and emotions. The growing conception of the right of every
individual to live in some degree of comfort and security is nothing
but the taking shape of these ideas and emotions; for the end of all
civilisation is to ensure that there shall be freedom for all from
debasing and degrading conditions, and that is perhaps as far as we
have hitherto advanced; but the further end in sight is to set all men
and women free to some extent from hopeless drudgery, to give them
leisure, to provide them with tastes and interests; and further still,
to contrive, if possible, that human beings shall not be born into
the world of tainted parentage, and thus to stamp out the tyranny of
disease and imbecility and criminal instinct. More and more does it
become clear that all the off-scourings and failures of civilisation
are the outcome of diseased brains and nerves, and that self-control
and vigour are the results of nature rather than nurture. All this is
now steadily in sight. The aim is personal freedom, the freedom which
shall end where another's freedom begins; but we recognise now that it
is no use legislating for social and political freedom, if we allow
the morally deficient to beget offspring for whom moral freedom is an
impossibility. And perhaps the best hope of the race lies in firmly
facing this problem.

But, as I say, we have hardly entered upon this stage. We have to deal
with things as they are, with many natures tainted by moral
feebleness, by obliquity of vision, by lack of proportion. The hope at
present lies in the endeavour to find some source of inspiration, in a
determination not to let men and women grow up with fine emotions
atrophied; and here the whole system of education is at fault. It is
all on the lines of an intellectual gymnastic; little or nothing is
done to cultivate imagination, to feed the sense of beauty, to arouse
interest, to awaken the sleeping sense of delight. There is no doubt
that all these emotions are dormant in many people. One has only to
reflect on the influence of association, to know how children who grow
up in a home atmosphere which is fragrant with beautiful influences,
generally carry on those tastes and habits into later life. But our
education tends neither to make men and women efficient for the simple
duties of life, nor to-arouse the gentler energies of the spirit. "You
must remember you are translating poetry," said a conscientious master
to a boy who was construing Virgil.