In most of the matters of modern England, the real difficulty is that there is a negative revolution without a positive revolution.  Positive aristocracy is breaking up without any particular appearance of positive democracy taking its place.  The polished class is becoming less polished without becoming less of a class; the nobleman who becomes a guinea-pig keeps all his privileges but loses some of his tradition; he becomes less of a gentleman without becoming less of a nobleman.  In the same way (until some recent and happy revivals) it seemed highly probable that the Church of England would cease to be a religion long before it had ceased to be a Church.  And in the same way, the vulgarisation of the old, simple middle class does not even have the advantage of doing away with class distinctions; the vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

At the same time, it must be remembered that when a class has a morality it does not follow that it is an adequate morality.  The middle-class ethic was inadequate for some purposes; so is the public-school ethic, the ethic of the upper classes.  On this last matter of the public schools Dr. Spenser, the Head Master of University College School, has lately made some valuable observations.  But even he, I think, overstates the claim of the public schools.  “The strong point of the English public schools,” he says, “has always lain in their efficiency as agencies for the formation of character and for the inculcation of the great notion of obligation which distinguishes a gentleman.  On the physical and moral sides the public-school men of England are, I believe, unequalled.”  And he goes on to say that it is on the mental side that they are defective.  But, as a matter of fact, the public-school training is in the strict sense defective upon the moral side also; it leaves out about half of morality.  Its just claim is that, like the old middle class (and the Zulus), it trains some virtues and therefore suits some people for some situations.  Put an old English merchant to serve in an army and he would have been irritated and clumsy.  Put the men from English public schools to rule Ireland, and they make the greatest hash in human history.

Touching the morality of the public schools, I will take one point only, which is enough to prove the case.  People have got into their heads an extraordinary idea that English public-school boys and English youth generally are taught to tell the truth.  They are taught absolutely nothing of the kind.  At no English public school is it even suggested, except by accident, that it is a man’s duty to tell the truth.  What is suggested is something entirely different:  that it is a man’s duty not to tell lies.  So completely does this mistake soak through all civilisation that we hardly ever think even of the difference between the two things.  When we say to a child, “You must tell the truth,” we do merely mean that he must refrain from verbal