The great state : essays in construction / by H.G. Wells [and others].

Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The great state : essays in construction / by H.G. Wells [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    employment of capitals. It will be possible for any one to argue that what is here defined as the Normal Social Life is not the normal social life, and that the Great State is indeed no state at all. That will be an argument outside the range delimited by these definitions. Now what is intended by the Normal Social Life here is a type of human association and employment, of extreme prevalence and antiquity, which ap- pears to have been the lot of the enormous majority of human beings as far back as history or tradition or the vestiges of material that supply our concep- tions of the neolithic period can carry us. It has never been the lot of all humanity at any time, to- day it is perhaps less predominant than it has ever been, yet even to-day it is probably the lot of the greater moiety of mankind. Essentially this type of association presents a localized community, a community of which the greater proportion of the individuals are engaged more or less directly in the cultivation of the land. With this there is also associated the grazing or herding over wider or more restricted areas, belong- ing either collectively or discretely to the commun- ity, of sheep, cattle, goats, or swine, and almost always the domestic fowl.is a commensal of man in this life. The cultivated land at least is usually assigned, temporarily or inalienably, as property to specific individuals, and the individuals are grouped in generally monogamic families of which the father