240 SEX 



industrial civilisation, of which therefore we 

 can but make what small temporary and 

 philanthropic alleviations as we can. For 

 this, the history of the past is but of fading 

 shadows; and even the "progress" of which 

 it has boasted so much is too little to be 

 estimated in quality of life, however easily 

 in quantity. Towards these quantitative 

 estimates, we have indeed masters of statistics ; 

 and their records are convincingly impressive. 

 See in the Canadian news how we pull down 

 our corn-elevators to build greater and in 

 South Africa how fast the Tubercle Mine and 

 the Long Ankylostome are being sunk to meet 

 the Bottomless ; or now that City Improvement 

 and Town-planning still too much in Second 

 Empire form are coming into fashion, how 

 unprecedentedly the plan of Chicago grows, 

 extending the street we last lived in, from 

 fifteen miles of seldom-disturbed dirt by fif- 

 teen more of mathematical dreariness ! Each 

 is in its way a triumph beyond question ; but 

 wherever any words be said of progress in 

 quality of civilisation and of life towards its 

 ideals, then there is silence; or if that will 

 not answer, a very tumult of utilitarians and 

 paleotects crying out with one voice : " Away 

 with these Utopians 1 " 



Yet the advance quietly making, in our 

 own generation, since Ruskin was thus 

 hooted out of economics, is that his prophecies 

 of the final social economy we here call neo- 

 technic are actually coming to pass. This 

 is still no doubt but the day of small things, 

 but the leaven has been at work, and the 



