have always had a certain amount of educational responsibility, and that
has furnished an abundance of material for pleasant talk and interesting
thoughts; but then I have always suffered from the Anglo-Saxon failing
of disliking responsibility except in the case of those for whom one's
efforts are definitely pledged on strict business principles. I cannot
deliberately assume a sense of responsibility towards people in general;
to do that implies a sense of the value of one's own influence and
example, which I have never possessed; and, indeed, I have always
heartily disliked the manifestation of it in others. Indeed, I firmly
believe that the best and most fruitful part of a man's influence, is
the influence of which he is wholly unconscious; and I am quite sure
that no one who has a strong sense of responsibility to the world in
general can advance the cause of equality, because such a sense implies
at all events a consciousness of moral superiority. Moreover, my
educational experience leads me to believe that one cannot do much
to form character. The most one can do is to guard the young against
pernicious influences, and do one's best to recommend one's own
disinterested enthusiasms. One cannot turn a violet into a rose by any
horticultural effort; one can only see that the violet or the rose has
the best chance of what is horribly called self-effectuation.
My own belief is that these great ideas like Equality and Justice are
things which, like poetry, are born and cannot be made. That a number of
earnest people should be thinking about them shows that they are in
the air; but the interest felt in them is the sign and not the cause
of their increase. I believe that one must go forwards, trying to avoid
anything that is consciously harsh or pompous or selfish or base, and
the great ideas will take care of themselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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