FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   387   388   389   390   391   392   393   394   395   396   397   >>  
he new socialized spirit of our time, placed face to face at last with a Christian aristocrat or Crowd-Man, would want him saved and emphasized too. It is because in democracies saviours are being kept by crowds and by millionaires and by machines very largely in the position of hired men, or of ordered about men, that ninety-nine one-hundredths of the saving or of the man-inventing and man-freeing in crowds, is not being attended to. I have wanted to suggest in this book that the moment the Saviours in any nation will organize quietly and save themselves first, the less difficult thing (with men to attend to it) like saving the rest of us, will be a mere matter of detail. The only thing that stands in the way is the Thomas Jefferson bug-a-boo. People seem to have a kind of left-over fear that the moment these saviours or experts or inventors or heroes, call them what you will, get the chance that they have been working to get to save us, they will not want to use it. It does not seem to me that anything will be allowed to interfere with it--with their saving us, or making detailed arrangements for our saving ourselves. Being a great man (if as democracies seem to think being a great man is a disease) is at least a self-limiting disease. Inventors when they get their first chance are going to save us, because they could not endure living with us unless we were saved. Inventors could not enjoy inventing--inventing their greater, more noble inventions, until they had attended to a little rudimentary thing in the world like having people half alive on it to live with and to invent for. It does not interest a really inspired man--inventing flying machines for people who have not time to notice the sky, wireless telegraph for people who have nothing to say, symphonies for tone-deaf crowds, or ambrosia for people who prefer potatoes. This is the whole issue in a nutshell. When people say that our inventors, or Crowd-Men or saviours, when they have fulfilled or saved themselves, cannot be trusted to save us, the reply that will have to be made is that only people who do not know how inventors feel or how they are made or what it is in them that drives them to do things, or how they do them, will be afraid to let men who give us worlds and who express worlds for us and who make us express ourselves in worlds the freedom to help shape them and run them. Men who have the automatic courage, the helpless bignes
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   387   388   389   390   391   392   393   394   395   396   397   >>  



Top keywords:

people

 

saving

 
inventing
 

crowds

 

worlds

 
inventors
 
saviours
 
Inventors
 

attended

 

chance


moment
 

express

 

disease

 
machines
 
democracies
 
inspired
 
flying
 

interest

 

invent

 
inventions

spirit

 

rudimentary

 

living

 

endure

 

greater

 
ambrosia
 

afraid

 

things

 

drives

 

courage


helpless

 

bignes

 
automatic
 

freedom

 

socialized

 

prefer

 

symphonies

 
wireless
 

telegraph

 

potatoes


fulfilled

 

trusted

 

nutshell

 

notice

 

detailed

 
organize
 
quietly
 

nation

 

Saviours

 

difficult