Suppose the State to have fairly started its "Industrial Regiments of the New Era,"which alas,are yet only beginning to be talked of,--what continents of new real work opened out,for the Home and all other Public Offices among us!Suppose the Home Office looking out,as for life and salvation,for proper men to command these "Regiments."Suppose the anncement were practically made to all British souls that the want of wants,more indispensable than any jewel in the crown,was that of men able to command men in ways of industrial and moral well-doing;that the State would give its very life for such men;that such men were the State;that the quantity of them to be found in England lamentably small at present,was the exact measure of England's worth,--what a new dawn of everlasting day for all British souls!le British soul,to whom the gods have given faculty and heroism,what men call genius,here at last is a career for thee.It will be needful to swear fealty to the Incredible,and traitorously cramp thyself into a cowardly canting play-actor in God's Universe;or,solemnly forswearing that,into a mutis rebel and waste bandit in thy generation:here is an aim that is clear and credible,a course fit for a man.need to become a tormenting and self-tormenting mutineer,banded with rebellious souls,if thou wouldst live;need to rot in suicidal idleness;or take to platform preaching,and writing in Radical Newspapers,to pull asunder the great Falsity in which thou and all of us are choking.The great Falsity,behold it has become,in the very heart of it,a great Truth of Truths;and invites thee and all brave men to cooperate with it in transforming all the body and the joints into the le likeness of that heart!Thrice-blessed change.The State aims,once more,with a true aim;and has loadstars in the eternal Heaven.Struggle faithfully for it;le is this struggle;thou too,according to thy faculty,shalt reap in due time,if thou faint .Thou shalt have a wise command of men,thou shalt be wisely commanded by men,--the summary of all blessedness for a social creature here below.The sore struggle,never to be relaxed,and forgiven to any son of man,is once more a le one;glory to the Highest,it is once more a true and le one,wherein a man can afford to die!Our path is again Heavenward.Forward,with steady pace,with drawn weapons,and unconquerable hearts,in the name of God that made us all!--Wise obedience and wise command,I foresee that the regimenting of Pauper Banditti into Soldiers of Industry is but the beginning of this blessed process,which will extend to the topmost heights of our Society;and,in the course of generations,make us all once more a Governed Commonwealth,and Civitas Dei ,if it please God!Waste-land Industrials succeedingt,other kinds of Industry,as cloth-making,shoe-making,plough-making,spade-making,house-building,--in the end,all kinds of Industry whatsoever,will be found capable of regimenting.
Mill-operatives,all manner of free operatives,as yet unregimented,adic under private masters,they,seeing such example and its blessedness,will say:"Masters,you must regiment us a little;make our interests with you permanent a little,instead of temporary and adic;we will enlist with the State otherwise!"This will go on,on the one hand,while the State-operation goes on,on the other:thus will all Masters of Workmen,private Captains of Industry,be forced to incessantly co-operate with the State and its public Captains;they regimenting in their way,the State in its way,with ever-widening field;till their fields meet (so to speak)and coalesce,and there be unregimented worker,or such only as are fit to remain unregimented,any more.--O my friends,Iclearly perceive this horrible cloaca of Pauperism,wearing nearly bottomless ,is the point where we must begin.Here,in this plainly unendurable portion of the general quagmire,the lowest point of all,and hateful even to M'Croudy,must our main drain begin:steadily prosecuting that,tearing that along with Herculean labor and divine fidelity,we shall gradually drain the entire Stygian swamp,and make it all once more a fruitful field!
For the State,I perceive,looking out with right sacred earnestness for persons able to command,will straightway also come upon the question:"What kind of schools and seminaries,and teaching and also preaching establishments have I,for the training of young souls to take command and to yield obedience?
Wise command,wise obedience:the capability of these two is the net measure of culture,and human virtue,in every man;all good lies in the possession of these two capabilities;all evil,wretchedness and ill-success in the want of these.He is a good man that can command and obey;he that can is a bad.If my teachers and my preachers,with their seminaries,high schools and cathedrals,do train men to these gifts,the thing they are teaching and preaching must be true;if they do ,true!"The State,once brought to its veracities by the thumb-screw in this manner,what will it think of these same seminaries and cathedrals!I foresee that our Etons and Oxfords with their sense-verses,college-logics,and broken crumbs of mere speech ,--which is even English or Teutonic speech,but old Grecian and Italian speech,dead and buried and much lying out of our way these two thousand years last past,--will be found a most astonishing seminary for the training of young English souls to take command in human Industries,and act a valiant part under the sun!The State does want vocables,but manly wisdoms and virtues:the State,does it want parliamentary orators,first of all,and men capable of writing books?What a rag-fair of extinct monkeries,high-piled here in the very shrine of our existence,fit to smite the generations with atrophy and beggarly paralysis,--as we see it do!The Minister of Education will want for work,I think,in the New Downing Street!