The second best method, and the one more compatible with the power of our best men of to-day, would consist in rescuing the meaningless terms of our language--and there are thousands of them--from their pointless, unattached and almost disreputable existence. It would consist in re-defining them in the realistic light of history, biology and psychology, and in the light of a sane and sound outlook on humanity and the world. It would consist, further, in creating a convention as rigorous as the existing convention regarding all reference to sexual questions and organs, according to which [p26] it would be regarded as an act of gross immorality and indecency to commit the sin of catachresis or abuse against any of the words thus re-defined, and it should be incumbent upon the ordinary citizen to report to the nearest police station any such breach of decency which he might happen to discover while reading his daily paper, or a novel, or any treatise printed after the promulgation of the law. How many false ideals, false aspirations, and pernicious creeds and doctrines would then be dispersed? How many agitators, tub-thumpers, self-seeking bell-wethers, would then be put to flight! How many politicians would then starve! But how fresh and crisp the air of every debating chamber would then become! This is a possible and highly practical method of dealing with our present situation. There is no excuse for its not being adopted. When once it had achieved all it could achieve, the masses should be made to benefit from the results of the undertaking. Indeed, it would be more or less futile if they were not made to benefit in this way. They would then become the alert and merciless critics of people who now sway them as easily as if they were corn in the wind; and seven-eighths of our present-day literature would cease from being published. It is the surest, the speediest, and the most fruitful method of saving what still remains of Order and Culture. But it is a stupendous undertaking and one that will exact a heavy toll from all those who embark upon it. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: He used the word in the sense of the “proletariat” or the “masses.”] [Footnote 2: Perhaps Tennyson should be honourably excepted here (see _In Memoriam_ LVI., line 15); but while the realistic estimate of Nature is certainly hinted at in the lines referred to, it could not be claimed that Tennyson consistently upheld this attitude.] [p27] CHAPTER I THE PRINCIPLE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY “There is nothing wrong either in great wealth or in extensive property, provided that it be wisely administered.”--William Cobbett (_Rural Rides_).