The High-Caste also stupidly support the old preparatory schools; and will not, if they can help it, suffer any of the Lower-Caste to enter them. In these, the barbarous customs continue; if one goes into them, he is at once carried backwards into the _dark ages_ (as even the Barbarians call them); ages, when the Priests had all the Learning--wretched as it was--and when the _Superstition_ coloured and directed everything. Here, the dead tongues are the chief studies, with something of the ancient _puzzles_ as to Lines and Points--for the most part useless--with a style of administration fitted to the savage brutality of those times. The only part of the training cared for by the youths, is that which developes the forces of the body. The disgusting _Ring Fight_, referred to elsewhere, is a common pastime; and the lad is a milksop [kou-ad] who really avoids the rude crowd, and wishes to study. To be respected he must fight his way, and be feared. If, by chance, some lad of the Lower-Caste be entered, by the foolish wish of the father to bring the son into the _polished_ circle of the High-Caste, he will be _polished off_ (as these young Barbarians say), in a manner never dreamed of. The poor lad will be beaten, humiliated, and driven from the School; unless, indeed, he be strong enough to bully and beat his tormentors! Very comically, in one part of these brutal fights, when one has got his antagonist completely in his power, and can bruise him as he pleases, the position is called _being in Chancery_! One of the fittest illustrations possible, of the universality of the judgment which places that Court among things the most repulsive! The younger in these schools are the _Slaves_, for the time being, to the older and stronger; in fact, the whole effect of the training is really to make these youths selfish, quick of quarrel, hardy of body, and barbarous; to prepare them for the lives of predatory exploit, upon which fortune and all the best honours depend--learning being subordinate, and disregarded, unless it further the main purpose. Force is still the god of these Barbarians, and _Jah_ is worshipped because he, in this, fits them. The intellect is improved only that Force may be developed and disciplined to its most effective use. One sees this everywhere. To invent the most destructive engines of war for the wholesale slaughter of the human species, to add to the swiftness of movement, to the durability and weight of action, to the means of assault and of defence, to bend the mind to uses based upon the idea that the normal condition of man is that of _a tiger with man's intellect_, to make the beast something inexpressibly dreadful!