I do not want to repeat what I said about fear in a former chapter; I am concerned with it now only in the intellectual sphere, as an obstacle to truthful thinking. In this sphere, it is much easier to overcome in youth than in later life, because a change of opinion is less likely to bring grave misfortune to a boy or girl than to an adult, whose life is built upon certain postulates. For this reason, I should encourage a habit of intelligent controversy among the older boys and girls, and I should place no obstacles in their way even if they questioned what I regarded as important truths. I should make it my object to teach thinking, not orthodoxy, or even heterodoxy. And I should absolutely never sacrifice intellect to the fancied interest of morals. It is generally held that the teaching of virtue demands the inculcation of falsehood. In politics, we conceal the vices of eminent statesmen of our own party. In theology, we conceal the sins of Popes if we are Catholics, and the sins of Luther and Calvin if we are Protestants. In matters of sex, we pretend before young people that virtue is much commoner than it is. In all countries, even adults are not allowed to know certain kinds of facts which the police consider undesirable, and the censor, in England, does not allow plays to be true to life, since he holds that the public can only be cajoled into virtue by deceit. This whole attitude implies a certain feebleness. Let us know the truth, whatever it is; then we can act rationally. The holders of power wish to conceal the truth from their slaves, in order that they may be misled as to their own interests; this is intelligible. What is less intelligible is that democracies should voluntarily make laws designed to prevent themselves from knowing the truth. This is collective Quixotism: they are resolved not to be told that the helmet is less good than they wish to believe. Such an attitude of abject funk is unworthy of free men and women. In my school, no obstacle to knowledge shall exist of any sort or kind. I shall seek virtue by the right training of passions and instincts, not by lying and deceit. In the virtue that I desire, the pursuit of knowledge, without fear and without limitation, is an essential element, in the absence of which the rest has little value.