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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    the action of the surplus forces as we see them te- day and as they appeared before the outbreak of physical science and mechanism. Then it seemed clearly necessary that whatever social and political organisation developed, it must needs rest ulti- mately on the tiller of the soil, the agricultural holding, and the Normal Social Life. But now even in agriculture huge wholesale methods have appeared. They are declared to be destructive; but it is quite conceivable that they may be made ultimately as recuperative as that small agriculture which has hitherto been the inevitable social basis. If that is so, then the new ways of living may not simply impose themselves in a growing proportion upon the Normal Social Life, but they may even oust it and replace it altogether. Or they may oust it and fail to replace it. In the newer countries the Normal Social Life does not appear to establish itself at all rapidly. No real peasantry appears in either America or Australia; and in the older coun- tries, unless there is the most elaborate legislative and fiscal protection, the peasant population wanes before the large farm, the estate, and overseas production. Now most of the political and social discussion of the last hundred years may be regarded and re- phrased as an attempt to apprehend this defensive struggle of the Normal Social Life against waxing novelty and innovation, and to give a direction and guidance to all of us who participate. And it is I2