lamented that such
wrong ideas had been put into their heads. Young people now look upon
many honourable and useful employments as beneath them, and there is a
general rush for those which seem to offer a better social position.'

The conventional belief in the efficacy of cramming boys with moral
platitudes and all kinds of commonplace facts and theoretical knowledge
is so ingrained that there is a natural reluctance to ascribe any evil
effects to the process of education. I am contented, however, to let the
facts speak for themselves. It cannot well be disputed that unsuitable
education, or sham education, or whatever one may like to call it, is
the direct cause of widespread dissatisfaction amongst the very classes
from which the majority of criminals are recruited. Whilst vast numbers
of people are constantly being unfitted for the commonest occupations of
life, there must result an overcrowding of the callings which are
considered suitable to the dignity of those who have eaten the unripe
fruit of the elementary tree of knowledge.

It is self-evident that the unsuitably educated have much greater
incentive to wrong-doing than the merely illiterate, and it is also a
corroborative fact that by far the greater proportion of criminals have
been taught at least to read and write. Given two boys, one of whom had
acquired a smattering of facts at school and had learnt the Catechism
very perfectly by rote, whilst the other had merely been encouraged to
apply a little common sense to manual labour, who would have any
hesitation in pointing out the former as the more likely to fall into
evil ways?

Therein lies the supreme foolishness of modern methods of instruction.
All the moral aphorisms in the world will not help a boy to be honest if
he is at the same time unfitted for his station in life. People do not
need moral instruction; they acquire all their morality in the school of
life. It is impossible to teach boys and girls theoretically to be
virtuous. All that can be done is to turn them into first-class
hypocrites, ready to quote texts and to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine
Articles, whilst they are busy breaking the Ten Commandments every day
of the week.

A surprising amount of virtue would come into the world of its own
accord if a little more pains were taken to preserve for each individual
the environment to which he is adapted by nature. This life has become
such a mockery that people talk of heaven as a state i