Strona 505 z 1391

Now that the world has once been set in motion, and is no longer

held fast under the tyranny of custom and ignorance; now that

criticism has pierced the veil of tradition and the past no

longer overpowers the present,-the progress of civilization may

be expected to be far greater and swifter than heretofore. Even

at our present rate of speed the point at which we may arrive in

two or three generations is beyond the power of imagination to

foresee. There are forces in the world which work, not in an

arithmetical, but in a geometrical ratio of increase. Education,

to use the expression of Plato, moves like a wheel with an

ever-multiplying rapidity. Nor can we say how great may be its

influence, when it becomes universal,-when it has been inherited

by many generations,-when it is freed from the trammels of

superstition and rightly adapted to the wants and capacities of

different classes of men and women.