I suppose that everybody living in a country parish, who can look back
over the period of fifty years of compulsory education, would agree
that the results are insignificant in comparison with the effort, and
one cannot help wondering whether, after all, they justify the
gigantic cost. We appear to have tried to build too quickly on an
insecure foundation. Nature produces no permanent work in a hurry, and
Art is a blind leader unless she submits to Nature's laws. The pace
has been too great, and the fabric which we have reared is already
showing the defects in its construction.
How otherwise can we account for the littleness of the men
representing "the people," who have been rushed into the big
positions, and for the vulgarity of the present age? Vulgarity in
public worship; vulgarity in the manners, the speeches, and the ideals
of the House of Commons; vulgarity in "literature," on the stage, in
music, in the studio, and in a section of the Press; vulgarity in
building and the desecration of beautiful places; vulgarity in form
and colour of dress and decoration. We are far behind the design and
construction of the domestic furniture of 150 years ago, and we have
never equalled the architecture of the earliest periods, for stability
and stateliness.
The skim milk seems to have come to the top and the cream has gone to
the bottom, as the result of the contravention of the laws of
evolution, and the failure to perceive the analogy between the
simplest methods of agriculture, and the cultivation of mentality.
Pages:
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176