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the wreath lectures Bertrand Russell is giving the third of six broadcasts on Authority and the individual his third lecture is entitled the role of
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individuality Bertrand Russell in this lecture I propose to consider the importance both for good and evil of impulses and desires that belong to some members of a
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community but not to all in a very primitive community such impulses and desires play very little part hunting and war are activities in which one man may be more successful than another
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between which all share a common purpose so long as a man's spontaneous activities are such as all the tribe approves of and Jersey his initiative is very little curbed by others within the
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tribe and even his most spontaneous actions conformed to the recognized pattern of behavior but as men grow more civilized there comes to be an increasing difference between one man's
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activities and another and the community needs if it is to prosper a certain number of individuals who do not totally conform to the general type practically all progress artistic moral and
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intellectual has depended upon such individuals who have been a decisive factor in the transition from barbarism to civilization if a community is to make progress
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it needs exceptional individuals whose activities though useful are not a resort that ought to be general there is always a tendency in a highly organized
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society for the activities of such individuals to be unduly hampered but on the other hand if the community exercises no control the same kind of individual initiative which may produce
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a valuable innovator may also produce the criminal the problem like all those which we are concerned is one of balance too little Liberty brings stagnation
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too much brings chaos there are many ways in which an individual may differ from most of the other members of his herd he may be exceptionally anarchic or criminal he may have rare artistic
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talents he may have what comes in time to be recognized as a new wisdom in matters of religion and moral then he may have exceptional intellectual powers it would seem that from a very early
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period in human history there must have been some differentiation of function the pictures in the caves in the Pyrenees which were made by Paleolithic men have a very high degree of artistic
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merit and one can hardly suppose with all the men of that time were capable of such admirable work it seems far more probable that those who were found to have artistic talent were sometimes
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allowed to stay at home making pictures while the rest of the tribe hunted the chief and priest must have begun from a very early time to be chosen for real or
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supposed peculiar excellencies medicine men could work magic and the tribal spirit was in some sense incarnate in the chief but from the earliest time there has been a tendency for every
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activity of this kind to become institutionalized the chieftain became hereditary the medicine men became a separate car and recognized bars became
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the prototypes of our poet Laurie it has always been difficult for communities to recognize what is necessary for individuals who are going to make the kind of exceptional contribution that I have in mind elements of wildly
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separatist from the herd of domination by rare impulses which the utility was not always obvious to everybody in this lecture I wish to consider both in
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history and in the present day the relation of the exceptional man to the community and the conditions that make it easy for his unusual marriage to be socially fruitful I should consider this
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problem first in art then in religion and morals and finally in science the artist does not in our day play nearly so vital a part in public life as
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he has done in many former ages there is a tendency in our days to despise a court poet and to think that a poet should be a solitary being proclaiming something the Philistines do not wish to hear
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historically the matter was far otherwise Homer Virgil and Shakespeare were caught fools they sang the glories of their tribe and its noble traditions
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of Shakespeare I must confess this is only partially true but it certainly applies to his historical phase Welsh birds kept alive the glories of King
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Arthur and these glories came to be celebrated by English and French writers king henry ii encouraged them for imperialistic reasons the glories of the path owner and of the medieval
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cathedrals were intimately bound up with public objects music though it could play its part in courtship existed primarily to promote courage in battle a
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purpose to which according to Plato it ought to be confined by law but of these ancient glories of the artist literal remains in the modern world except the
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piper to a Highland regiment we still honor the artist but we isolate him we think of art is something separate not as an integral part of the life of the community
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the architect alone because his art serves the utilitarian purpose retains something of the ancient status of the artist the decay of art in our time is
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not only due to the fact that the social function of the artist is not as important as in former days it is due also to the fact that spontaneous delight is no longer felt as something
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which it is important to be able to enjoy among comparatively unsophisticated populations folk dances and popular music still flourish when something of the pooi
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exists in very many men but as men grow more industrialized and regimented the kind of delight that is covered in children becomes impossible to adults because they are always thinking of the
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next thing and cannot let themselves be absorbed in the moment this habit of thinking of the next thing is more fatal to any kind of aesthetic excellence than
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any other habit of mind that can be made and if art in any important sense is to survive it will not be by the foundation of solemn academies but by recapturing
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the capacity for old arti joys and sorrows which prudence and foresight have all but destroyed the men
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conventionally recognized as the greatest of mankind MGP innovators in religion and morals in spite of the reverence given to them by subsequent ages most of them during their lifetime
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were in greater or less degree in conflict with their own communities moral progress has consisted in the main a protest against trivial custom and have attempts to enlarge the bounds of
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human sympathy human sacrifice among the Greeks died out at the beginning of the fully historically buck the Stoics taught that there should be sympathy not only for free Greeks but for barbarians
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and slaves and indeed for all mankind Buddhism and Christianity is pretty similar doctrine far and wide religion which had originally been part of the apparatus of tribal cohesion promoting
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conflict without just as much as cooperation within it took on a more universal character an endeavour to transcend the narrow limits with primitive morality had said it is no
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wonder if the religious innovators were execrated in their own day for they sought to rob men of a joy of battle and fierce delights of revenge primitive ferocity which had seemed a virtue was
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now said to be a sin and the DQ allottee was introduced between morality and the life of impulse or rather between the morality taught by those in whom the impulse of humanity was strong and the traditional morality
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that was preferred by those who had no sympathies outside their own head religious and moral innovators have had a profound effect upon human life not always it must be confessed the effect
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that they intended but nevertheless on the whole profoundly beneficial it is cruising in the present century we have seen in important parts of the world a loss of moral values which we had
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thought fairly secure but we may hope that this retrogression will not last we go it to the model innovators who first attempted to make morality or universal and not merely a tribal matter that
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there has come to be a disapproval of slavery the feeling of duty towards prisoners of war a limitation of the powers of husbands and fathers when the recognition however imperfect that subject races ought not to be merely
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exploited for the benefit of their conquerors all these moral games it must be admitted have been jeopardized by a recruit essence of ancient ferocity but
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I do not think that in the end the moral advance which they are represented will be lost to mankind the prophets and sages who inaugurated this modern
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advance although for the most part they were not honored in their own day where nevertheless not prevented from doing their work in a modern totalitarian state matters are worse than they we're in the time of Socrates or in the time
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of the Gospels in a totalitarian state an innovator whose ideas are disliked by the government is not merely put to death which is a matter to which a brave man may remain indifferent but is
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totally prevented from causing his doctrine to be known innovations in such a community can come only from the government than the government now as in the past is not likely to approve
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anything contrary to its own immediate interests in a totalitarian state such events as the rise of Buddhism or Christianity are scarcely possible not even the greatest terrorism when a moral
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reformer acquire any influence whatever this is a new fact in human history brought about by the much increased control over individuals which the modern techniques the government is made
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possible it is a very grave fact one which shows how fatal the totalitarian regime must be to every kind of model progress in our own day an individual of
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exceptional powers can hardly hope to have so great a career also greater social influence as in former times if he devotes himself to art or to religious and moral reform there are
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however still four careers which are open to him he may become a great political leader like Lennie he may acquire vast industrial power like Rockefeller he may transform the world
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by scientific discoveries as is being done by the atomic physicist or finally if he has not the necessary capacity sparingly of the East careers or if opportunity is lacking his energy in
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default of other our clique may drive him into a life of crime criminals in the legal sense seldom have any influence upon the course of history and therefore a man of overweening ambition
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will choose some other career if it is open during the rise of men of science to great eminence in the state is a modern phenomenon scientists like other
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innovators had to fight for recognition some were banished some were burned some were kept in dungeons others merely had their books burned but gradually it came to be
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realized that they could put power into the hands of the state the French revolutionaries after mistaking a guillotining Lavoisier employed his surviving colleagues in the manufacture
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of explosives in modern war the scientists are recognized by all civilized governments is the most useful citizens provided they can be tamed and induced to place their services at the disposal
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of a single government rather mankind both for good and evil almost everything that distinguishes our age which predecessors is you the science in
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daily life we have electric light and the radio in the cinema in industry we employ machinery and power which we owe to science because of the increased productivity of labour we are able to
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develop a far greater proportion of our energies to Wars or preparations for Wars than was formally possible and we are able to keep the young in school very much longer than we formerly could
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owing to science we are able to disseminate information and misinformation through the press and the radio there practically everybody going to science we can make it enormously
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more difficult than it used to be for people to escape from a government which dislikes them the whole of our daily life and our social organization is what it is because of science the hood of
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this vast development of science is supported nowadays by the state but science grew up originally in opposition to the state and where as in Russia the state has reverted to an earlier pattern
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the old opposition would appear again if the state were not omnipotent to a degree undreamed of by the tyrants of former ages the pollution of Science in
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the past was by no means surprising men of science affirmed things that were contrary to what everybody had believed they upset preconceived ideas and were thought to be destitute of reverence
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annex address thought that the Sun was a red-hot stone and the moon was made of Earth who this impiety he was banished chromatic who was it not well-known that the Sun was a God than the moon the
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goddess it was only the power of a natural forces convert by science but late bit by bit to a toleration of scientists and even this was a very slow process because their powers were at
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first attributed to magic it would not be surprising if in the present day a powerful anti scientific movement were to arise as a result of the dangers to human life presented by the atom bomb
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and liable to be intensified by bacteriological warfare but whatever people may feel about these horrors they dare not turn against the men of science so long as war isn't over probable
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because if one side would equip the scientist and the other not the scientific side would almost certainly win science insofar as it consists of
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knowledge must be regarded as having value but insofar as it consists of technique the question whether it is to be praised or blamed depends upon the use that is made of the technique in
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itself it is neutral neither good nor bad and any ultimate use that we may have about what gives value to this all that must come from some other source
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and silence the men of science in spite of their profound influence upon modern life are in some ways less powerful than the politicians politicians in our day a
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far more influential than they were at any former period in human history their relations to the men of science like that of a magician in the Arabian Nights
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to a genie who obeys his orders the genie does astounding things which the magician without his help could not do but he does them only because he is told to do him not because of any impulses in
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himself so it is with the atomic scientists in our day some government captures them in their homes or on the high seas and they are said to work according to the luck of their capture
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to slave for the one side or the other the politician when he is successful is subject to no such coercion the most astounding career of our times was that
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of Lenin after his brother had been put to death by the Czarist government he spent years in poverty and exile and then rose within a few months command one of the great
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two states and this command was not like that of Xerxes or Caesar merely the power to enjoy luxury and adulation with but for him some other man would have been enjoying it was the power to mold
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vast country according to a pattern conceived in his own mind to alter the life of every worker every peasant in every middle-class person who introduced a totally new kind of organization and
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to become throughout the world a symbol of a new order admired by some execrated by many but ignored by none no megalomaniacs dream could have been more
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terrific Napoleon had asserted that you can do everything with bayonets except sit upon them Lenin is proved he exhibited the great men who stand out in
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history have been partly benefactors of mankind and partly quite reverse some like the great religious and moral innovators have done what lay in their power to make men lay screw you towards
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each other unless limited in their sympathies some like the men of science have given us a knowledge and understanding of natural processes which however it may be refused must be
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regarded as in itself it's friendly thing some like the great poets and composers and painters who put into the world beauties and spenders which in moments of discouragement too much to
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make the spectacle of human destiny endurable but others equally able equally effective in their way have done quite the opposite I cannot think of anything that mankind is gained by the
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existence of language gone I do not know what good came of Robespierre and for my part I see no reason to be grateful Delaney but all these men good and bad
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alike had a quality which I could not wish to see disappear from the world the quality of energy and personal initiative of independence of mind and of imaginative vision a man who
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possesses these qualities is capable of doing much good or doing great harm and if mankind is not to sink into dullness such exceptional men must find scope though one could wish that the scope
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they find should be for the benefit of mankind there may be less difference than he sometimes thought between the temperament of a great criminal and a great statesman it may be that Captain
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Kidd and Alexander the Great if a magician did interchanged them at birth would each fulfill the career which in fact was fulfilled by the other the same thing may be said of some artists the memoirs of benvenuto cellini
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do not give a picture of a man with that respectful law which every right minded citizen ought to have in the modern world and still more so far as can be guessed in the world of the near future
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important achievement is almost impossible to an individual if he cannot dominate some vast organization if he can make himself head of a state like Lenin or monopolist of a great industry
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like Rockefeller or a controller of credit like the elder Pierpont Morgan he can reuse enormous effects in the world and so he can if being a man of science he persuades some government that his
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work may be useful in war but the man who works without the help of an organization like a Hebrew prophet the poet or a solitary philosophers such as Spinoza can no longer hope for the kind
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of importance which such men had in former days this change applies to the scientists as well as to other men the scientists of the past did their work very largely as individuals but the
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scientists of our day needs enormously expensive equipment a laboratory with many assistants all this he can obtain through the favor of the government or in America a very rich man he is thus no
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longer an independent worker but essentially part and parcel of some large organization this change is very unfortunate for the things which a great man could do in solitude would have to
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be more beneficial than those which you could do only with the help of the powers-that-be a man who wishes to influence human affairs finds it difficult to be successful except as
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a slave or a tyrant as a politician he may make himself the head of a state or as a scientist he may sell his labor to the government but in that case he must serve its purpose and not his own and
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this applies not only to men of rare and exceptional greatness but to a wide range of talent in the eighties in which there were great poets there were also large numbers of little poets and when they were great painters there were
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large numbers of little painters the great German composers arose in a milieu where music with value and where numbers of lesser men found opportunities in those days poetry painting and music
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were a vital part of the daily life of ordinary men as only sport is now the great prophets were men who stood out from a host of minor prophets the inferiority of our age in such respects
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is an inevitable result of the fact the society is centralized and organized to such a degree that individual initiative is reduced to a minimum where art is flourished in the past it was flourished
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as a rule against rival small communities such as the Greek city-states the little principalities of the Italian Renaissance and the petticoats of German eighteenth-century rulers each of these rulers had to have
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his musician and once in a way he was Johann Sebastian Bach but even if he was not he was still free to do his best there is something about local rivalry that is essential in such matters it's
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played its part even in the building of the cathedrals because each Bishop wished to have a finer cathedral in the neighboring Bishop it would be a good thing if cities could develop an artistic pride leading them to mutual
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rivalry and eWEEK had its own School of Music and painting not without a vigorous contempt for the school of the next city but such local patriotism we do not readily flourish in a world of empires and free mobility
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the Manchester man does not readily fee you towards a man from Sheffield as an Athenian felt towards a Corinthian or a Florentine towards a Venetian but in spite of the difficulties I think that
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this problem of giving importance to localities will have to be tackled if human life is not to become increasingly grabbed at monotonous the Savage in spite of his membership of a small
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community live the life in which his initiative will not too much hampered by the community the things that he wanted to do usually hunting and war but also the things that his neighbors wanted to
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do and if he felt an inclination to become a medicine man he only had to ingratiate himself with some individual already eminent in that profession and so in due course to succeed his powers
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of magic if he was a man of exceptional talent he might invent some improvement in weapons or a new skill in hunting these would not put him into any opposition to the community but on the
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contrary would be welcomed the modern man lives a very different time if he sings in the street he will be thought to be drunk and if he dances a policeman will reprove him for impeding the
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traffic his working day unless he is exceptionally fortunate he is occupied in a completely monotonous manner in producing something which is valued not likely shield of Achilles as a beautiful
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piece of work but mainly for its utility he cannot like Milton's Shepherd till his tail under the Hawthorn in the dáil because there is often no Dale anywhere
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near where he lives or if there is it is full of tin and always in our highly regularized way of life he is obsessed by thoughts of the
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morrow of all precepts in the Gospels the one the Christians have most neglected is the commandment to take no thought for the morrow if a man is proven thought for the
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morrow we lead him to say if he is imprudent it would make him apprehensive of being unable to pay his debts in either case the moment loses its safe everything is organized nothing is
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spontaneous the Nazis organized strength through joy the drive prescribed by the government is not likely to be very joyful in those who might otherwise have
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where the ambitions the effective synchronization is to bring them into competition with two large number of rivals an inter subjection to an unduly uniform standard or taste you wish to be
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a painter you will not be content to pit yourself against the men with similar desires in your own town you will go to some school of painting in a metropolis where you will probably conclude that you are mediocre and having come to this
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conclusion may be so discouraged that you are tempted to throw away your paintbrushes and take the money-making or to drink for a certain degree of self-confidence is essential to
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achievement in Renaissance Italy you might have hope to be the best painter in Siena and this position would have been quite sufficiently honorable but you would not now be content to acquire
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all your training in one small town we know too much and feel too little at least we feel too little reach for those creative emotions which good life Springs in regard to what is important
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we are passive where we are active it is over trivialities if life is to be saved from boredom relieved only by disaster means must be found a restoring individual initiative not only in things
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that are trivial but in the things that really matter I do not mean that we should destroy those parts of modern organization up in which is very existence of large populations depends but I do mean that the organization
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should be much more flexible more relieved by local autonomy and less oppressive to the human spirit to its impersonal vastness then it has become so it's unbearably rapid growth and
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centralization which are ways of thoughts and feelings have been unable to keep pace berkland rah sille has been speaking on the role of
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individuality the third of the bbc's wreath lectures on Authority and the individual
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