it"? For then, having dealt with this, we shall have educated ourselves to deal with a larger area.
Let me state again in other terms this fugitiveness of wealth forms, and then suggest the conclusion to which that consideration should lead us. So marked are the changes which society exhibits—especially a society in a progressive state—that the outward and visible forms which our civilisation presents to-day, its public and private buildings, its means of communication, the appliances with which it works, its machinery, its docks, its artificial harbours, its instruments of war and its instruments of peace, have most of them undergone a complete change, and many of them several complete changes, within the last sixty years. I suppose not one person in twenty in this country is living in a house which is sixty years old; not one sailor in a thousand is sailing a ship, not one artisan or labourer in a hundred is engaged in a workshop or handling tools or driving a cart which was in existence sixty years ago. It is now sixty years since the first railway was constructed from Birmingham to London, and our Railway Companies possess one thousand millions of invested capital, while our systems of water supply, of gas, of electric lighting, and of sewerage are, for the most part, of recent date. Those material relics of the past which were created more than sixty years ago, though some of them are of infinite value as mementos, examples, and heirlooms, are, for the most part, certainly not of a kind which we need wrangle over or fight about. The best of them are our universities, schools, churches, and cathedrals, and these should certainly teach us a different lesson.
But can any reasonable person, who reflects for a 9
