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.

And among those evils, I do, and must always, believe will fall that
one which last year I told you that I accounted the greatest of all
evils, the heaviest of all slaveries; that evil of the greater part
of the population being engaged for by far the most part of their
lives in work, which at the best cannot interest them, or develop
their best faculties, and at the worst (and that is the commonest,
too) is mere unmitigated slavish toil, only to be wrung out of them
by the sternest compulsion, a toil which they shirk all they can--
small blame to them. And this toil degrades them into less than
men: and they will some day come to know it, and cry out to be made
men again, and art only can do it, and redeem them from this
slavery; and I say once more that this is her highest and most
glorious end and aim; and it is in her struggle to attain to it that
she will most surely purify herself, and quicken her own aspirations
towards perfection.

But we--in the meantime we must not sit waiting for obvious signs of
these later and glorious days to show themselves on earth, and in
the heavens, but rather turn to the commonplace, and maybe often
dull work of fitting ourselves in detail to take part in them if we
should live to see one of them; or in doing our best to make the
path smooth for their coming, if we are to die before they are here.

What, therefore, can we do, to guard traditions of time past that we
may not one day have to begin anew from the beginning with none to