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I am assuming this will be done quite in addition to the natural growth of Universities and Colleges, to the evolution of great text-books and criticism, and to the organization and publication of special research in science and letters. This is to be an endowment specifically for unspecialized literature, for untechnical philosophy that is, and the creative imagination.
Such a division of labour within a group would be fatally foolish and entirely uncalled for since there are plenty of men adapted to hunting and fighting, but entirely unspecialized to child-bearing and nursing.
The whole thing is perfectly natural when seen from a clear recognition of what the creative working of Spirit must be in itself; and when it is realized in this perfectly natural manner all strain and effort to compel its action ceases we are at one with the All-creating Power which has now found a new centre in ourselves from which to continue its creative work to more perfect manifestation than could be attained through the unspecialized generic conditions of the merely cosmic order.
By means of his human intelligence this frail, unspecialized being became in a sense the very lord of creation, for instead of remaining, like the animals, entirely subject to his surroundings he subjected his surroundings to himself.
We may well regret the passing of the time when the variety of work performed in the unspecialized workshop naturally stimulated the intelligence of the workingmen and brought them into contact both with the raw material and the finished product. But the problem of education, as any advanced educator will tell us, is to supply the essentials of experience by a short cut, as it were.
But while individual specialization may be safe for the individual, and beneficial to the race, the race which is to inherit the future must remain unspecialized. It must not sacrifice future possibilities to present rapidity of advance. And the common people are advancing safely, slowly, but surely.
Whether we believe or disbelieve in the reality of that which is called the material universe, still the ethical significance of the inexplicable laws of heredity of the transmission of both racial and personal tendencies in the unspecialized reproductive cell remains to justify the doctrine of karma.
Sidney Webb and his little circle is a trifle more "scientific" in tone than these naive objections of the common run of antagonist, but underlying it is the same passionate desire to keep politics a close game for the politician and to bar out the politically unspecialized man. There is more conceit and less jobbery behind the criticisms of this type of mind.
Furnace heating, hot and cold water, improved cooking conditions and many domestic inventions of our day are keeping housework well abreast of other unspecialized work in attractiveness. The fact that domestic servants are scarce and unwilling to do general housework, in no way disproves the soundness of these conclusions.
And I would charge my penitent to go away forthwith and commit some practicable saving irregularity; to fast or get drunk or climb a mountain or sup on pork and beans or give up smoking or spend a month with publicans and sinners. Right conduct for the common unspecialized man lies delicately adjusted between defect and excess as a watch is adjusted and adjustable between fast and slow.
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