First there is the progress of education. It is possible, and even
probable, that the extension of the means of knowledge over a wider
area and to persons living under new conditions may lead to many new
combinations of thought and language. But, as yet, experience does
not favour the realization of such a hope or promise. It may be truly
answered that at present the training of teachers and the methods of
education are very imperfect, and therefore that we cannot judge of the
future by the present. When more of our youth are trained in the best
literatures, and in the best parts of them, their minds may be expected
to have a larger growth. They will have more interests, more thoughts,
more material for conversation; they will have a higher standard and
begin to think for themselves. The number of persons who will have the
opportunity of receiving the highest education through the cheap press,
and by the help of high schools and colleges, may increase tenfold. It
is likely that in every thousand persons there is at least one who is
far above the average in natural capacity, but the seed which is in him
dies for want of cultivation. It has never had any stimulus to grow,
or any field in which to blossom and produce fruit. Here is a great
reservoir or treasure-house of human intelligence out of which new
waters may flow and cover the earth. If at any time the great men of
the world should die out, and originality or genius appear to suffer
a partial eclipse, there is a boundless hope in the multitude of
intelligences for future generations. They may bring gifts to men such
as the world has never received before. They may begin at a higher point
and yet take with them all the results of the past. The co-operation of
many may have effects not less striking, though different in character
from those which the creative genius of a single man, such as Bacon or
Newton, formerly produced. There is also great hope to be derived, not
merely from the extension of education over a wider area, but from the
continuance of it during many generations. Educated parents will have
children fit to receive education; and these again will grow up under
circumstances far more favourable to the growth of intelligence than any
which have hitherto existed in our own or in former ages.