V

In the preceding chapter we set forth the causes that proceed
from the government in fostering and maintaining the evil we are
discussing. Now it falls to us to analyze those that emanate from
the people. Peoples and governments are correlated and complementary:
a fatuous government would be an anomaly among righteous people, just
as a corrupt people cannot exist under just rulers and wise laws. Like
people, like government, we will say in paraphrase of a popular adage.

We can reduce all these causes to two classes: to defects of training
and lack of national sentiment.

Of the influence of climate we spoke at the beginning, so we will
not treat of the effects arising from it.

The very limited training in the home, the tyrannical and sterile
education of the rare centers of learning, that blind subordination of
the youth to one of greater age, influence the mind so that a man may
not aspire to excel those who preceded him but must merely be content
to go along with or march behind them. Stagnation forcibly results
from this, and as he who devotes himself merely to copying divests
himself of other qualities suited to his own nature, he naturally
becomes sterile; hence decadence. Indolence is a corollary derived
from the lack of stimulus and of vitality.

That modesty infused into the convictions of every one, or, to
speak more clearly, that insinuated inferiority, a sort of daily and
constant depreciation of the mind so that, it may not be raised to