It has been for want of good character, good example, and
good government.” The notion that intelligence is a personal endowment
or personal attainment is the great conceit of the intellectual class,
as that of the commercial class is that wealth is something which they
personally have wrought and possess.
A point which concerns us in conclusion passes beyond the field of
intellectual method, and trenches upon the question of practical
re-formation of social conditions. In its deepest and richest sense
a community must always remain a matter of face-to-face intercourse.
This is why the family and neighborhood, with all their deficiencies,
have always been the chief agencies of nurture, the means by which
dispositions are stably formed and ideas acquired which laid hold on
the roots of character. The Great Community, in the sense of free and
full intercommunication, is conceivable. But it can never possess
all the qualities which mark a local community. It will do its final
work in ordering the relations and enriching the experience of local
associations. The invasion and partial destruction of the life of the
latter by outside uncontrolled agencies is the immediate source of
the instability, disintegration and restlessness which characterize
the present epoch. Evils which are uncritically and indiscriminately
laid at the door of industrialism and democracy might, with greater
intelligence, be referred to the dislocation and unsettlement of local
communities. Vital and thorough attachments are bred only in the
intimacy of an intercourse which is of necessity restricted in range.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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