We had no
business with pleasant things at all, at any rate very little business,
at any rate not he, Ernest. We were put into this world not for pleasure
but duty, and pleasure had in it something more or less sinful in its
very essence. If we were doing anything we liked, we, or at any rate he,
Ernest, should apologise and think he was being very mercifully dealt
with, if not at once told to go and do something else. With what he did
not like, however, it was different; the more he disliked a thing the
greater the presumption that it was right. It never occurred to him that
the presumption was in favour of the rightness of what was most pleasant,
and that the onus of proving that it was not right lay with those who
disputed its being so. I have said more than once that he believed in
his own depravity; never was there a little mortal more ready to accept
without cavil whatever he was told by those who were in authority over
him: he thought, at least, that he believed it, for as yet he knew
nothing of that other Ernest that dwelt within him, and was so much
stronger and more real than the Ernest of which he was conscious. The
dumb Ernest persuaded with inarticulate feelings too swift and sure to be
translated into such debateable things as words, but practically insisted
as follows--
"Growing is not the easy plain sailing business that it is commonly
supposed to be: it is hard work--harder than any but a growing boy can
understand; it requires attention, and you are not strong enough to
attend to your bodily growth, and to your lessons too.
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