CHAP. xx. THE DEMON OF GREED. 367 



fundamental change in our methods was necessary, and 

 stated clearly, and I believe truly, what the first essen- 

 tial steps of that change must be. 1 Tennyson asks us 



" Is it well that while we range with Science, glorying in the Time, 

 City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city Slime? " . 



John Stuart Mill long since warned us that when great 

 evils are in question small remedies do not produce a 

 small effect, but no effect at all. And Lowell says the 

 same in his exquisite verse: 



" New occasions teach new duties : Time makes ancient good 



uncouth ; 

 They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of 



Truth; 

 Lo! before us gleam her camp fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims 



be; 

 Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate 



winter sea, 

 Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted 



key." 



Yet this is exactly what we have been doing during 

 the whole century, applying small plasters to each 

 social ulcer as it became revealed to us petty pallia- 

 tives for chronic evils. But ever as one symptom has 

 been got rid of new diseases have appeared, or the old 

 have burst out elsewhere with increased virulence; and 

 it will certainly be considered one of the most terrible 

 and inexplicable failures of the nineteenth century that, 

 up to its very close, neither legislators nor politicians of 

 either of the great parties that alternately ruled the 

 nation would acknowledge that there could be anything 

 really wrong while wealth increased as it was increasing. 



1 See " Unto this Last." Preface. 



