I must not go on, though there is so much to be said.  I see before us in the immediate future a vast University whose home is in the Mile End Road; but it has affiliated colleges in all the suburbs, so that even poor, dismal, uncared-for Hoxton shall no longer be neglected; the graduates of this University are the men and women whose lives, now unlovely and dismal, shall be made beautiful for them by their studies, and their heavy eyes uplifted to meet the sunlight; the subjects or examination shall be, first, the arts of every kind:  so that unless a man have neither eyes to see nor hand to work with, he may here find something or other which he may learn to do; and next, the games, sports, and amusements with which we cheat the weariness of leisure and court the joy of exercising brain and wit and strength.  From the crowded class-rooms I hear already the busy hum of those who learn and those who teach.  Outside, in the street, are those—­a vast multitude to be sure—­who are too lazy and too sluggish of brain to learn anything:  but these, too, will flock into the Palace presently to sit, talk, and argue in the smoking-rooms; to read in the library; to see the students’ pictures upon the walls; to listen to the students’ orchestra, discoursing such music as they have never dreamed of before; to look on while His Majesty’s Servants of the People’s Palace perform a play, and to hear the bright-eyed girls sing madrigals.

[1884.]

THE ASSOCIATED LIFE. [The substance of this paper was delivered as the presidential speech at the opening of the Hoxton Library and Institute.]

It has seemed to me—­for reasons which I hope to make clear to you—­that the present occasion, the opening of our newly-acquired Place of Gathering, is one on which something may be said upon the subject of the Associated Life—­that is to say, on the union, or combination of men, or of men and women, in order to effect by collective action objects—­objects worthy of effort—­impossible for the individual to attempt.

It would seem at first sight that combination should be the very simplest thing in the world.  It is self-evident that those who want anything have a much better chance of getting it if they join together in order to demand it, or to work for it.  Like one or two other simple laws of human nature, this, though the simplest, is the hardest to get people to understand and to accept.  Nothing is so difficult as to persuade people to trust each other, even to the extent of standing together and sticking together and working together in order to get what they want.

The first association of men was forced upon them for protection, I wonder how many ages—­hundreds of thousands of years—­it took to teach men to join together in order to protect themselves against starvation, wild beasts, and each other.  The necessity of self-preservation first made men associate, and changed hunters into soldiers, and turned the whole world into a camp.  It was war,