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