The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV
General
The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV
Literature -- Collections
Our immense manufacturing system with its multitudinous inventions,
supplying both home and foreign consumers, and the immense mercantile
marine by which its products are taken all over the globe and other
products brought back, have been naturally and not artificially
originated. That transformation by which, in thousands of years, men's
occupations have been so specialized that each, aiding to satisfy some
small division of his fellow citizen's needs, has his own needs
satisfied by the work of hundreds of others, has taken place without
design and unobserved. Knowledge developing into science, which has
become so vast in mass that no one can grasp a tithe of it, and which
now guides productive activities at large, has resulted from the
workings of individuals prompted not by the ruling agency, but by
their own inclinations. So, too, has been created the still vaster
mass distinguished as literature, yielding the gratifications filling
so large a space in our lives. Nor is it otherwise with the literature
of the hour. That ubiquitous journalism which provides satisfactions
for men's more urgent mental wants has resulted from the activities of
citizens severally pursuing private benefits. And supplementing these
come the innumerable companies, associations, unions, societies,
clubs, subserving enterprise, philanthropy, culture, art, amusement;
as well as the multitudinous institutions annually receiving millions
by endowments and subscriptions: all of them arising from the unforced
cooperations of citizens.
II
SELF-DEPENDENCE AND PATERNALISM[46]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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