badly-dressed people.  If I had money and a profiteering
+complex I should set up a Bond Street shop in the centre of Rotterdam.
+No, that's wrong; that wasn't my first impression at all: my first
+impression was of a window filled with cigars at six cents each--one
+and a fifth pence.  From that moment I loved Holland and the Dutch.
+What did it matter if their clothes were badly cut?  What did anything
+matter?  I dived into that shop and bought twenty . . . and ten yards
+farther on discovered a shop with fatter and longer cigars at five
+cents each.  Three days later in the Hague I walked round the cigar
+shops for two hours, dying for a smoke, but not daring to buy a cigar
+at five cents lest in the next street I should find a shop offering
+them at four cents.
+
+It was in Rotterdam that I discovered how bad my manners were.  I was
+sitting in a cafe when a gentleman entered.  He swept off his hat and
+bowed graciously . . . and I hastily put a protecting hand on the
+pocket containing my pocket-book.  But every man who entered greeted me
+in the same way, and I realised that I was in a polite country.  By the
+end of the week I was beating the Dutch at their own game, for I swept
+off my hat to every policeman, shopkeeper, tramwayman I spoke to.
+
+On a Monday morning I walked forth to inspect the Dutch schools.  I saw
+a troop of little girls following a mistress, and I joined the
+procession.  They turned into a playground, and I followed.  I
+approached the lady.
+
+"Do you speak English?"
+
+"Engelish!  Ja!" she said with a smile.
+
+"I am an English--no, Scots teacher," I explained, "and I should like
+to see the school."
+
+"I will ask the head-mistress," she said, and entered the school, while
+I stood and admired the bonny white dresses of the girls.
+
+She returned shaking her head.
+
+"The head-mistress says that it is not allowed to visit a school in
+Holland without a permit from the Mansion House."
+
+"A rotten country!" I growled, and went away.
+
+In the street I ran into a group of boys led by a master who was
+smoking a fat cigar.
+
+"Speak English?" I asked, lifting my hat gracefully.
+
+"Nichtenrichtilbricht," he said; at least that's how it sounded.
+
+"Thank you," I said, lifted my hat again, and fell in behind the boys.
+I was determined to see this thing through.
+
+I tackled him again when we reached the playground.
+
+"I the head would see," I began, "the ober-johnny, the chef."
+
+"Ja!" he exclaimed with an enlightened grin, and nodded.  In ten
+seconds the chief stood before me.  He could speak a broken English,
+and said he would be glad to show me round.  It was a third class
+school, and I gathered that in Holland there are three grades of State
+school; the first class is attended by the rich, the second by the
+middle class, and the third by the poor.
+
+The school was very like a Board School in England.  The children sat
+in the familiar desks and were spoon-fed by the familiar teacher.
+There was nothing new about it.  I noticed that hand writing seemed to
+be the most important thing, and each class teacher proudly showed me
+exercise books filled with beautiful copper-plate writing.  Most
+obliging class teachers they were.  Would I like to hear some singing?
+It was wonderful singing in three parts; what surprised me was that the
+boys seemed to be just as keen on singing as the girls.  I have always
+found it otherwise in Scotland and England.
+
+In this school I got the gratifying news that corporal punishment is
+not allowed in Dutch schools, and later I learned that this applies to
+all reformatories also.
+
+I think the Dutch are fond of children.  Children seem to be
+everywhere.  I went to the police-station to register as an alien, and
+as the inspector was examining my passport this wee girl of three
+toddled in and climbed on his knees.  He laid down his pen and fondled
+the child.  Then his wife came in; she had been out shopping, and
+wanted him to admire the big potatoes she had bought.  I was delighted
+to see the human element mingle with the official.  A country that
+allows wives and children to mix up with its red-tape is on the right
+road to health if not wealth.
+
+I went to the Hague next day, and English friends met me at the station
+and piloted me to their home.  Next morning I visited an establishment
+called the Observatiehuis, and found that the superintendent had spent
+six years in England and had an English wife.  The observation house,
+he explained, is a home for bad boys.  When convicted they are sent
+there and are "observed."  If a boy is well-behaved he is sent to live
+with a family and learn a trade; if he is incorrigible he is sent to a
+reformatory.
+
+I looked in vain for the new psychological way of treating delinquents.
+There was discipline here, but it was kindly discipline, for Mr. Engels
+is a kindly man; the boys sang as they swept the stairs.  That was
+good, yet, it was Mr. Engels that brought freedom into the school; his
+successor may be a bully.
+
+From Mr. Engels I got a letter of introduction to a real reformatory in
+Amersfoort, and off I set.  Amersfoort is inland and I expected to find
+much language difficulty there, for I thought it unlikely that English
+would be spoken so far inland.
+
+Amersfoort is a beautiful old town, and I at once set out to find the
+Coppleport mentioned in my guide-book.  I suppose I looked a lost soul.
+A youth of eighteen jumped off his cycle and lifted his cap.  Then he
+pointed to a badge he wore in his coat.
+
+"Boy scout!" he said.
+
+"Excellent!" I cried, "you speak English?"
+
+He held out his hand.
+
+"Good bye!" he said; "pleased you to meet!"
+
+"How do you do?" I said.
+
+He grinned.
+
+"God damn!" he said sweetly.
+
+After that conversation seemed to die down.  I managed to convey to him
+that I was looking for the Coppleport, and he led me to it.  Gradually
+his English improved, and he told me of his brother in England.  A nice
+lad.  I told him that I had once had a long conversation with the great
+B.P., but he looked blank.
+
+"Baden Powell, your chief," I explained.
+
+He shook his head; he had never heard of B.P.  I think now that what
+was wrong was that he did not understand the name as I pronounced it;
+possibly he knows B.P. under the sound of Bahah Povell or something
+similar.
+
+On the following morning I went to the reformatory.  It was a beautiful
+building fitted with every appliance necessary . . . and one not
+necessary--a solitary confinement room.  A young teacher, Mr. Conijn, a
+very decent chap, who could speak excellent English, showed me round.
+Every door we came to had to be opened with a key and locked behind us.
+Here there was more of military discipline than in the Observatiehuis,
+but none of the boys looked sulky or unhappy.  The relations of the
+boys and the teachers were fine; as Conijn passed a lad he would pull
+his hair or pass a funny remark, and the boy would grin and reply.
+
+"Any self-government?" I asked.
+
+"We tried it but it was no good.  It may work with English boys but not
+with Dutch," said Mr. Conijn.
+
+"Did you have locked doors?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"Then self-government hadn't the ghost of a chance to succeed," I
+remarked.
+
+We entered a class where an old man of about eighty was teaching a
+group.
+
+"Why do these lads keep their eyes on the ground?" I asked.  "Is their
+spirit crushed out of them?"
+
+Conijn laughed.
+
+"They are admiring your boots!" he cried.
+
+I wore a pair of ski-ing boots on my trip, and all Holland stared
+open-mouthed at them.  If I had been wanted for a murder I don't think
+anyone in Holland could have identified me, for their eyes never got
+above my boots.
+
+One of the masters, Mr. van Something-or-other, very trustingly lent me
+his bike, and on the following day I cycled to Laren to see the
+Humanitarian School there.  Nearly every road has a cycle path on one
+side and a riding path on the other, but in spite of the excellent
+roads I did not enjoy cycling in Holland; a free wheel was of little
+value on the flat surface.  One delightful feature about cycling in
+Holland is that there are no mid-day closing times for pubs, but on the
+other hand you cannot raise much of a thirst in a flat country.
+
+Well, I reached Laren after many narrow escapes, for I was continually
+forgetting that you keep to the right in Holland.  A postman came
+along, and I jumped off.
+
+"Humanitaire School?" I asked as I doffed my hat.
+
+By his expression I judged that he did not know the institution under
+that name.
+
+"School," I said, and he nodded and pointed to the village State school.
+
+"Nay!  School Humanitaire!" I persisted.
+
+At this juncture another man came forward, and the two of them jawed
+away gutturally for some time.  I began to grow weary.
+
+"Hell!" I murmured to myself half aloud.
+
+The postman brightened, and enlightenment came to him.
+
+"Engelissman!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Liar!" I cried, "I'm a Scot," and I left the two of them discussing
+Engelissmen.
+
+After much trouble and many bitter words I found the school.  A
+gentleman who looked extremely like Bernard Shaw before Shaw's hair
+turned grey, was digging in a garden with a lot of boys and girls.  He
+was Mr. Elbrink, the head-master.  He could speak English and he showed
+me round.
+
+The school is rather like what is known as the crank school in England.
+In a manner it is the super-crank school, for everyone on the staff is
+teetotal, vegetarian, and a non-smoker.  Here it was that I heard of
+Lightheart for the first time, and I blushed for my ignorance of the
+gentleman.  It appears that he was a great educational reformer, a sort
+of Froebel I fancied, for handwork seemed to be the main consideration
+in the school.  But I regret to say that the school did not impress me
+much.  Too many children were doing the same sort of work; they sat in
+desks and held themselves more or less rigid.  Here was benevolent
+authority again, not true freedom.  All schools in Holland are State
+schools, and the Humanitarian School is one of them.  It is almost
+impossible for a State school to be very much advanced; I think it is
+impossible, for the State is the national crowd, and a large crowd has
+little use for the crank.
+
+I returned to Amersfoort, where by this time I had become the guest of
+the International School of Philosophy.  This is a building standing in
+about twenty acres of ground amid the pine forests two miles south of
+the town.  I was the sole guest, for the summer classes had not
+started.  This school is the beginning of a great movement.  Here
+students from every country will meet and discuss life and education.
+Mr. Reiman, the president, talked long and earnestly to me about the
+scheme, but I found myself challenging his insistence on spiritual
+education.
+
+The aim of the school is to develop the spiritual side of man, an
+excellent aim . . . so long as man does not imagine that by living on
+the higher plane he is annihilating his earthly self.  Everyone there
+was very, very kind to me, but I did not feel quite in my element, for
+I am not an obviously spiritual person.  I find that I can discuss the
+higher life best when I have a glass of Pilsener at my elbow and a
+penny cigar in my mouth.  It is clear that I have a complex about the
+higher life, and it may be a sour-grapes complex.  All the same I
+should like to attend a summer course at Amersfoort and listen to the
+wise men dilate on the Bhagavadgita, Psycho-analysis and Religion,
+Plato, Sufism, and other subjects on the programme; anyway I would have
+no prepossessions and prejudices in listening to Dr. G. R. S. Meads'
+course of lectures on The Mystical Philosophy and Gnosis of the
+Trismegistic Tractates.
+
+From Amersfoort I went to Amsterdam.
+
+"Umsterdum, dree klasse, returig," I said to the ticket office girl.
+
+"Third class return?" she asked with a smile and gave me the ticket.
+
+I was indignant.
+
+It is the most humiliating thing in the world to ask a question in
+Dutch and to be answered in English.  In Rotterdam I had stopped a
+seafaring looking man and tried to ask him in Dutch what was the way to
+the Hotel de France.  He listened patiently while I struggled with the
+language; then he spat on my boot.
+
+"Hotel de France?" he replied in broad Cockney, "damned if I know."
+
+On the way to Amsterdam I got into a carriage full of farmers and one
+of them made a remark to me.  I shook my head.
+
+"Engelissman?" he said.
+
+I nodded.
+
+Then those men began to talk about Engelissmen, and they talked and
+laughed all the way to Amsterdam.  Every now and then one of them would
+jerk his thumb in my direction.  It was a trying journey.
+
+Arrived in Amsterdam I made for the Rijks Museum.  At the door a
+seedy-looking man touched me on the arm.
+
+"Guide, sir?"
+
+"No thank you."
+
+"Two hundred rooms, sir!  Official guide."
+
+"No thank you."
+
+He kept pace with me, and in a weak moment I inquired his charge.  It
+was three guilden (five shillings), and I saw at once that the dirty
+dog had won, for he took on an air of possession.
+
+"Righto," I said resignedly, and he led me into the building.
+
+He began his tiresome patter.
+
+"Thees picture was painted in 1547; beautiful ees eet not?  Wonderful
+arteest!"
+
+I sighed.
+
+"Take me to the Rembrandts," I said.
+
+I cannot describe this incident.  I hated the beast because I had been
+so weak as to accept his services.  The beauty of Rembrandt and Franz
+Hals was lost on me; all I could see was the dirty face of that guide.
+Rembrandt's _Night Watch_ made me forget the creature for a moment, but
+when he began to describe it I fled in horror.  We finished up in the
+modern section, and as I looked at van Gogh and Cézanne and Whistler's
+_Effie Deans_ his squeaky voice kept up a running commentary.  I rushed
+from the building after a ten minutes' tour, paid the worm his three
+guilden . . . and then went back and enjoyed the gallery.  But I nearly
+committed murder in the Rijks Museum that day.  If ever I am hanged it
+will be for murdering an official guide.  This particular specimen
+spoiled my visit to Amsterdam.  I could not get away from the thought
+of my weakness, and I fled the city.
+
+In the train going back to Amersfoort a genial Dutchman made a remark
+to me.  I resolved that I should pretend to be a fellow-countryman.
+
+"Ja!" I said, and the answer seemed to satisfy him.  He went on to say
+other things, and when his facial expression seemed to demand an
+affirmative I said "Ja!"
+
+After a time he frowned as he said a sentence.
+
+"Nay!" said I.
+
+That did it.  He became white with anger, and swore at me all the way
+to Amersfoort.  He had a fine command of language, too, and I was
+extremely sorry that I could not understand it.
+
+On the Saturday I set off on my return journey to Rotterdam, doing a
+tour in American fashion of Leiden on the way.  It was like going home,
+for I liked Rotterdam.  I think it was the gay paint on the barges that
+attracted me so much.
+
+On the Sunday morning the Austrian kiddies arrived, and my sight-seeing
+ended.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+The Austrian kiddies arrived at the Maas station on Sunday morning, and
+the Dutch folk gave them a kindly welcome.  The Rotterdam committee was
+in charge, and I stood back because it was not my job.  The kiddies
+came tumbling out of the train with great relief, for they had
+travelled for two nights.  All had heavy rucksacks, many of them the
+packs of their dead fathers and brothers.
+
+My eye lit on little Hansi.  She stood on the platform crying, and I
+went forward to comfort her.  Alas!  I knew less German than I did
+Dutch, and I knew not what she said; but one of the Austrian escort
+told me that she had been homesick all the way.  There is, however, a
+universal language that all children understand, and I took wee Hansi
+in my arms and cuddled her.  The flow of tears stopped and she took
+from a small basket slung to her neck a tiny naked doll.  I included
+Puppe in the cuddle, and Hansi smiled.  A dear wee mite she was, very
+very thin, with great big eyes that were sunken.  Her tears did not
+affect me, but when she smiled I found myself weeping, and I had to
+blow my nose hard.
+
+The four hundred and fifty-eight children were bundled across the road
+to a ship, which took them in two parts across the Maas to the large
+building used by the Cunard Line for emigrants.  Many of them thought
+they were on the way to England, and ten minutes later I found a wee
+chap gazing round in wonder on the land of England.
+
+"This aint England, anywye," he said at last in evident disgust; "look
+at them clogs!  This is Holland."
+
+The boy was a Londoner resident in Vienna.  There were about a dozen
+English children in the party.  Later I found one standing in front of
+a group of Austrian boys.
+
+"Any one o' you," he was shouting, "I'll box the whole gang o' you!"
+
+This Cockney, his little brother, and their sister were the thorn in
+the flesh of the escort.
+
+"Absolute terrors," declared everyone, but I liked them.
+
+Many of the children were middle class, children of doctors, lawyers,
+architects, and so on; nice kiddies they were.  The bigger girls could
+speak English, and I used them as interpreters.
+
+On the Monday morning the English escort took charge.  The first task
+was medical inspection, and the two English doctors and four or five
+Dutch doctors prepared for action.  Our job was to marshal the kiddies,
+help them to take their shirts off, and then bundle them into the
+inspection room.  It sounds easy, but it was a weary business.  You
+looked down the list for No. 258, and you found a name.
+
+"Mitzi Dvoracek!" you called, and wondered whether a boy or a girl
+would appear.  There was no answer . . . and an hour later you found a
+little girl who had lost her identity card, and you concluded that she
+was Dvoracek, but she wasn't; her name was Leopoldine Czsthmkyghw, or
+something resembling that.
+
+I was greatly troubled by their questions.  Following a method I had
+used with indifferent effect while conversing with garrulous Dutchmen
+in railway carriages, I answered "Ja" and "Nay" alternately.  Many of
+the children stared at me in wonder and I marvelled . . . until I
+discovered that most of them had been asking me the way to the
+lavatory.  After that I just pointed to a door in the wall when a boy
+asked me a question, and when one lad didn't seem to understand, I took
+him by the back of the neck and shoved him through the door.  Then I
+found that he had been asking the time.
+
+I gave up replying to questions after that.
+
+The children had all been examined, and one lad stood alone; he had no
+card and no one could place him.  Then he confessed that he was a
+stowaway who had been too old to join the batch, and had boarded the
+train quietly at Vienna.  Mrs. Ensor, the secretary of the Famine Area
+Committee, proved herself a sport by declaring that she would take him
+to England.  The good Dutch folk also rose to the occasion, and went
+out and bought him a pair of short trousers.
+
+In the afternoon I sat down beside a few boys.  And then I did a fatal
+thing.  A boy dropped his pencil and I picked it up, threw it over the
+house . . . and then produced it from another lad's pocket.  That did
+it.  In two seconds I had a hundred children round me roaring at me.
+An Austrian lady explained that they were calling me a magician and
+asking for more.  I blushingly told her to explain to them that it was
+my only trick.  Sighs of disgust followed, and I was on the point of
+losing my popularity when I hastily got the lady to explain to them
+that I had a better talent . . .  I could make anyone laugh merely by
+looking at him.  Fifty of them at once challenged me to begin, and I
+had a great time.  One lad beat me, but then he had toothache, a
+blistered heel, and was homesick.
+
+After a time I asked them to sing to me, and they sang sweet folk songs
+of their home.  They were delightful singers, and the boys sang as
+eagerly and as well as the girls.  In England boys usually hate
+singing.  I marvelled at their all knowing the same songs, and one of
+the girls explained to me that in Austria every school has the same
+songs; more than that, every school has the same class-books, and if
+two children living a hundred miles apart meet on the street they can
+say to each other: "I'm at page 67 of my Geography.  What page are you
+at?"
+
+They demanded a song from me, and I sang _Now is the Month of Maying_,
+and, by special request, _Tipperary_.  Then I asked them to sing their
+National Anthem, and the lady began it, but the children did not follow
+her.  At my look of surprise the lady said: "They cannot sing it
+because now they feel that they have no Austria left to sing about."
+
+A man's voice sounded from inside the building, and they rushed
+indoors, for it was the voice of their beloved Ministry of Health
+doctor, who had brought them from Vienna, and they all loved him.  They
+forgot me at once and left me . . . all but one.  Little Hansi put her
+wee hand in mine and snuggled closer . . . and that's why I love her so
+very much.
+
+On Tuesday morning they all took up their packs, and we set off for
+England via the Maas boat and station.  We packed into carriages and
+set off.  There was no water on the train, but we laughed and said:
+"We'll be in Flushing in two hours!  We are a special!"  We were.  We
+left the Maas station at one o'clock, and we travelled until three.
+Then we drew up . . . and found we were back at the Maas station.
+Where we had been I don't know, but it was the biggest mystery of my
+life.  Well, we crawled along past picturesque villages where women
+with white caps and red arms smiled on us and gave us water to drink.
+And at eight o'clock we reached Flushing all very weary and extremely
+dirty.  The kiddies had a good meal set out on white tablecloths, and
+the doctor and I had the best Pilsener of our lives.  We handed over
+the kiddies to the ship stewards and the fresh escort from England, and
+retired to rest.
+
+I awoke at six and found that all the children were on deck, and the
+bad English boy almost in the water, for his heels were off the ground
+and his head far down towards the water.  He was looking for fish, he
+said.  None of the children had seen the sea before, but I think they
+were too tired to be excited about it.  They did become excited when
+they saw the cliffs of Dover.
+
+Much to my annoyance a gentleman had been teaching them _God Save the
+King_ on the way over.  I was annoyed because I knew it was a piece of
+jingoism meant for the journalists at Folkestone.  When we drew up at
+the pier, sure enough the gentleman struck up the tune, and the kiddies
+sang it.  But the girls who could speak English sang _God Save YOUR
+Gracious King_.  I thought it a beautiful touch; the finest piece of
+good taste I have ever come across.
+
+I didn't like the well-dressed ladies who came bossing around at
+Folkestone.  Frankly I was jealous.  As I was leading the children off
+the steamer, one of them touched me on the arm and asked me to make way
+for the children.  And I smiled to see that the women in rich dresses
+managed somehow to get in front of the camera.
+
+We took the children to Sandwich by rail and then to a camp by motor
+lorry.  It was a tiresome job loading and unloading the lorry, but
+after six trips I found that every child was in camp.  I went off to
+have a wash and some tea, and then, glowing with self-satisfaction at
+all I had done, I lit a cigar and walked outside.  A gentleman passed
+me.
+
+"Are you a worker?" he demanded.
+
+"I--er--I suppose I am--in a way," I said modestly.
+
+"Well, don't you think you might find something to do?" he asked.
+"There's plenty to do, you know."
+
+Then for the first time in my life I understood the old Mons Ribbon men
+who used to annihilate the recruit with the terse phrase: "Afore you
+came up!"
+
+The pressmen passed by, a dozen of them with the stowaway in their
+midst.  Presently they posed him and a dozen cameras snapped while a
+cinema burred.  And next day the papers told a romantic story; the
+stowaway had crept into the train at Vienna, and, foodless, had hid
+until he arrived in Rotterdam.  Then darkly he had crept on board the
+ship and had been discovered at Folkestone.  Also when next day I saw
+in the pictorial papers a photograph of a boy violinist playing to his
+chums, I was not very much surprised to find the title of the photo
+was: _The Stowaway Entertains His Companions_.  As a matter of fact,
+the fiddler wasn't the stowaway at all, but this incident makes me
+think hard about history.  If a Fleet Street reporter changes one boy
+into another, why, we may be all wrong in our history.  Henry VIII. may
+only have had one wife, and the reporter who interviewed him may have
+had so much sack to drink that his vision along with the journalistic
+touch may have manufactured the other five.  The tale of King Harold
+being shot through the eye at the Battle of Hastings may have arisen
+from a reporter's using the figurative expression that William the
+Conqueror "put his eye out."  Nor, after reading the account of the
+landing of the Austrian children, can I believe the tale of the
+minstrel Taillifer who sprang into the water to lead the Normans in
+landing.  And as for the time-honoured phrases, "Take away that
+bauble!" and "England expects every man to do his duty," I don't
+believe they were ever uttered--not now.
+
+I am not singling out journalists as special misreporters.  Not one of
+us can report an incident truly.  There is a good example of this truth
+in Swift's _Psychology and Everyday Life_, just published.  Swift
+prepared a stunt as a test for his adult class.  In the midst of a
+serious lecture two men and two women students created a disturbance
+outside in the lobby, then they burst into the room.  One held a banana
+pistol-wise at another's head.  Swift dropped a toy bomb, and one of
+the students staggered back crying: "I'm shot!"
+
+One student dropped a parcel containing a brick, and all yelled and
+made much noise.  The class was seriously alarmed until they were
+assured that the whole affair was a put-up job.  Each student was asked
+to write an account of what had happened, and the result of their
+attempts is so astounding that the reader becomes uncertain whether any
+witness in a law-court ever tells the truth.  Few, if any, students
+could identify one of the wranglers; every account said that the banana
+was a real pistol; only one or two saw the brick drop.  The strangest
+thing was that many were quite sure of the identity of the actors . . .
+and one or two of the accounts named students who had long since left
+the college.  I write from memory, but the facts were as arresting as
+the ones I have given.
+
+This makes one uneasy about the methods the police adopt to identify a
+prisoner.  If I saw a man shoot another in Piccadilly, it is a thousand
+to one chance that I should not be able to identify him later.  Yet
+many a man has been hanged on identification.
+
+But I meant to finish my account of the Austrian kiddies.  The time
+came when I had to leave them and return to London.  I set out to find
+my Hansi to say good-bye to her.  I saw her in the distance . . . and
+then I ran away, for I hate saying good-bye.
+
+I liked those kiddies, dear wee souls, just as sweet as any English
+kiddies, but then children have no nationality; they are lovable for
+they all belong to the Never Never Land.  Barrie proved himself a
+genius when he created Peter Pan, for Peter symbolises man's highest
+wish--to become a little child and never grow up.  "Genius," he says,
+"is the power of being a boy again at will."  It is true in his case.
+Yet this kind of genius is retrospective; it is a regression.  The
+genius who will help man to look forward instead of backward must not
+return to boyhood; he must go forward to superman.  To put it
+psychologically, Barrie's genius comes from the unconscious, but what
+the world needs is a man whose genius will come from the
+superconscious, the divine.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+I have just been reading Jack London's _Michael, Brother of Jerry_, and
+I am full of righteous rage.  What a picture!  It is the story of how
+performing animals are trained, and before I had read half the book I
+made a vow that never again will I sit through a performance of animals.
+
+The tale of Ben Bolt the tiger, if known by the masses, would kill
+every animal turn on the stage.  Ben Bolt, fresh from the jungle, is
+broken by the trainers.  The method is unspeakable; he is lashed with
+iron bars and stabbed with forks until in agony he falls senseless in
+the arena.  This treatment goes on for weeks . . . and in the end many
+good, kindly people see Ben Bolt, a miserable, broken animal, sit up in
+a chair like a human.  And they laugh.  My God!
+
+Then there is Barney the good-natured mule that was once a family pet.
+Later he becomes the celebrated bucking mule, and a prize is offered to
+anyone who will keep on his back for one minute.  Audiences go into
+fits of laughter at his antics.  But the audiences do not know that
+Barney was trained with a spiked saddle, and that for months life was
+one long agony of pain.
+
+Is my anger due to the cruelty I am repressing in myself?  I don't care
+whether it is sadism or the spark of the divine in me.  All I care
+about is that this inferno of pain must cease.
+
+Never has any book affected me as this one has done.  By word of mouth
+and by my pen I shall try my hardest to send dear old Jack London's
+message round the world.  Public opinion is the only thing that can
+stop the misery of these broken creatures, and I suggest that the
+anti-vivisectionists turn their energies to this infinitely worse evil.
+The vivisectionists, at any rate, are working for humanity, but the
+brutes who break performing animals are merely amusing crowds of good
+people who know nothing about what goes on behind the scenes.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+I see in the newspaper that Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks held up
+the traffic in Piccadilly.  They appeared on a balcony at the Ritz, and
+the crowd went frantic.  The super-hero and the super-heroine of the
+cinema drew the crowd's emotion to them, and Tagore the Indian poet
+arrived in town at the same time unnoticed.  It would seem that the
+crowd responds to the presence of the unimportant person only.  London
+went mad over Hawker and Jack Johnson, and Georges Carpentier; and if
+Charlie Chaplin were to come over, I fancy London would take a general
+holiday.
+
+No one will contend that these people are of supreme importance in the
+scheme of life.  Charlie is a funny little man; Douglas Fairbanks is a
+fine lump of a fellow; Mary Pickford is a sweet little woman.  But
+Tagore will live longer; Thomas Hardy, Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell,
+Sigmund Freud are of greater moment to humanity, yet each could walk
+out of Paddington Station and be unrecognised by the crowd.
+
+The morning paper shows well that the crowd is interested only in
+unessentials.  "Punish the profiteers!" was the press cry a few months
+ago.  Well, they punished the profiteers . . . and prices continued to
+rise.  A few years ago the cry was: "Flog the white slave traffickers!"
+They flogged them, and yet I still see thousands of white slaves in the
+West End of London.  And while Europe is sinking into anarchy and
+bankruptcy to-day, the only remedies the crowd representatives--the
+press--can think of are remedies of the Hang-the-Kaiser type.  I
+believe that the crowd still thinks that juvenile crime is mainly
+caused by cinema five-part dramas.
+
+The crowd is rather like the individual unconscious; it is primitive,
+and like the unconscious it can only wish.  The crowd that welcomed
+Mary and Douglas was closely akin to the personal unconscious.  Douglas
+stands to each individual in the crowd as the eternal hero, the man who
+always wins.  Each man in the crowd sees in Douglas his own ideal self,
+so that when the office boy cheers Douglas he is cheering himself.
+Mary has been well named "the world's sweet-heart"; she is the ideal
+heroine, beautiful, wronged, protected by six foot of masculinity.
+Both come from the world of make-believe, the world of phantasy.  Their
+arrival in England simply made a dream come true.
+
+Now I am certain that if any individual in the great Piccadilly crowd
+had met Douglas and Mary on the boat, he or she would have looked at
+them with interest, but there would have been no cheering and throwing
+of roses.  What the crowd does is to raise an emotion to a superlative
+degree.  In a full hall you will laugh at a joke that would not bring a
+smile to your face in a room.  You become absorbed in your crowd, and
+you are fully open to your crowd's suggestion.  I generally laugh at
+Charlie Chaplin, but one night a cinema manager, a friend of mine, gave
+me a private view of Charlie's latest production.  I sat alone in the
+large cinema palace . . . and I couldn't even smile.  Had a crowd been
+there to share my laugh, I should have roared.
+
+The Douglas-Mary episode makes me pessimistic about the future of
+democracy.  For democracy is crowd rule, and the crowd is a baby when
+it isn't a savage.  Yet we have no real democracy in this country.  We
+have a slave state, the exploiters and the exploited, the "haves" and
+the "have nots."  Douglas and Mary came over, and the poor
+beauty-starved populace forgot for the moment its poverty, and showered
+all its pent-up emotion on the people from picture-book land.
+
+In Elizabethan times the world was a place of wonder; every mariner was
+coming home with wondrous tales of Spanish gold and men with necks like
+bulls.  All you had to do to find a reality that was more wonderful
+than fancy was to sail away across the sea.  But to-day the world holds
+no mystery; there are no pirates to overcome, no prisoned maidens to
+rescue.  Reality means toil and taxes and trouble.  But there is a land
+where men are dew-lapped like bulls . . . the land of phantasy.  There
+is a society where the villain always gets his deserts . . . the land
+of film pictures.  And when your hero and heroine walk out of the
+picture and become real flesh and blood, what are you to do?  After
+all, you cannot pour all your emotion into your looms and office-desks
+and counters.  Sweet-faced Mary does not know it, but she is one of the
+best allies that our capitalist system could have; for if the crowd
+were not showering its emotion on her it might well be using it up in
+the smashing of all the ugly things in our civilisation.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+I have been thinking of the crowd in another aspect.  Last year in a
+merry mood I sat down to write a novel.  I meant it to be a comedy,
+but, having no control over the characters, I found that they insisted
+in making the story a farce.  The result was _The Booming of Bunkie_.
+I thought it a very funny book, and I laughed at some of my own jokes
+and murmured, "Good!"  I impatiently awaited the book's appearance, and
+when the day of publication came I sat down hopefully to await the
+press notices.  The first one to come in was lukewarm.
+
+"Why do papers send a funny book to an old fossil of a reviewer with no
+sense of humour?" I said, testily and waited for the next post.  Well,
+it came; it brought three adverse notices and a letter.
+
+"Dear Dominie, I admired your _Log_, but why, oh why, did you
+perpetrate such a monstrosity as _The Booming of Bunkie_?"
+
+Then a friend wrote me a letter.
+
+"Dear old chap,--You are suffering from the effects of the war.  If the
+war has induced you to write _Bunkie_, I am all for hanging the Kaiser."
+
+For weeks I clung to the belief that the crowd had no sense of
+humour . . . then I re-read my novel.  I still hold that it is funny in
+parts, but I see what is wrong.  It is a specialised type of humour, or
+rather wit, the type that undergraduates might appreciate.  In fact I
+was recently gratified to hear that the students of a Scots university
+were rhapsodising about it.  The real fault of the book is that it is
+clever, and to be clever is to be at once suspect.
+
+I naturally like to think that the circulation of a book is generally
+in inverse proportion to its intrinsic merit.  J. D. Beresford's novels
+are, to me, much better than those of the late Charles Garvice, yet I
+make a guess that Garvice's circulation was many times greater than
+Beresford's.  Still I cannot argue that the reverse is true--that
+because a book does not go into its second edition it is necessarily
+good.  I find that the problem of circulations is a difficult one.  I
+cannot, for instance, understand why _The Young Visitors_ sold in
+thousands; I failed to raise a smile at it.  Again, there is my friend
+although publisher, Herbert Jenkins.  I didn't think _Bindle_ funny,
+yet it has been translated into umpteen European languages.  Jenkins
+himself does not think it funny, and that, possibly, is why he is my
+friend.
+
+The most surprising success to me was Ian Hay's _The First Hundred
+Thousand_.  I read Pat MacGill's _Red Horizon_ about the same time, and
+thought Hay was stilted and superior with a public-school man's
+patronising Punch-like attitude to the working-class recruits.  I
+thought that he didn't know what he was writing about, that he had not
+reached the souls of the men.  MacGill, on the other hand, gave me the
+impression of a warm, passionate, intense knowledge of men; he wrote as
+one who lived with ordinary men and knew them through and through.  Yet
+I fancy that _The Red Horizon_, popular as it was, did not have the
+sales of _The First Hundred Thousand_.
+
+I was lunching with Professor John Adams one day in London.  We got on
+to the subject of circulations, and he said that he had just been
+asking the biggest bookseller in London what novel sold best.
+
+"Have a guess," said the Professor to me.
+
+"_David Copperfield_," I said promptly.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Not bad!" he said, "you've got the author right, but the book is _A
+Tale of Two Cities_."
+
+He then asked me to guess what two authors sold best among the troops
+at the front during the war.
+
+"Charles Garvice and Nat Gould," I said, and the Professor thought me a
+wonderful fellow, for I had guessed aright.
+
+There is a whiskered Ford story which tells that Mr. Ford took a new
+car from his factory and invited a visitor to have a spin.  They
+started off, and went seven miles out.  Then the car stopped.  Ford
+jumped out and lifted the bonnet.
+
+"Good Lord!" he cried, "the engine hasn't been put in!  The car must
+have run seven miles on its reputation!"
+
+I think that books run many miles on reputation alone.  Like a snowball
+the farther a circulation rolls the more it gathers to itself.  But
+what is it that makes a book popular?  The best press notices in the
+world will not send the circulation of a book up to a hundred thousand
+level.  What sells a book is talk.  Scores of people said to me: "Oh,
+_have_ you read _The Young Visitors_?"  I hasten to add, as a Scot,
+that I personally did not help to increase the circulation; I borrowed
+the book from an enthusiast.  Talk sells a book, but we have to
+discover why people talk about _The Young Visitors_ and not
+about--er--_The Booming of Bunkie_.  The book that is to sell well must
+be able to touch a chord in the crowd heart, and _The Young Visitors_
+sold because it touched the infantile chord in the crowd heart; it
+brought back the happiest days of life, the schooldays: again, its
+naïve Malapropisms appealed to the crowd, because we are all glad to
+laugh at the social and grammatical errors we have made and
+conveniently forgotten about.
+
+_Bunkie_ did not reach the hundred thousand level because it was too
+clever; it was a purely intellectual essay in wit rather than humour.
+And the crowd distrusts wit, and that is why the witty plays of Oscar
+Wilde are seldom produced, while _Charley's Aunt_ goes on for ever.
+
+I am tempted to go on to a comparison of wit with humour, but I shall
+only remark that wit is an intellectual thing, whereas humour is
+emotional.  Humour is elemental, but wit is cultural.  Without a
+language you could have humour, but without language there could be no
+wit.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+I have just come across a small book entitled _Hints on School
+Discipline_, by Ernest F. Row, B.Sc.
+
+"Boys will only respect a master whom they fear," he says.  I have been
+preaching this doctrine for years . . . that respect always has fear
+behind it . . . and it pleases me to find that an exponent of the old
+methods should support my argument.
+
+When I began to read the book I was amazed.
+
+"Good Lord!" I cried, "this chap should have published his book in the
+year 1820.  He advocates a system that modern psychology has shown to
+be fatal to the child.  It is army discipline applied to schools."
+
+I found it hard to finish the book, but I read every word of it and
+then I said to myself: "The majority is on the side of Row.  Eton,
+Harrow, many elementary teachers would agree with him.  He is evidently
+an honest sort of fellow, and he must be reckoned with.  I must try to
+see his point of view."
+
+And I think I see it.  He accepts current education with its set
+subjects, time-tables, order, morality, and he is trying to adapt the
+young teacher to what is established.  Hence to maintain all these
+things, we must have stern discipline and swift punishment.  But I
+wonder if Row has thought of the other side of the question; I wonder
+if he has asked himself whether order and time-tables and obedience and
+respect are really necessary.  I should like to meet him and have a
+chat; I think I should like him, and further, I think that I could
+convert him to the other way . . . if he is under forty.
+
+Ah!  Horrid thought!  Is it possible that Row is pulling our legs?  No,
+he writes as an honest man.  Perhaps he knows all about the modern
+movement; perhaps he has studied Montessori, Freud, Jung, Homer Lane,
+Edmond Holmes, and found that they are all pathetically wrong.  Mayhap
+he has proved that the child _is_ a sinner.
+
+"The young teacher should never address a boy by his Christian name or
+nickname," he says.
+
+Oh, surely he _is_ pulling our legs!
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+At intervals during the past few years I have been puzzled when people
+congratulated me on my village school in Lancashire.  I had quite a
+number of misunderstandings on the subject.  Then one day I discovered
+that there was a village schoolmaster in Lancashire called E. F.
+O'Neill.  I wrote him telling him that I was coming to see his school,
+and one July morning I alighted at one of the ugliest villages in the
+world, and I walked past slag-heaps and all the horrors of
+industrialism to a red building on the outskirts.  Three or four boys
+were digging in the school garden.  I walked into the school, and two
+seconds after entering I said to myself: "E. F. O'Neill, you are a
+great man!"
+
+There were no desks, and I could see no teacher.  Half-a-dozen children
+stood round a table weighing things and cutting things.
+
+"What's this?" I asked.
+
+"The shop," said a girl, and after a little time I grasped the idea.
+You have paste-board coins, and you come to the shop and buy a pound of
+butter (plasticene), two pounds of sugar (sand), and a bottle of
+Yorkshire Relish (a brown mixture unrecognisable to me).  You pay your
+sovereign and the shop-keeper gives you the change, remarks on the
+likelihood of the weather's keeping up and turns to the next customer.
+
+I walked on and found a boy writing.
+
+"Hullo, sonny, what are you on?"
+
+"My novel," he said, and showed me the beginning of chapter XII.
+
+A young man came forward, a slim youth with twinkling eyes.
+
+"E. F. O'Neill?"
+
+"A. S. Neill?"
+
+We shook hands, and then he began to talk.  I wanted to tell him that
+his school was a pure delight, but I couldn't get a word in edgeways.
+If anything, he was over-explanatory, but I pardoned him, for I
+realised that the poor man's life must be spent in explaining himself
+to unbelievers.  I disliked his tacit classing of me with the infidel,
+and I indignantly took the side of the infidel and asked him questions.
+Then he gave me of his best.
+
+He is a great man.  I don't think he has any theoretical knowledge, and
+I believe that anyone could trip him up over Freud or Jung, Montessori
+or Froebel, Dewey or Homer Lane; but the man seems to know it all by
+instinct or intuition.  To him creation is everything.  I was half
+afraid that he might have the typical crank's belief in imposing his
+taste on the pupils, and I mentioned my doubt.
+
+"No," he said, "we have a gramophone with fox-trots, ragtimes,
+Beethoven and Melba, and the children nearly always choose the best
+records."
+
+Love of beauty is a real thing in this school.  The playground is full
+of bonny corners with flowers and bushes.  The school writing books are
+bound in artistic wallpaper by the children, and hand-made frames
+enclose reproductions of good pictures on the walls.
+
+I saw no corporate teaching, and I should have asked O'Neill if he had
+any.  If he hasn't I think he is wrong, for the other way--the
+learn-by-doing individual way--starves the group spirit.  The
+class-teaching system has many faults, and O'Neill seems to have
+abolished spoon-feeding, but the class has one merit--it is a crowd.
+Each child measures himself against the others, not necessarily in
+competition.  Perhaps it is the psychological effect of having an
+audience that I am trying to praise.  Yes, that is it: the
+individual-work way is like a rehearsal of a play to empty seats; the
+class-way is like a performance before a crowded house.  It is a
+projection of one's ego outward.
+
+"This method," said O'Neill, "may be out-of-date in a month."
+
+I think highly of him for these words alone.  He has no fixed beliefs
+about methods of study; he himself learns by doing, and to-morrow will
+be cheerfully willing to scrap the method he is using to-day.  If the
+ideal teacher is the man who is always learning, then O'Neill comes
+pretty near that ideal.  I wish that every teacher in Britain could see
+his school.
+
+The big problem for the heretical teacher is the problem of order, or
+rather of disorder.  When a child is free from authority, he usually
+leaves his path untidy; he leaves his chisels on the bench or the
+ground; he strews the floor with papers; he throws his books all over
+the room.  Now O'Neill's school was not untidy, and I marvelled.
+
+"Oh, the kiddies look after that," he explained.  "They have voluntary
+workers among themselves who do all that, and if a child does not do
+his job, the others naturally complain: 'Why did you take it on if you
+aren't going to do it properly?'"
+
+But somehow I am not convinced; I want to know more about this
+business.  To find so highly developed a social sense in small children
+runs dead against all my experience.  I must write to O'Neill for
+further information.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+On re-reading the pages of this book I feel like throwing it on the
+fire.  I find myself disagreeing with the statements I made a few weeks
+ago.  When I began to write it I was a more or less complete Freudian,
+and in an airy fashion I explained away my actions.  Why should pale
+blue be my favourite colour?  I asked myself this when I painted my
+cycle blue, and I found a ready answer in a reminiscence . . . my first
+sweetheart wore a blue tam-o'-shanter.  This is called the "nothing
+but" psychology.  Do I dream of a train?  Quite simple!  It is merely
+"nothing but" a sexual symbol!
+
+Life is too complex for a "nothing but" psychology.  Last night a girl
+told me a sexual dream she had had, but when she gave her associations
+we found that the deep meaning of the dream had nothing to do with sex.
+Freud says that about every dream is the mark of the beast, but then I
+think he believes in original sin.
+
+I have been thinking a lot recently about the psychology of flogging.
+It is generally stated that the flogger is a sexual pervert, a Sadist,
+and undoubtedly there are pathological cases where men find sexual
+gratification in inflicting or in watching the infliction of pain.  In
+the pathological case the gratification is conscious, but I believe
+that many respectable parents and teachers find an unconscious
+gratification.  It is absurd to say to a man like Macdonald: "Your
+punishing is 'nothing but' Sadism."  Yet I think that a little test
+might decide the matter.  If the accused flogger is shocked or
+indignant at the idea I should be inclined to think that the accusation
+was a just one.
+
+If I say to Simpson: "Excuse my mentioning it, old man, but I don't
+think you love your wife," he will laugh heartily, for he has been
+married for a month only, and is still very much in love.  His laugh
+shows that his love is real; my rude remark touches no chord in his
+unconscious.  But suppose I make a similar remark to Smith, who has
+been very much married for ten years!  He will hit me in the eye,
+thereby betraying the fact that my remark touched what his unconscious
+knows to be true.  His blow is physically directed to me, but
+psychically he is hitting to defend his conscious from his unconscious.
+
+Hence if a flogger is angry when I accuse him of being a Sadist, I
+guess that he is a Sadist.
+
+I tried the experiment on Macdonald.  He shook his head sadly.
+
+"Poor chap," he said feelingly, "you're daft!"
+
+"Right!" I said, "you aren't a Sadist, anyway, Mac.  You must flog
+because it is your method of self-assertion.  As I've told you many
+times, you strap kids because wielding a strap is your childish way of
+showing your power."
+
+Then Mac became angry, and when I hinted that my remarks must have hit
+the bull's-eye . . . he laughed again.  He is a baffling study in
+psychology.
+
+"You don't know much about it, old chap," he said genially.
+
+"Hardly anything at all," I said with true modesty, "only I know one
+thing about you, and that is that the fault always lies in yourself.
+When you flog Tom Murray, you are really chastising the Tom Murray in
+yourself . . . that is, the part that your wife knows so well--the part
+of you that leaves the new graip out in the rain all night, that rebels
+against the authority of the School Board and the inspectorate.  Tom is
+being crucified for your transgressions."
+
+Barrie, wizard as he is, failed to understand the full significance of
+Shakespeare's line: "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but
+in ourselves."
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+The opposite of the Sadist is the Masochist--the person who finds
+sexual gratification in being beaten or bullied.  When 'Arriet proudly
+boasts about the black eye that 'Arry gave her on Saturday night, she
+is being masochistic, and the woman who likes to be bullied by the
+strong, silent man is likewise a masochist.  I do not say "nothing but"
+a masochist, because she is also a Sadist, for Sadism and Masochism are
+complementary in the same person.
+
+It is an understood fact that many people find joy in suffering, and I
+can recollect feeling something akin to joy when the dentist, before
+the days of the local anaesthetic, used to lay hold on my molars.
+
+Hence I look back to the day when I whacked Peter Smith for cruelty to
+a calf, and I acknowledge that I was wrong.  I recall explaining to him
+that I wanted him to realise what suffering meant, but I was completely
+mistaken.  If Peter were a Sadist in his cruelty, my cruelty to him was
+giving unconscious gratification to the Masochistic part of him.  If
+his cruelty to the calf was due to his self-assertion again I did the
+wrong thing, for the fear evoked by my strap merely inhibited his
+desire to assert himself in cudgelling calves.  I think now that there
+was nothing to be done; his cruelty showed that his whole education had
+been wrong.  Had he been allowed to create all the way up from one week
+old he would have applied his interest to making rabbit-hutches instead
+of to beating calves.
+
+I remember a questioner at one of my lectures.  I had been trying to
+elaborate the release theory, and had said that a boy should be
+encouraged to make a noise so that he will release all his interest in
+noise as power.
+
+"If a boy liked torturing cats, would you encourage him on the theory
+that suppression by an adult would cause the child to retain his
+interest in torturing cats?"
+
+"Certainly not," I said, and the lady crowed.  I do dislike questioners
+at any time, but when they crow . . . .!  However, I tried to hide the
+murder in my heart by smiling.
+
+"What would you do?" she asked sweetly.
+
+"I don't know, madam," I said, "but I can make a rapid guess . . .  I
+very probably would use the toe of my boot on him, thereby showing that
+my own interest in cruelty was still alive.  But five minutes later I
+should try to discover what was at the back of the boy's mind."
+
+Not long ago I studied a small boy whose chief pleasure was in pulling
+bees' wings off.  I never mentioned bees to him, but I got him to talk
+about himself.  He was suffering from a deep hatred of his teacher, and
+he had a bad inferiority complex.  He feared to play games like
+football and hockey because of his sense of inferiority.  All that was
+wrong with him was that he was regressing.  Life was too difficult for
+him, and he took refuge in his infantile past; his pulling off wings
+was the destructiveness of the infant.  But the important thing to
+remember is that destructiveness is simply constructiveness gone wrong.
+The child is born good, and all his instincts are to do good.  Bad
+behaviour is the result of thwarted desire to do good.  This is shown
+in the case of Tommy on page 115.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+At one time I was absolutely certain that the Great War was caused by
+economic factors; British and German capital were competing, and the
+losing party took up the sword.  I am not so certain now.  It may be
+that the cataclysm was a natural ebullition of human nature, and as a
+cause the economic rivalry may have been just as insignificant as the
+murder of the Archduke.
+
+During the last few decades education has been almost wholly
+intellectual and material; intellectual education gave us the don, and
+material education gave us the cotton-spinner.  The emotional and the
+spiritual in mankind had no outlet.  In the unconscious of man there is
+a God and a Devil, and intellectual activities afford no means of
+expression to either.  And when any godlike or devilish libido can find
+no outlet it regresses to infantile primitive forms; thus, while the
+brain of man was concerned with mathematics and logic, the heart of man
+was seeking primitive things--cruelty, hate, and blood.
+
+It may be then that the war was the direct result of the world's bad
+system of education.  No boy will destroy property if he is free to
+create property, and no nation will take to killing if it is free to be
+creative.  Intellectual education allows no freedom for the creative
+impulse; it not only starves the creative impulse but it drives it into
+rebellion.  An outlet is always a door to purification.  The old men
+who sat at home hated the Hun because their libido was being bottled
+up, but the young men who were using up their libido in fighting talked
+cheerfully of "Old Fritz."  The chained dog soon becomes savage, and
+the chained libido reverts to savagery also.
+
+I have often said that the outrages of the German troops in Belgium
+became understandable to me when I studied a Scots school where
+suppressive discipline turned good boys into demons.  The brutality of
+the German army was a natural result of the brutality of their
+discipline.  So is it in the individual soul, and in the national soul.
+Intellectualism and materialism were the Prussian drill-sergeants who
+enslaved the emotional life of the citizen and of the nation.  War was
+a means of releasing this pent-up emotion.
+
+The ultimate cure for war is the releasing of the beast in the heart of
+mankind . . . not the releasing after chaining him up, but the
+releasing of the beast from the beginning.  Personally I do not believe
+that he is a wild beast until we make him one by chaining him; he is
+primitive and animal and amoral, but I believe that by kind treatment
+we can make him our ally in living a goodly life.  The Devil is merely
+a chained God.
+
+The problem for man and for mankind is to reconcile the God and the
+Devil in himself.  The saint represses the devil; the sinner represses
+the god.  The atheist cries: "There is no God!" because he has
+repressed the God in himself.  Then, again, many people project their
+personal devil; the men who shouted "Hang the Kaiser!" were
+subjectively crying "Hang the Devil in me!"
+
+Who and what is this devil we carry in our hearts?  We cannot tame him
+unless we can know him.  The Freudians would say that he is the
+primitive unconscious, the tree-dweller in us.  But that explanation is
+not enough for me.  The tiger has no devil in him, and why should our
+remote savage ancestors leave us a devil as legacy?  Yet the tiger is a
+devil whenever man formulates a law against killing; the man-eater
+becomes bad because he is a danger to man, and because the tiger is bad
+it is assumed that man is good.  The ox that is slaughtered for our
+dinners might well look upon man as its special objective devil.
+
+I have often argued that it is Authority that makes the beast in
+children a wild beast.  That is true, but it does not go down to first
+causes.  Why do adults exercise authority?  To keep down the devil in
+themselves, the beast that _their_ parents and teachers made wild by
+authority.  Truly a vicious circle!  But the devil is the cause of
+authority in the beginning.
+
+Since there is no devil in the tiger and the ox, the animalism of man
+cannot be his devil.  But man made his animalism a devil when he began
+to have ideals.  Then it was that he began to talk of crucifying the
+flesh; then it was that the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak.
+The devil in man is the negative of man's ego-ideal.  The ethical self
+says that honesty is good, and dishonesty comes to be of the devil; it
+says that love is good, and hate then becomes devilish.  No ego-ideal,
+no devil.  The ox has no ego-ideal; therefore it has no devil.  Man
+invented the devil to account for his failures.
+
+This brings me to the question: why should man want to have an
+ego-ideal?  Why should he praise self-sacrifice, love, charity,
+honesty, unselfishness, while he contemns hats, murder, cruelty,
+stealing, selfishness?  It might be argued that he praises those
+attributes that make for the good of the herd, but I cannot take this
+argument as final.  Rather am I inclined to look for the answer in what
+we vaguely call the divine.  I think that there is a power . . . call
+it God or intuition or the superconscious or what-not . . . that draws
+man toward higher things.  This spark of the divine raises man above
+the beast of the field, but yesterday he was the beast of the field,
+and like the _nouveau riche_, he scorns his humble origins.
+
+I am forced to conclude that wars will not cease until man realises
+that his ego-ideal must be capable of being the working partner of his
+primitive animalism.  When that time comes man will know that he is
+neither god nor devil, but . . . mere man.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+I am spending my days wandering round London suburbs looking for a
+school.  Of an evening I sit and think about how I shall furnish it.
+There will be no desks; instead there will be tables for writing and
+drawing on, chairs of all descriptions--arm-chairs, deck-chairs,
+straight backed chairs, stools.  The children will make the tables and
+stools, and we may make a combined effort to make and upholster an
+arm-chair.
+
+Then we must have at least one typewriter, not for office use, but for
+the children's use.  The children will use it to type their novels and
+poems, and I think they would be tempted to type out poems from Keats
+and Coleridge, binding their own anthologies in leather or coloured
+paper.
+
+There will be no school readers and no school poetry books.  I hope
+that with the aid of the typewriter each child will make his own
+selection of prose and poetry.
+
+The wall decorations will be left to the children, and if they bring
+bad, sentimental prints from the Christmas numbers I shall say nothing
+when they hang them up.  But as an active member of the community, I
+shall bring reproductions of the work of Rembrandt, Velasquez, Angelo,
+Augustus John, Cezanne, Nevinson; I shall buy _Colour_ every month.
+
+So with music.  I shall sing _Eliza Jane_ with them if they want to
+sing _Eliza Jane_, but I shall bring to their notice _To Music_
+(Schumann), Blake's _Jerusalem_, and the bonny old English songs like
+_Golden Slumbers, Now is the Month of Maying, Polly Oliver_.  Then a
+gramophone is a necessity, and all kinds of records will be
+necessary--Beethoven, Stravinsky, Rimski-Korsikoff, Harry Lauder, Fox
+Trots, Sousa.  O'Neill told me that his Lancashire kiddies have tired
+of ragtime, and are now playing classical music only.  Personally, I
+haven't reached that standard of taste yet; I still have Fox Trot
+moods.  I also want a player-piano--an Angelus, if possible.
+
+Now for the library.  I shall leave the choice of periodicals to the
+community, and I expect to find them select a list of this
+kind:--_Scout, Boy's Own Paper, Girl's Own Paper, Popular Mechanics, My
+Magazine, Punch, Chips, Comic Cuts, Tit-Bits, Answers, Strand, Sketch,
+Sphere_.  It will be interesting to watch the career of _Chips_; I will
+not be surprised if the community tires of _Chips_ in a month.
+
+Our book library will be stocked from the children's homes, I fancy.
+Each child will bring his or her favourite novel, and gladly hand it
+round.  I shall certainly hand on my own fiction library:--Conan Doyle,
+Wells, Jack London, Rider Haggard, Cutcliffe Hyne, Guy Boothby, Barrie,
+O. Henry, Leacock, Jacobs, Leonard Merrick, Seton Merriman, Stanley
+Weyman, and a host of others.
+
+No, this won't do!  How can I furnish before my self-governing school
+decides what furniture it will have?  The children may demand desks and
+time-tables, but I do not think it likely.  Anyhow, I am counting my
+chickens before they are hatched.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+I finish this book in the place where I began it, in Forfarshire, but
+not in Tarbonny Village.  Hustling Herbert Jenkins sent me the galley
+proofs this morning with an urgent demand that I should return them at
+once.  I do dislike publishers.  At first I took them at their own
+valuation: I believed what they said.
+
+"Machines waiting," Jenkins would wire.  "Send MS. at once."
+
+And I, simple I, would sit up late correcting proofs.  I know better
+now.  I know that Jenkins always divides time by 20.  His "at once"
+means that twenty days hence he will say to his Secretary: "That new
+book of Neill's . . . has it gone to the printer yet?"  And his
+Secretary will 'phone down to the office secretary and say: "You've got
+to send Neill's new book to the printer."  Then this lady will order
+the office-boy to take the MS. to the printer . . . and I bet the
+little devil reads _Deadwood Dick on the Boomerang Prairie_ as he
+crawls to the printer's office with my masterpiece under his arm.
+
+Hence, understanding Jenkins, I tossed the proofs into a corner this
+morning, and went out to continue the game of ring quoits that Nellie
+and I had to give up as darkness fell last night.  Nellie is a Dundee
+lassie of thirteen and she is spending her holidays with her auntie
+here.
+
+Nellie won, and we sat down on the bank and I began to ask her about
+her school-life.
+
+"I dinna like the school, and I wish I was left," she said.
+
+"Tell me why you dislike it, Nellie."
+
+"If ye speak ye get the strap."
+
+"What!" I cried, "are you _never_ allowed to speak?"
+
+"Only at playtime," she replied.  "And ye never get less than six
+scuds."
+
+And it was only the other day that a lady wrote me saying that when I
+preach against Prussianism in schools I am merely resuscitating a dead
+bogey for the purpose of knocking it down.
+
+I get quite a lot of information of schools from children.  I remember
+when I was in Lyme Regis last Easter I went out sketching one day.  As
+I passed a village school a troupe of happy children came out.  Joy lit
+up their faces.
+
+"The ideal school!" I cried, and stopped to speak to them.
+
+"Tell me, children, tell me why you have laughter in your eyes," I
+said, "tell me of your happy school."
+
+The oldest boy grinned.
+
+"Master's gone off for the day to a funeral," he said.
+
+I walked on deep in thought.
+
+Nellie dislikes school.  What a tragedy.  She is a dear sweet child
+with kind eyes and a bonny smile.  She spoke frankly to me at first but
+when I told her that I was a teacher she looked at me with fear and (I
+smiled at this) dropped her Dundee dialect and answered me in School
+English.  I had to throw plantain heads at her for a full five minutes
+before the look of fear left her eyes and her dialect returned.
+
+"I dinna believe ye _are_ a teacher," she said to-night.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Ye're no like ane," she said hesitatingly.  "Ye're ower--ower daft."
+
+"But why shouldn't a teacher be daft?" I asked.
+
+"They shud be respectable," she said, "or the children winna respect
+them."
+
+I looked alarmed.
+
+"What!" I cried, "don't you respect me?"
+
+She laughed gaily.
+
+"No!" she cried, then she added seriously: "But I'd like to be at your
+schule."
+
+She returns to Dundee to-morrow, to a class of fifty, where silence
+reigns.  Poor Nellie!  What worries me is that when Nellie's teacher
+reads this book she will most probably agree with Nellie's remark that
+I'm "daft".  But she won't mean what Nellie meant.
+
+A telegraph girl approached.
+
+"Machines are waiting.--Jenkins."
+
+Nellie looked anxious.
+
+"That's twa telegrams ye've got the day," she said.  "Is onybody deid?"
+
+I looked at the words on the telegraph form.
+
+"No, Nellie, unfortunately no!" I said slowly, and I went in to read my
+galley proofs.
+
+
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Dominie in Doubt, by A. S. Neill
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