The strongest, fiercest force in nature is human will.

It is the highest organization we know of,

the will that has created the whole universe. Now all honest civilization, religion, law, and
convention is an attempt to keep this force within beneficent bounds. What corrupts
civilization, religion, law, and convention (and they are at present pretty nearly as corrupt as
they dare) is the constant attempts made by the wills of individuals and classes to thwart the
wills and enslave the powers of other individuals and classes. The powers of the parent and the
schoolmaster, and of their public analogues the lawgiver and the judge, become instruments of
tyranny in the hands of those who are too narrow-minded to understand law and exercise
judgment; and in their hands (with us they mostly fall into such hands) law becomes tyranny.
And what is a tyrant? Quite simply a person who says to another person, young or old, “You
shall do as I tell you; you shall make what I want; you shall profess my creed; you shall have no
will of your own; and your powers shall be at the disposal of my will.” It has come to this at
last: that the phrase “she has a will of her own,” or “he has a will of his own” has come to
denote a person of exceptional obstinacy and self-assertion. And even persons of good natural
disposition, if brought up to expect such deference, are roused to unreasoning fury, and
sometimes to the commission of atrocious crimes, by the slightest challenge to their authority.
Thus a laborer may be dirty, drunken, untruthful, slothful, untrustworthy in every way without
exhausting the indulgence of the country house. But let him dare to be “disrespectful” and he is
a lost man, though he be the cleanest, soberest, most diligent, most veracious, most trustworthy
man in the county. [From On Parents and Children, by George Bernard Shaw]

thwart—hinder, prevent, put a stop to something;

profess—claim something which might not be true;

creed—a set of beliefs and norms;

deference—behavior showing respect and willingness to accept someone else’s

beliefs;

slothful—lazy;

diligent—hard-working;

veracious—truthful.

-How does the author define civilization?

―How does the author define corruption?

―What connection does the author make between respect and tyranny?