As We Are and As We May Be | Page 9

stages.
First, there is the original project, fresh from the brain of the dreamer,
glowing with the colours of his imagination, a figure fair and strong as
the newly born Athênê. By its single-handed power mankind are to be
regenerated, and the millennium is to be at once taken in hand. There
are no difficulties which it will not at once clear away; there are no
obstacles which will not vanish at its approach as the morning mist is
burned up by the newly risen sun. The dreamer creates a school, and
presently among his disciples there arises one who is practical enough
to reduce the dream to a possible and working scheme. The advocates
of the Cause are still, however, a good way from getting the scheme
established. The battle with the opposition follows, in which one has to
contend--first with those who cannot be touched by any generous aims,
always a pretty large body; next with those who are afraid of the people;
and lastly with those who have private interests of their own to defend.
The triumph which presently arrives by no means concludes the history
of the agitation, because there is certain to follow at no distant day the
discovery that the measure has somehow failed to achieve those
glorious results which were so freely promised. It has, in fact, gone to
swell the pages of that chronicle, not yet written, which may be called
the 'History of the Well-intentioned.'
The emancipation of the West Indian slaves, for instance, has not been
accompanied by the burning desire for progress--industrial, artistic, or
educational--which was confidently anticipated. Quite the contrary.
Yet--which is a point which continually recurs in the History of the
Well-intentioned--one would not, if it were possible, go back to the
former conditions. It is better that the negro should lie idle, and sleep in
the sun all his days, than that he should work under the overseer's lash.
For the free man there is always hope; for the slave there is none. Again,

the first apostles of Co-operation expected nothing less than that their
ideas would be universally, immediately, and ardently adopted. That
was a good many years ago. The method of Co-operation still offers the
most wonderful vision of universal welfare, easily attainable on the
simple condition of honesty, ever put before humanity; yet we see how
little has been achieved and how numerous have been the failures.
Again, though the advantages of temperance are continually preached
to working men, beer remains the national beverage; yet even those of
us who would rather see the working classes sober and self-restrained
than water-drinkers by Act of Parliament or solemn pledge,
acknowledge how good it is that the preaching of temperance was
begun. Again, we have got most of those Points for which the Chartists
once so passionately struggled. As for those we have not got, there is
no longer much enthusiasm left for them. The world does not seem so
far very substantially advanced by the concession of the Points; yet we
would not willingly give them back and return to the old order. Again,
we have opened free museums, containing all kinds of beautiful things:
the people visit them in thousands; yet they remain ignorant of Art, and
have no yearning discoverable for Art. In spite of this, we would not
willingly close the museums.
The dreamer, in fact, leaves altogether out of his reckoning certain
factors of humanity which his first practical advocate only partially
takes into account. These are stupidity, apathy, ignorance, greed,
indolence, and the Easy Way. There are doubtless others, because in
humanity as in physics no one can estimate all the forces, but these are
the most readily recognised; and the last two perhaps are the most
important, because the great mass of mankind are certainly born with
an incurable indolence of mind or body, which keeps them rooted in
the old grooves and destroys every germ of ambition at its first
appearance.
The latest failure of the Well-intentioned, so far as we have yet found
out, is the Education Act, for which the London rate has now mounted
to nine-pence in the pound. It is a failure, like the emancipation of the
slaves; because, though it has done some things well, it has wholly
failed to achieve the great results confidently predicted for it by its

advocates in the year '68. What is more, we now understand that it
never can achieve those results.
It was going, we were told, to give all English children a sound and
thorough elementary education. It was, further, going to inspire those
children with the ardour for knowledge, so that, on leaving school, they
would carry on their studies and continually advance in learning. It was
going to take away the national reproach of