But I dont want my son to ripen into either of those imbecile developments of species.
Then dont listen to Parson John; and theres an end of the discussion.
No, there is not. I have not heard your advice what to do if Johns advice is not to be taken.
Mr. Mivers hesitated. He seemed puzzled.
The fact is, said the Parson, that Mivers got up The Londoner upon a principle that regulates his own mind,find fault with the way everything is done, but never commit yourself by saying how anything can be done better.
That is true, said Mivers, candidly. The destructive order of mind is seldom allied to the constructive. I and The Londoner are destructive by nature and by policy. We can reduce a building into rubbish, but we dont profess to turn rubbish into a building. We are critics, and, as you say, not such fools as to commit ourselves to the proposition of amendments that can be criticised by others. Nevertheless, for your sake, Cousin Peter, and on the condition that if I give my advice you will never say that I gave it, and if you take it that you will never reproach me if it turns out, as most advice does, very ill,I will depart from my custom and hazard my opinion.
That is true, said Mivers, candidly. The destructive order of mind is seldom allied to the constructive. I and The Londoner are destructive by nature and by policy. We can reduce a building into rubbish, but we dont profess to turn rubbish into a building. We are critics, and, as you say, not such fools as to commit ourselves to the proposition of amendments that can be criticised by others. Nevertheless, for your sake, Cousin Peter, and on the condition that if I give my advice you will never say that I gave it, and if you take it that you will never reproach me if it turns out, as most advice does, very ill,I will depart from my custom and hazard my opinion.
I accept the conditions.
Well then, with every new generation there springs up a new order of ideas. The earlier the age at which a man seizes the ideas that will influence his own generation, the more he has a start in the race with his contemporaries. If Kenelm comprehends at sixteen those intellectual signs of the time which, when he goes up to college, he will find young men of eighteen or twenty only just prepared to comprehend, he will produce a deep impression of his powers for reasoning and their adaptation to actual life, which will be of great service to him later. Now the ideas that influence the mass of the rising generation never have their well-head in the generation itself. They have their source in the generation before them, generally in a small minority, neglected or contemned by the great majority which adopt them later. Therefore a lad at the age of sixteen, if he wants to get at such ideas, must come into close contact with some superior mind in which they were conceived twenty or thirty years before. I am consequently for placing Kenelm with a person from whom the new ideas can be learned. I am also for his being placed in the metropolis during the process of this initiation. With such introductions as are at our command, he may come in contact not only with new ideas, but with eminent men in all vocations. It is a great thing to mix betimes with clever people. One picks their brains unconsciously. There is another advantage, and not a small one, in this early entrance into good society. A youth learns manners, self-possession, readiness of resource; and he is much less likely to get into scrapes and contract tastes for low vices and mean dissipation, when he comes into life wholly his own master, after having acquired a predilection for refined companionship under the guidance of those competent to select it. There, I have talked myself out of breath. And you had better decide at once in favour of my advice; for as I am of a contradictory temperament, myself of to-morrow may probably contradict myself of to-day.
Sir Peter was greatly impressed with his cousins argumentative eloquence.
The Parson smoked his cutty-pipe in silence until appealed to by Sir Peter, and he then said, In this programme of education for a Christian gentleman, the part of Christian seems to me left out.
The tendency of the age, observed Mr. Mivers, calmly, is towards that omission. Secular education is the necessary reaction from the special theological training which arose in the dislike of one set of Christians to the teaching of another set; and as these antagonists will not agree how religion is to be taught, either there must be no teaching at all, or religion must be eliminated from the tuition.
That may do very well for some huge system of national education, said Sir Peter, but it does not apply to Kenelm, as one of a family all of whose members belong to the Established Church. He may be taught the creed of his forefathers without offending a Dissenter.
Which Established Church is he to belong to? asked Mr. Mivers,High Church, Low Church, Broad Church, Puseyite Church, Ritualistic Church, or any other Established Church that may be coming into fashion?