‘Consider also that this lesser grade of people make up both our Merchant class and those in power, and perhaps you may understand why unreason is so pervasive. You must understand that such people have always felt threatened by those better educated than themselves, and who should those very people they fear be, but the Scholastic community; those poor in wealth but rich in real knowledge.
‘The rich, in their arrogant presumption, simply cannot tolerate the realization that they are a bunch of ignorant louts without the education, and therefore the right, to so much as express an opinion. So how do they respond to this threat? By vilifying reason itself, which they have almost always managed to get away with, because the poor, who make up the greatest numbers in any population, are also intimidated by the Scholastic community, and in this case will almost always stand by the rich who champion such spurious nonsense.
‘There is a perverse desire for self-importance, an unwillingness to admit to ignorance, and an aversion to earning accolades through hard work, which resides in each of us, the three together creating a sort of inertia which, unchecked, will drag even the best society down into muck and ruin. The cure is and has always been blatantly obvious: self-motivation, hard work, education, and a healthy degree of self-privation; but instilling those four simple axioms . . .’ he shrugged. Then smiled. ‘There is a saying, that “Every victory contains the seeds if its own defeat.” I think that it applies most eloquently to our present state of affairs in the Elf Kingdom.’