Even the negative side of this very necessary piece of training is omitted, and boys are not taught (at least in any school with which I have acquaintance) the importance of _economy_ in falsehood.
The immature mind will, of course, tend to falsehood as a natural human instinct, but the force of kindly nature is here wasted because it lacks direction. Young men go out into the world lying freely about the grandeur of their acquaintance, their personal prowess, and the rest, all matters conducing in no way to the accumulation of wealth--which is the end of man. Now, what could be simpler than, in such a class as I suggest (I admit that half an hour a week is rather short commons, but everything must have a beginning)--what could be simpler than to give some direction at least to this pseudological factor in the mind and train it to the right end?
Examples should be set before youth. Let the master recite some braggart story of strength or skill such as is common among the young of the rich. Then let him show what a waste of energy it is, and how an equal amount of pseudological force expended in a useful channel, a false description or a flattery, might have earned £100. "It is just as easy," the good preceptor would tell his young charges, "to brag about a horse that you want to sell as about, say, your horsemanship, for which there is no market. It is just as easy to lie about the value of something you have for sale as it is to lie about your lineage. But in the first case you trouser the dibs, while in the second there is no stuff--it is wasted effort. Remember, therefore, my dear boys, to check yourselves when you are about to tell an uneconomical falsehood. Count ten before you speak and consider whether there be not ready to your hand some subject in which you can fully satisfy this natural instinct of lying and at the same time prepare some advantage for your pocket."
It may be objected to me that if this very necessary reform were introduced and the elements of modern commerce were taught in all our schools, the results would cancel out; for since all our youth would be forearmed, there would still be waged in the great world outside the conflict of the better sharper against the worse, with victory as now to the master-thief. But such an objection applies to all forms of learning. My desire is to raise the general level of our gentry in this department, and especially not to leave men in middle age with the bitter memory of lost opportunities: opportunities lost through no personal fault but through the neglect of those who had a sacred trust and who did not fulfil it. At least let the man of fifty be able to say to himself: "I had every advantage. My masters at school (and no one more than my dear old headmaster, Dr. Buggins) repeatedly warned me against the peril of honesty and were at pains to teach me how to overreach the innocent; if I have proved clumsy and am now living as a publisher's hack, the fault is all with me." As things now are, many a man who has sunk to be a proof-reader, or even an author, is, in his heart, bitterly reproaching those who launched him upon the world quite ignorant of affairs.