general inefficiency. There are much wider things for which his school is only mediately or not at all to blame. For example, he is not only ignorant and inefficient and secretly aware of his ignorance and inefficiency, but, what is far more serious, he does not feel any strong desire to alter the fact; he is not only without the habit of regular work, but he does not feel the defect because he has no desire whatever to do anything that requires work in the doing. And you will find that this is so because there is woven into the tissue of his being a profound belief that work and knowledge “do not pay,” that they are rather ugly and vulgar characteristics, and that they make neither for happiness nor success.
He did not learn that at school, nor at school was it possible he should unlearn it. He acquired that belief from his home, from the conversation of his equals, from the behaviour of his inferiors; he found it in the books and newspapers he has read, he breathed it in with his native air. He regards it as manifest Fact in the life about him. And he is perfectly right. He lives in