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 trade routes. And such toleration as there was rarely extended to active teaching and propaganda. Even in liberal Athens the hemlock was in the last resort at the service of the ancient gods and the ancient morals against the sceptical critic. But with the steady development of innovating forces in human affairs, there has actually grown up a cult of receptivity, a readiness for new ideas, a —I do not of course refer in any way to the political party which makes this profession—is essentially anti-traditionalism; its tendency is to commit for trial any institution or belief that is brought before it. It is the accuser and antagonist of all the fixed and ancient values and imperatives and prohibi- tions of the Normal Social Life. And growing up in relation to Liberalism and sustained by it is the great body of scientific knowledge, which professes at least to be absolutely undogmatic and perpet- ually on its trial and under assay and re-examination. Now a very large part of the advanced thought of the past century is no more than the confused negation of the broad beliefs and institutions which have been the heritage and social basis of humanity for immemorial years. ‘This is as true of the ex- tremest Individualism as of the extremest Socialism. The former denies that element of legal and cus- tomary control which has always subdued the in- dividual to the needs of the Normal Social Life, and the latter that qualified independence of dis- T4