This revolution in existence accomplished, and public life having in consequence vanished, there ceased all need of social display, of conversational fireworks, and of tact in managing men either singly or in masses. The object of gregarious education disappeared at once. As long as the coarse and selfish struggle called public life was the highest sphere, they knew the youth had to be trained for it, its methods and aims had to be adopted, and schools and universities were a necessity, as miniature reflections of the greater world. In order to succeed in life they had to be rolled together and tumbled against one another like pebbles in a stream till they had taken the conventional smoothness of outline and similarity of sheen; they had to learn to keep the wild beast in their hearts and the silken courtier in their manners, to cloak untruth and hypocrisy in an appearance of brilliancy or wisdom, to make grasping selfishness seem almost divine love, and brutal cruelty and arrogance the most dazzling refinement. It was painful to read the flashy lies and stabs in the dark that went for wit, and the cruel intrigue and showy falsehood that went to the making of history, in those old times. Even the friendship of the foremost was but a piece of acting; little trust could be put in it; it served its purpose and was abandoned as soon as it failed to impress the dupes. And solitaries then seemed useless, moping self-analysers; they made no history and they were soon forgotten. No parents could afford to let any one of their children thus lose his life; and, however gentle and meditative he might be by nature, he must be thrust into the cruel struggle of school and university in order to acquire hardness and brilliancy; however virtuous and noble in purpose, he had to prepare for the arena of polished scoundrelism. As soon as these conditions of competition ceased, education in masses had to cease too; it must be a miniature of the general life and a preparation for it. At a distance and in a haze it seems as if the immature in their sports were leading a life of primitive and happy innocence; but innocence often accompanies untamed passion and fierce emulation. The appearance of simplicity comes from their ignorance of the advance of the world. Nothing did the Limanorans so shudder at as the chance of perpetuating the methods and habits of this early and undeveloped stage throughout later life. What their associative education in former times had done for them was to confirm the vices of savagery under the gloved conventions that civilised life demanded, and to destroy the simplicity for ever. Solitary training under the supervision of sages, they soon found, had the reverse effect; it confirmed the naturalness and spontaneity, and swept out the inclination to intrigue and arrogance and cruelty.