imagination and originality, which are apt to be subversive of the
_status quo_. At present, those who have power dread a disturbance of
the _status quo_, lest their unjust privileges should be taken away.
In combination with the instinct for conventionality,[1] which man
shares with the other gregarious animals, those who profit by the
existing order have established a system which punishes originality
and starves imagination from the moment of first going to school down
to the time of death and burial. The whole spirit in which education
is conducted needs to be changed, in order that children may be
encouraged to think and feel for themselves, not to acquiesce
passively in the thoughts and feelings of others. It is not rewards
after the event that will produce initiative, but a certain mental
atmosphere. There have been times when such an atmosphere existed:
the great days of Greece, and Elizabethan England, may serve as
examples. But in our own day the tyranny of vast machine-like
organizations, governed from above by men who know and care little for
the lives of those whom they control, is killing individuality and
freedom of mind, and forcing men more and more to conform to a uniform
pattern.

[1] In England this is called "a sense of humor."

Vast organizations are an inevitable element in modern life, and it is
useless to aim at their abolition, as has been done by some reformers,
for instance, William Morris. It is true that they make the
preservation of individuality more difficult, but what is needed is a
way of combining them with the greatest possible scope for individual
initiative.

One very important step toward this end would be to render democratic