But it may be asked us whether we do not see a possibility of our hopes for the English race and its future falling to the earth; we reply: "We do; we recognize that it is possible that we may not even kill out the black races of Africa but that, a seething and ignorant mass, they may live under us, at last infecting us and dragging us down to themselves; we know it is possible that our conception of the English race, as possessed of a vast fertilizing and liberating power which shall spread from it till it permeates the whole race, may be mistaken and the result of national egoism and mental refraction; we know that the twentieth century, instead of being, as we dream, the great blossoming time of the English race, as the fourth century before Jesus was of the Greek, may be the century of our decay; that the spread of the consciousness of the unity of all men and the importance of their individual freedom may be not for us to spread but for some other people; and that when we have shown the world how lucifer matches can be made for one penny the gross by girls who work for three shillings a week; and that, if you can make guns which discharge so many bullets a minute, you can bring down so many unarmed black men in a minute; and that, if a few men can gain a grant of the mineral wealth of half a continent, they can buy mistresses, palaces, titles, governments, and roll in gold as if it had been water--then our work will be done. We know that this is possible, and I suppose there are moments of horrible bitterness when to all of us it has seemed almost more than possible." If it be asked us: Even if our view be true and the function and destiny of the English race be what we hope it, what after all is the use of our striving to bring it nearer; may we not in our individual action be mistaken, and, where we believe ourself to be helping a great race to walk in the path which shall serve all humanity, we are simply sacrificing ourselves to no purpose? we reply: "We know this. Under the sea millions of insects work, and, as the ages pass, they raise at last a bank that in time becomes an island on which great trees grow and the sun shines. The work of no one insect is necessary to the growth; the almost invisible speck of coral he makes may be broken off and crushed to powder, and the work yet grows; but by just such an infinite accretion of specks the island rises, and the wide instinct which compels all to contribute their part builds at last the island. "So we work, only _not_ quite unconsciously. If our individual addition be worthless and be broken off--well--we are obeying the deepest necessity of our being; we are working on in the only direction we know of, and, unlike our fellow insects of the sea, we, where we work, have dreams of the future land, not that will be, but that _may_ be--and which we believe we are building."