however, will not take the trouble to give even the new species that appear a
chance of living; they are too busy, it appears, in keeping their jobs.
No new profession has been organized in England since the Middle Ages. In the
meantime we have invented new arts, new sciences and new letters; when will
these be organized and regimented in new and living professions, so that young
ingenuous souls may find suitable fields for their powers and may not be forced
willy-nilly to grub for pignuts when it would be more profitable for them and
for us to use their nobler faculties? Not only are the poor poorer and more
numerous in England than elsewhere; but there is less provision made for the
"intellectuals" too, consequently the organism is suffering at both extremities.
It is high time that both maladies were taken in hand, for by universal consent
England is now about the worst organized of all modern States, the furthest
from the ideal.
Something too should be done with the existing professions to make them worthy
of honourable ambition. One of them, the Church, is a noble body without a
soul; the soul, our nostrils tell us, died some time ago, while the medical
profession has got a noble spirit with a wretched half-organized body. It says
much for the inherent integrity and piety of human nature that our doctors
persist in trying to cure diseases when it is clearly to their self-interest to
keep their patients ailing--an anarchic world, this English one, and stupefied
with self-praise. What will this professor of aesthetics make of it?
Here he is, the flower of English University training, a winner of some of the
chief academic prizes without any worthy means of earning a livelihood, save
perchance by journalism. And journalism in England suffers from the prevailing
anarchy. In France, Italy, and Germany journalism is a career in which an
eloquent and cultured youth may honourably win his spurs. In many countries
this way of earning one's bread can still be turned into an art by the gifted
|