286 THE GOSPEL, AND THE SOCIAL CREED OF SCIENCE. 



this and the possibility of making* the head of the 

 concern share these feelings. Both Mr. Mill and Mr. 

 Thornton regard co-operation as the final solution of 

 the problem of labour, and the goal of the workmen in 

 the future. It will certainly be more generally tried; 

 but I think that the day of its universal adoption is far 

 more distant than either of these friends of labour be- 

 lieved, partly because they wished it. At least, if we 

 assume that the rate of development of the necessary 

 qualities love and mutual trust in the workmen, and 

 at the same time the rate of extinction of the interfering 

 qualities selfishness, and dislike, and jar, and hatred 

 in man in general, is to be only as rapid as in the past, 

 then the future Utopia of labour is a good deal further 

 off than sanguine friends suppose. 



5. There is, indeed, one conceivable and remotely 

 possible contingency which, if it ever became realized, 

 would have a great effect on the future of labour and of 

 all social progress. If the highest intellect and virtue 

 in society, deeply stirred by pity and by a higher sense 

 of justice, ever come to take up the cause of the poor; 

 if, as we see some tendency in that direction, the aristo- 

 cracy of thought and letters and art, possessing as they 

 do the ear and appealing to, the heart of the public, 

 should place themselves at the head of a new social 

 crusade ; more than all, if one man of eminent genius, a 

 single commanding and reforming spirit, should appear, 

 filled with enthusiasm and devotion to the work, who 

 should be the Luther of the social reformation, then 

 indeed the naturally slow course of evolution might be 

 accelerated into revolutionary speed. But though the 

 highest minds of the present and of the past generation 

 have meditated much on the great social problems, and 

 have been all friends of the poor; though Fourier, 



