ce of certain members of upper-class society
had sent out envoys; it had not moved as a body. Individuals were
ready to sacrifice themselves, but the conditions of labour remained
unchanged.

So long as a general wrong is allowed to stand, it gives the lie to
every individual effort. The wrong becomes even more bitter because it
loses its unconsciousness--men know it for wrong, and do not amend it.
For this reason a second movement of importance, that of the People's
High Schools, which has created in Denmark the most advanced
peasant-class in existence, can achieve no social reform in lands
cloven by proletarianism. If in addition to this the High School
movement should depart from its original conception, that of a
temporary community of life between the teachers and the taught, and
should, instead of this, resolve itself into a lecture-institution,
then the danger arises that what is offered will be disconnected
matter, intended for entertainment, and without any basis of real
knowledge, something commonly called half-culture which is worse than
unculture, and is more properly described as misculture.

No work of the charitable type can bring about the reconciliation of
classes or be a substitute for popular education. The reconciliation
of classes, however, even if it were attainable, is by no means our
goal, but rather the abolition of classes, and our ultimate object is
not popular education but popular culture. We do not intend to give
with one hand and take back with the other, we shall not condemn a
brother-people to dullness and quicken a few chosen individuals; no,
we mean to go to the root of the evil, to break down the monopoly of
culture, and to create a new people, united and cultured throughout.

But the root of the trouble lies in the conditions of labour. It is an
idle dream to imagine that out of that soulless subdivision of labour
which governs our mechanical methods of production, the old
handicrafts can ever be developed again. Short of some catastrophic
depopulation which shall restore the mediaeval relation between the
area of the soil and the numbers that occupy it, the subdivision of
labour will have to stand, and so long as it stands no man will
complete his job from start to finish--he will only do a section of
it; at best, and assuming the highest mechanical development, it will
be a work of supervision. But mindless and soulless work no man can do
with any joy. The terrible fact about th