"Man, dominie, it's a queer thing, but the more religious a man is the less he likes to hear aboot death. Jake here is an elder o' the auld kirk; he's on the straight and narrow path; he's going straight to heaven when he dees . . . and I never saw onybody so feared o' death as Jake is. How wud ye explain that?"
"I think," I replied, "that it is due to the fact that Jake has been brought up in the fear of the Lord."
"Exactly," nodded Dauvit. "It's my belief that most religious fowk are religious not becos they want specially to play harps in the next world, but becos they dinna want to be roasted."
Dauvit's philosophy comes pretty near that of Edmond Holmes. In What Is and What Might Be Holmes argues that our education system is founded on the Old Testament. Man is a sinner, prone to evil; a stern angry God chastises him when he transgresses. Education treats children as sinners; it punishes the wrongdoer. I believe Holmes is right, only he does not trace back education far enough. The God of the Old Testament was a man-made God (Jung says that man makes his God in his own image; his God is his ego-ideal).
The genesis of education is not the God of the Old Testament; it is the unconscious wish of the primitive men who invented that God. The religion of the Old Testament is a father complex religion; God is the hated and feared father, the authority who punishes, the provider of food and clothing, the maker of laws. Authority always makes the governed inferior and dependent; the man with a father complex cannot stand alone; he must always flee to his father or father substitute when he meets a difficulty. Thus does the Christian act; he seeks the Father; he places his burden on the Lord; he avoids responsibility. The Hebraic religion and our modern education both demand that the individual shall avoid responsibility; the good Christian and the good schoolboy must obey the Law. I think that if the world is to be free the church and the school must aim at breaking the power of the Father.
* * * * *
"Look here, Mac," I said last night, "I am going to pay you for my board."
Mac protested vigorously.
"You'll do nothing of the kind," he said firmly.
I went to the kitchen and made the offer to his wife, and she also protested.