Indeed, the more pleasant side of learning to do this or that had always been treated as something with which Ernest had no concern.  We had no business with pleasant things at all, at any rate very little business, at any rate not he, Ernest.  We were put into this world not for pleasure but duty, and pleasure had in it something more or less sinful in its very essence.  If we were doing anything we liked, we, or at any rate he, Ernest, should apologise and think he was being very mercifully dealt with, if not at once told to go and do something else.  With what he did not like, however, it was different; the more he disliked a thing the greater the presumption that it was right.  It never occurred to him that the presumption was in favour of the rightness of what was most pleasant, and that the onus of proving that it was not right lay with those who disputed its being so.  I have said more than once that he believed in his own depravity; never was there a little mortal more ready to accept without cavil whatever he was told by those who were in authority over him:  he thought, at least, that he believed it, for as yet he knew nothing of that other Ernest that dwelt within him, and was so much stronger and more real than the Ernest of which he was conscious.  The dumb Ernest persuaded with inarticulate feelings too swift and sure to be translated into such debateable things as words, but practically insisted as follows—­

“Growing is not the easy plain sailing business that it is commonly supposed to be:  it is hard work—­harder than any but a growing boy can understand; it requires attention, and you are not strong enough to attend to your bodily growth, and to your lessons too.  Besides, Latin and Greek are great humbug; the more people know of them the more odious they generally are; the nice people whom you delight in either never knew any at all or forgot what they had learned as soon as they could; they never turned to the classics after they were no longer forced to read them; therefore they are nonsense, all very well in their own time and country, but out of place here.  Never learn anything until you find you have been made uncomfortable for a good long while by not knowing it; when you find that you have occasion for this or that knowledge, or foresee that you will have occasion for it shortly, the sooner you learn it the better, but till then spend your time in growing bone and muscle; these will be much more useful to you than Latin and Greek, nor will you ever be able to make them if you do not do so now, whereas Latin and Greek can be acquired at any time by those who want them.

“You are surrounded on every side by lies which would deceive even the elect, if the elect were not generally so uncommonly wide awake; the self of which you are conscious, your reasoning and reflecting self, will believe these lies and bid you act in accordance with them.  This conscious self of yours, Ernest, is a prig begotten of prigs