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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    very largely a matter of temperament and free choice still, just where we shall decide to place our- selves. Let us consider some of the key words of contemporary thought, such as Liberalism, Indi- vidualism, Socialism, in the light of this broad generalisation we have made; and then we shall find it easier to explain our intention in employing as a second technicality the phrase of The Great State as an opposite to the Normal Social Life, which we have already defined. II THE Normal Social Life has been defined as one based on agriculture, traditional and essentially un- changing. It has needed no toleration and dis- played no toleration for novelty and strangeness. Its beliefs have been of such a nature as to justify and sustain itself, and it has had an intrinsic hos- tility to any other beliefs. The god of its com- munity has been a jealous god even when he was only a tribal and local god. Only very occasion- ally in history until the coming of the modern period do we find any human community relaxing from this ancient and more normal state of entire intolerance towards ideas or practices other than its own. When toleration and a receptive attitude towards alien ideas was manifested in the Old World, it was at some trading centre or political centre; new ideas and new religions came by water along +)