

IX GOVERNMENT 423 



to justify those who, content with the present, 

 are opposed to all endeavours to bring about 

 any fundamental change in our social arrange- 

 ments. 



Those who have had the patience to follow me 

 to the end will, I trust, have become aware that 

 my aim has been altogether different. Even the ' 

 best of modern civilisations appears to me to ex- 

 hibit a condition of mankind which neither em- 

 bodies any worthy ideal nor even possesses the . 

 merit of stability. I do not hesitate to express 

 the opinion, that, if there is no hope of a large 

 improvement of the condition of the greater part 

 of the human family ; if it is true that the increase 

 of knowledge, the winning of a greater dominion 

 over Nature which is its consequence, and the 

 wealth which follows upon that dominion, are to 

 make no difference in the extent and the intensity 

 of Want, with its concomitant physical and moral 

 degradation, among the masses of the people, I 

 should hail the advent of some kindly comet, 

 which would sweep the whole affair away, as a 

 desirable consummation. What profits it to the | 

 human Prometheus that he has stolen the fire of / 

 heaven to be his servant, and that the spirits of/ 

 the earth and of the air obey him, if the vulture/ 

 of pauperism is eternally to tear his very vitals/ 

 and keep him on the brink of destruction ? 



Assuredly, if I believed that any of the schemes 

 hitherto proposed for bringing about social amelio- 



