52 ATTAINABLE IDEALS. 



read, better informed, better behaved, and better 

 instructed — perhaps also better housed, better fed, 

 and better supplied with simple luxuries — than 

 many among them are nowadays. This is the 

 true, realizable ideal for all masses viewed as 

 masses ; the notion of all raising themselves, each 

 by his individual exertions, to a better social posi- 

 tion (as the words are now generally understood) 

 is a mere chimera; but the notion of all raising 

 themselves as a body by each attaining higher 

 interests and higher levels of culture is in every 

 way a practicable and a desirable one. Toward this 

 end all social progress ought properly to direct 

 itself; it should aim at the general elevation of 

 classes, not at the particular elevation of individ- 

 uals from one class into another. To make nhe 

 great thoughts of poet and philosopher, of essayist 

 "nd thinker, of scholar and orator, familiar to every 

 English and American lad and maiden ; to bring 

 home art to the firesides of the million ; to ditTuse 

 the wonderful discoveries of science among tlie 

 widest possible appreciative audiences; to stimu- 

 late all the liigher tastes for music and reading, 

 and country scenery, and the study of nature, and 

 the delights of all {esthetic sense — this is a true 

 means of making thousands of lives more really 

 successful — that is to say, happier, fuller, and 

 worthier of a reasonable creature's living — than 

 they are in the present condition of society. The 



