Page:The English Constitution (1894).djvu/86

 6 seem in the faint distance to see them&mdash;if we call up the image of those dismal tribes in lake villages, or on wretched beaches&mdash;scarcely equal to the commonest material needs, cutting down trees slowly and painfully with stone tools, hardly resisting the attacks of huge, fierce animals&mdash;without culture, without leisure, without poetry, almost without thought&mdash;destitute of morality, with only a sort of magic for religion; and if we compare that imagined life with the actual life of Europe now, we are overwhelmed at the wide contrast&mdash;we can scarcely conceive ourselves to be of the same race as those in the far distance. There used to be a notion&mdash;not so much widely asserted as deeply implanted, rather pervadingly latent than commonly apparent in political philosophy&mdash;that in a little while, perhaps ten years or so, all human beings might, without extraordinary appliances, be brought to the same level. But now, when we see by the painful history of mankind at what point we began, by what slow toil, what favourable circumstances, what accumulated achievements, civilised man has become at all worthy in any degree so to call himself&mdash;when we realise the tedium of history and the painfulness of results&mdash;our perceptions are sharpened as to the relative steps of our long and gradual progress. We have in a great community like England crowds of people scarcely more civilised than the majority of two thousand years ago; we have others, even more numerous, such as the best people were a thousand years since. The lower orders, the middle orders, are still, when tried by what is the standard of the educated "ten thousand," narrow-minded, unintelligent, incurious.