AUTOBIOGRAPHY 5 



has always ascribed to me, though I fancy they have 

 for the most part remained in a latent state. 



My regular school training was of the briefest, per- 

 haps fortunately, for though my way of life has made 

 me acquainted with all sorts and conditions of men, 

 from the highest to the lowest, I deliberately affirm that 

 the society I fell into at school was the worst I have 

 ever known. We boys were average lads, with much 

 the same inherent capacity for good and evil as any 

 others; but the people who were set over us cared 

 about as much for our intellectual and moral welfare 

 as if they were baby-farmers. We were left to the 

 operation of the struggle for existence among ourselves, 

 and bullying was the least of the ill practices current 

 among us. Almost the only cheerful reminiscence in 

 connection with the place which arises in my mind is 

 that of a battle I had with one of my classmates, who 

 had bullied me until I could stand it no longer. I was 

 a very slight lad, but there was a wild-cat element in 

 me which, when roused, made up for lack of weight, 

 and I licked my adversary effectually. However, one 

 of my first experiences of the extremely rough-and- 

 ready nature of justice, as exhibited by the course of 

 things in general, arose out of the fact that I the 

 victor had a black eye, while he the vanquished 

 had none, so that I got into disgrace and he did not. 

 We made it up, and thereafter I was unmolested. One 

 of the greatest shocks I ever received in my life was to 

 be told a dozen years afterwards by the groom who 

 brought me my horse in a stable-yard in Sydney that 

 he was my quondam antagonist. He had a long story 



for the deductive method of reasoning in the jesting remark that 

 "if Spencer ever wrote a tragedy, its plot would be the slaying 

 of a beautiful deduction by an ugly fact." Life and Letters of 

 Herbert Spencer, 11:264. 



