Thus does the selfishness of the will turn on itself, and obtain by
flattery what it cannot seize by open force. Democracy becomes the
latest trick of tyranny: "womanliness" becomes the latest wile of
prostitution.

Between parent and child the same conflict wages and the same
destruction of character ensues. Parents set themselves to bend the will
of their children to their own--to break their stubborn spirit, as
they call it--with the ruthlessness of Grand Inquisitors. Cunning,
unscrupulous children learn all the arts of the sneak in circumventing
tyranny: children of better character are cruelly distressed and more or
less lamed for life by it.




Our Quarrelsomeness

As between adults, we find a general quarrelsomeness which makes
political reform as impossible to most Englishmen as to hogs. Certain
sections of the nation get cured of this disability. University men,
sailors, and politicians are comparatively free from it, because the
communal life of the University, the fact that in a ship a man must
either learn to consider others or else go overboard or into irons, and
the habit of working on committees and ceasing to expect more of
one's own way than is included in the greatest common measure of the
committee, educate the will socially. But no one who has ever had to
guide a committee of ordinary private Englishmen through their first
attempts at collective action, in committee or otherwise, can retain