When some changes have come to pass, that perhaps will be speedier
than most people think, doubtless education will both grow in
quality and in quantity; so that it may be, that as the nineteenth
century is to be called the Century of Commerce, the twentieth may
be called the Century of Education. But that education does not end
when people leave school is now a mere commonplace; and how then can
you really educate men who lead the life of machines, who only think
for the few hours during which they are not at work, who in short
spend almost their whole lives in doing work which is not proper for
developing them body and mind in some worthy way? You cannot
educate, you cannot civilise men, unless you can give them a share
in art.

Yes, and it is hard indeed as things go to give most men that share;
for they do not miss it, or ask for it, and it is impossible as
things are that they should either miss or ask for it. Nevertheless
everything has a beginning, and many great things have had very
small ones; and since, as I have said, these ideas are already
abroad in more than one form, we must not be too much discouraged at
the seemingly boundless weight we have to lift.

After all, we are only bound to play our own parts, and do our own
share of the lifting, and as in no case that share can be great, so
also in all cases it is called for, it is necessary. Therefore let
us work and faint not; remembering that though it be natural, and
therefore excusable, amidst doubtful times to feel doubts of success
oppress us at whiles, yet not to crush those doubts, and work as if
we had them not, is simple cowardice, which is unforgivable. No man
has any right to say that all has been done for nothing, that all
the faithful unwearying strife of those that have gone before us