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 interests, amusements, and adornments of the individual life, and all sorts of collective concerns, social and political discussion, religious worship, philosophy, and the like to the free personal initia- tives of entirely unofficial people. This still leaves the problem of systematic knowl- edge and research, and all the associated problems of zsthetic, moral, and intellectual initiative to be worked out in detail; but at least it dispels the nightmare of a collective mind organised as a branch of the civil service, with authors, critics, artists, scientific investigators appointed in a phrensy of wire-pulling —as nowadays the British state ap- points its bishops for the care of its collective soul. I will not venture here to invade the province of my colleagues in the treatment of the Great State in its relation to individual education, in the discussion of the methods by means of which the accumulating results of the free activities of the free collective mind will be brought to bear upon the development of the young citizen, nor will I do more than point out our present extreme ignorance and indecision upon those two closely correlated problems, the problem of family organisation and the problem of women’s freedom. In the Normal Social Life the position of women is easily defined. They are sub- ordinated but important. The citizenship rests with the man, and the woman’s relation to the com- munity as a whole is through a man. But within that limitation her functions as mother, wife, and