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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    nated to and co-ordinated by asmall class of wealthy, vigorous, and probably truculent overseers and ‘‘un- derstanding persons’’—in short, a Servile State. If, therefore, we are to escape both from the evils of the Normal Social Life and from those of the possible Servile State, we must systematically encourage forces adverse to specialisation of individuals. A tradition of liberalism and criticism must be con- sciously sustained. Granting that in the Great State each citizen will be brought into contact with the broadening influence of a catholic tradition, it is possible there will be no specialists at all in the or- dinary sense of the word. That there may be a degree of specialisation in certain lives is quite probable. Not only has knowledge grown beyond the possi- bilities of individual intellectual grasp, but always there are men who at an early age show predilections for a certain class of work; and in so far as they excel in that work they will, no doubt, be specialists. But this need not involve, as it so often involves now, the atrophy of all those possibilities of de- velopment not brought to bear on the matter im- mediately in hand. A man will be able to specialise and yet remain a man. The tradition of his time and education, the new tradition of the Great State, will have fitted him to tackle widely differing classes of work; and even if he devotes his life to one field of narrowed limits determined by his special capacity, he will still have a sympathetic under- standing of those activities which lie beyond his