Entry type: Book | Call Number: 3635 | Barcode: 31290036143873 |
-
Publication Date
1935
-
Place of Publication
Sydney
-
Book-plate
No
-
Edition
First
-
Number of Pages
37
-
Publication Info
hardcover
Copy specific notes
Bookplate inserted; p. 30 earmarked (on appeal of the “cult of force” in Europe); numerous passages highlighted in margin/underlined with pencil, including: “We decline to submerge the individual in the State and society on individual freedom and the free initiative of the citizen. Our outlook remains that of free men in a world in which the tradition of freedom is, alas! steadily weakening.” [p. 12]; “With the cataclysm of the Great War the whole European order threatens to collapse and in the ruins to involve the most precious treasures along with the accumulated rubbish of the nineteenth century.” [p. 16]; “In the events of our times I see much ground for anxiety but none for real pessimism.” [p. 22]; “There is to-day a decay of the individual’s responsibility and share in government which seems to strike at the roots of our human advance. [/] For me the individual is basic to any world-order that is worth while. Individual freedom, individual independence of mind, individual participation in the difficult work of government seems to me essential to all true progress. Yet to-day the individual seems more and more at a discount in the new experiments in government which are being tried out. The sturdy individualism which inspired progress in the past, which made Rome, which made Scotland, which has created all our best human values, seems to be decaying in the atmosphere of confusion and disillusion of our day. Men and women have suffered until they are abdicating their rights as individuals in their misery and helplessness they are surrendering to the mass will which leads straight to autocracy.” [pp. 27 – 28]; “The disappearance of the sturdy, independent-minded, freedom-loving individual, and his replacement by a servile standardized mass-mentality is the great human menace of our time.” [pp. 28 – 29]; “In many if not most European countries the standard of human freedom has already fallen far below that of the nineteenth century. Perhaps I do not exaggerate when I say that what we call liberty in its full human meaning – freedom of thought, speech, action, self-expression-there is to-day less in Europe than there has been during the last two thousand years.” [p. 31]; “The denial of what is deepest in our spiritual nature must lead to a materialist mechanist civilization [where economic goods take the place of the spiritual values, and where mankind can at best only achieve a distorted and stunted growth, a sort of substitute or ‘Ersatz’ humanity – very different from that which has been our ideal through the ages.]” [p. 34].
Related entries
Sign up to our newsletter
Sign up for our monthly newsletter to hear the latest news and receive information about upcoming events.