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Page 29
So once more I say, if in any matters civilisation has gone astray,
the remedy lies not in standing still, but in more complete
civilisation.
Now whatever discussion there may be about that often used and often
misused word, I believe all who hear me will agree with me in
believing from their hearts, and not merely in saying in
conventional phrase, that the civilisation which does not carry the
whole people with it, is doomed to fall, and give place to one which
at least aims at doing so.
We talk of the civilisation of the ancient peoples, of the classical
times, well, civilised they were no doubt, some of their folk at
least: an Athenian citizen for instance led a simple, dignified,
almost perfect life; but there were drawbacks to happiness perhaps
in the lives of his slaves: and the civilisation of the ancients
was founded on slavery.
Indeed that ancient society did give a model to the world, and
showed us for ever what blessings are freedom of life and thought,
self-restraint and a generous education: all those blessings the
ancient free peoples set forth to the world--and kept them to
themselves.
Therefore no tyrant was too base, no pretext too hollow, for
enslaving the grandsons of the men of Salamis and Thermopylae:
therefore did the descendants of those stern and self-restrained
Romans, who were ready to give up everything, and life as the least
of things, to the glory of their commonweal, produce monsters of
license and reckless folly. Therefore did a little knot of Galilean
peasants overthrow the Roman Empire.
Ancient civilisation was chained to slavery and exclusiveness, and
it fell; the barbarism that took its place has delivered us from
slavery and grown into modern civilisation; and that in its turn has
before it the choice of never-ceasing growth, or destruction by that
which has in it the seeds of higher growth.
There is an ugly word for a dreadful fact, which I must make bold to
use--the residuum: that word since the time I first saw it used,
has had a terrible significance to me, and I have felt from my heart
that if this residuum were a necessary part of modern civilisation,
as some people openly, and many more tacitly, assume that it is,
then this civilisation carries with it the poison that shall one day
destroy it, even as its elder sister did: if civilisation is to go
no further than this, it had better not have gone so far: if it
does not aim at getting rid of this misery and giving some share in
the happiness and dignity of life to ALL the people that it has
created, and which it spends such unwearying energy in creating, it
is simply an organised injustice, a mere instrument for oppression,
so much the worse than that which has gone before it, as its
pretensions are higher, its slavery subtler, its mastery harder to
overthrow, because supported by such a dense mass of commonplace
well-being and comfort.
Surely this cannot be: surely there is a distinct feeling abroad of
this injustice: so that if the residuum still clogs all the efforts
of modern civilisation to rise above mere population-breeding and
money-making, the difficulty of dealing with it is the legacy, first
of the ages of violence and almost conscious brutal injustice, and
next of the ages of thoughtlessness, of hurry and blindness; surely
all those who think at all of the future of the world are at work in
one way or other in striving to rid it of this shame.
That to my mind is the meaning of what we call National Education,
which we have begun, and which is doubtless already bearing its
fruits, and will bear greater, when all people are educated, not
according to the money which they or their parents possess, but
according to the capacity of their minds.
What effect that will have upon the future of the arts, I cannot
say, but one would surely think a very great effect; for it will
enable people to see clearly many things which are now as completely
hidden from them as if they were blind in body and idiotic in mind:
and this, I say, will act not only upon those who most directly feel
the evils of ignorance, but also upon those who feel them
indirectly,--upon us, the educated: the great wave of rising
intelligence, rife with so many natural desires and aspirations,
will carry all classes along with it, and force us all to see that
many things which we have been used to look upon as necessary and
eternal evils are merely the accidental and temporary growths of
past stupidity, and can be escaped from by due effort, and the
exercise of courage, goodwill, and forethought.
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