Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/118

82 thus seem that language, at least, is becoming effectively socialised. And here, let us hope, lies the security against that mild form of the malady of preciosity which is apt to follow the wide diffusion of an imperfect culture. The preciosity of democratic half-culture, in an age of knowledge, is at the worst a much less extravagant thing than the preciosities of the upper-class culture of ages in which all culture was narrow. So that the so-called process of "levelling-down," here as in other matters, turns out to give the best securities for a general levelling-up.