A Tale of Work Everyday

We continue with John Watson's words about the contributions of ordinary people:

The prosperity of a country depends on the millions of people who are doing their tale of work every day, bringing up their children in respectability and religion, and discharging humble household duties and resisting every-day temptations; the trend of national life depends upon what a multitude of people are thinking and feeling and wishing and striving; and the goodness of the commonwealth is made up of the character of an innumerable number of undistinguished folk. We may not be philosophers, nor travellers, nor statesmen, nor conquerors, yet we ordinaries have our own sphere. We are the soldiers in the army which won the battle; we are the multitude to whom the thinkers spoke; we are the voters by whom the statesmen legislate; we are the force of which historians write. There are thousands of volumes containing the record of births in the archives of the registrar-general, and the keeper is accustomed to show a celebrated entry here and there. But all the pages of all the volumes are filled with names, and each name represents a person who has been born into the world, and, in many a case, has lived to old age and has done his piece of work. Without this nameless and in numerable multitude there had been no work and no race.