All those who may be tempted to regard this conclusion as extreme, would do well to pause a moment here, in order to dwell upon the possible consequences of a confusion of language. Is it not clear that at all times and in all climes where a confusion of language has existed, man has been doomed not only to be misleading and misled, but also to be incapable of leading? That is the worst danger. A lack of precision amounting almost to incomprehensibility is sure in any case to mislead; but what if it makes it no longer possible to lead? [p15] There will always be thousands of men prepared to mislead their fellows. Even in the heydey of every culture this has been so. Even with language at its brightest and best in precision and adequacy this is always so. But how about those who are prepared to lead their fellows, and who are admirably equipped for so doing? What are they to do if the only medium which lies to hand is so corrupt, so devoid of meaning, that they cannot use it without the tragic certainty of being misunderstood? And yet who would undertake to stand up and speak to-day, even before an educated audience, without feeling certain beforehand that he would be misunderstood if he used the words Liberty, Freedom, Right, Democracy, Patriotism, etc.? That is the danger. While there is a harvest prepared for those who would mislead in days like the present; for the rare individual who would lead, who is sufficiently gifted to lead, and whose leadership is needed, there can be but disappointment and barrenness. This is the pass to which our present confusion of language has brought us. It makes revolution possible, because it makes the pursuit of false ideals inevitable, and conflict and misunderstanding a certainty. The causes of our present condition are to be sought, first and chiefly, in the decline of a common and uniform culture, secondly in the cheap literature that has come into being since the Education Act of 1870, and thirdly in modern journalism. In modern journalism the distortion and abuse of terms, the crippling of words has [p16] become almost a habit. Catachresis, or the forcing and straining of words, is the rule; nowhere is the sacred duty of precision less observed than in the very quarter where its sway should be most uncontested. The journalist, intent only on sensation, is the first to debase words into missiles or empty symbols. He it is who sets the example to the crowd, by picking up these unfortunate fallen pieces of mosaic, in order to fling them about with the wantonness of a schoolboy. He it is who shakes the shoddy frame of modern culture in the hope of making even more of these sparkling fragments fall out of the design of life, until ultimately when some one does arise who would choose to construct rather than to destroy, he finds nothing to hand but shapeless and irrecognisable monstrosities, chipped into mere stones by the mad fury with which they have been hurled about.