The road to freedom and what lies beyond / by Josiah & Ethel Wedgwood.

  • Wedgwood, Josiah Clement, 1872-1943.
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The road to freedom and what lies beyond / by Josiah & Ethel Wedgwood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    necessary outcome of the world’s development, and that civilisation, as we know it, is the culmination of human history, then, obviously, when any part sticks or breaks down, it is for want of proper attention and management, and we must call in the army of social mechanicians who deafen and override us to-day. Their business is not to speculate on ultimate prin- ciples, but to keep the present thing going at all costs and by any means. But in the midst of the social reformer’s ceaseless activity, of the endless league for the propagation of this and that, and enactments for the regulation of one thing and another, one pauses to wonder whether the common-sense of men will not at last revolt against all this meddlesomeness ? The plainest thinker can see that opinions as to the ultimate good are conflicting, and that, even if every- one be agreed as to the aim, it is folly to attempt to legislate for the intricacies of modem life, because calculations of the necessary accuracy are impossible. And one is led to reflect whether there is not, after all, some simpler solution to the great problem of social duty, plain enough to guide the man-in-the- street, and not involving a solution of statistics to the nth decimal and a dictatorship over the living and the yet unborn. The question, as it presents itself to us, is not, how by careful adjustment we may improve the condition of those who oil the wheels of the cai of civilisation, as well as gratify the amiable feelings of those whose principal function is to ride inside it ; nor yet, how, by increasing the solidarity of laboui and fomenting class warfare, we may continue the present benefits of civilisation but secure them to the class that produces them; but—much simpler