s movement, which is a movement in the main of ideas and
not of _objets d'art_, & there is a danger in the constant repetition
of exhibitions, civic, national, and international, of public attention
being diverted from the movement of ideas, & action thereupon, to the
mere production and exhibition of exhibits. Moreover, of exhibits,
very few things, relatively to the whole of life's possessions and
productions, can be brought together usefully, or at all, under one
roof, and of those which can very few can tell their own tale,
apologize for their shortcomings, or of themselves ask to be forgiven
for the sake of their approximate merit. It was to guard against the
danger of this possible diversion of interest and forgetfulness of the
movement's greater purposes, and indirectly, by suggestion of the
ideal, to illuminate the possible deficiencies of the exhibits, as well
as to draw attention to their merits, that the aid of lectures was made
an essential part of at least the scheme of the Society: and lectures
of the kind in question, lectures, that is to say, which shall deal at
large with the meaning, as well as the contents, of an exhibition, are,
in my opinion, an essential adjunct of every exhibition.

With this objection stated, I now proceed to wind up my observations
and to come to a conclusion. But before doing so I must ask your
attention in one other matter in which I find it necessary to differ
from Mr. Morris.

But pray note that it is a matter of interpretation only in which here,
as elsewhere, I presume to differ from that great spirit, now passed
away. Only in the matter of interpretation, for I do not--how could
I?--call in question, here or anywhere, the greatness of the aims of
William Morris himself. I claim only (1) that the movement which I am
attempting to describe had a higher aim than in his own despite he
assigned to it in the passage I have quoted: (2) that machinery may be
redeemed by imagination, and made to enter even into his restored
world, adding to the potency of good, and to its power over evil, which
itself, in my view, it is not: and (3) finally, & this is the last
point of difference to which I shall have to call your attention, that
the age upon which mankind entered, at the close of the fifteenth
century, was one of decay of an old world indeed, but at the same time,
and this was its characteristic, was an age in which a new and a
greater world came to the birth, as in this age it