records of human communities; but the time has come now--or, at the
worst, is rapidly coming--when this will cease to be a fated thing. We
may have a far more copious and varied tongue than had Addison or
Spenser--that is no disaster--but there is no reason why we should not
keep fast hold of all they had. There is no reason why the whole fine
tongue of Elizabethan England should not be at our disposal still.
Conceivably Addison would find the rich, allusive English of George
Meredith obscure; conceivably we might find a thousand words and
phrases of the year 2000 strange and perplexing; but there is no reason
why a time should ever come when what has been written well in English
since Elizabethan days should no longer be understandable and fine.

The prevailing ignorance of English in the English-speaking
communities, enormously hampers the development of the racial
consciousness. Except for those who wish to bawl the crudest thoughts,
there is no means of reaching the whole mass of these communities to-
day. So far as material requirements go it would be possible to fling a
thought broadcast like seed over the whole world to-day, it would be
possible to get a book into the hands of half the adults of our race.
But at the hands and eyes one stops--there is a gap in the brains. Only
thoughts that can be expressed in the meanest commonplaces will ever
reach the minds of the majority of the English-speaking peoples under
present conditions.

A writer who aims to be widely read to-day must perpetually halt, must
perpetually hesitate at the words that arise in his mind; he must ask
himself how many people will stick at this word altogether or miss the
meaning it should carry; he must ransack his memory for a commonplace
periphrase, an ingenious rearrangement of the familiar; he must omit or
overaccentuate at every turn. Such simple and necessary words as