Discipline
is being outwardly preserved, but the destroying forces are creeping
into every weak place, and the men of our time may see strange things.
Gradually a certain resolute body of men are teaching weaker people that
even self-discipline is unnecessary, and that self-reverence,
self-knowledge, self-control are only phrases used by interested people
who want to hold others in slavery. In our England it is plainer every
day that the character of the people is changing. Individual men are
obedient, brave to the death, self-sacrificing, just as they always were
even in our darkest times; but, none the less, it is too plain that
authority ordained by law is dying, and that authority which rests on
vague and fluctuating sentiment gains power with steady swiftness. The
judges sit and retain all their old confidence; the magistrates sentence
daily their batches of submissive culprits; the policeman rules supreme
over the streets--he scares the flower-girl, and warns the pensive
burglar with the staccato thunder of his monarchical foot. All seems
very firm and orderly; and our largest crowds maintain their attitude of
harmless good-humour when no inflammatory talkers are there. But the
hand has written, and true discipline cannot survive very much longer
unless we rouse ourselves for a dead-lift effort.
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