With the rise of chiefdoms around 7,500 years ago, people had to learn, for the first time in history, how to encounter strangers regularly without attempting to kill them. Guns, Germs And Steel

Certainly the prolonged education indispensable to the progress of Society is not natural to mankind. It cuts against the grain. A boy would like to follow his father in pursuit of food or prey. He would like to be doing serviceable things so far as his utmost strength allowed. He would like to be earning wages however small to help to keep up the home. He would like to have some leisure of his own to use or misuse as he pleased. He would ask little more than the right to work or starve. And then perhaps in the evenings a real love of learning would come to those who are worthy – and why try to stuff in those who are not? – and knowledge and thought would open the ‘magic casements’ of the mind. Never Give In!

“And there is nothing wastes so rapidly as liberality, for even whilst you exercise it you lose the power to do so.” The Prince

But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality. The Picture of Dorian Gray