SOCIOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS 103 



it. It is not education that gives the capacity for 

 acquiring strength or knowledge. Our statesmen of 

 the year 1870, and before and since, would have been 

 more of statesmen had they first enquired whether the 

 masses possessed the inborn capacity of acquiring 

 and retaining knowledge, before they thrust com- 

 pulsory and pauperised education upon them. The 

 inborn instincts of the masses were, indeed, in this 

 matter truer than the artificial aspirations of their 

 social superiors, for at the time they bitterly resented 

 — and in my opinion rightly so — the compulsory 

 interference with their legitimate liberties and the 

 rightful privacy of their lives. 



