Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The False Assumptions of Democracy
Now the supreme importance of abstract or general terms lies in the fact that they are the words with which we guide our lives, mark out our goals and direct our effort. It is therefore urgently necessary that they should stand for very precise ideas, and that as the current coinage of speech they should mean the same things to all men of the same group, body, or nation.
As opposed to the effort of the Middle Ages, however, the effort of this Age, or the Muddle Age, seems to be directed towards turning every nation into a Europe - into a unit, that is to say, without unity. And this lack Of unity is nowhere more acute and more apparent than in the realm of abstract or general terms. People Of the same nation, nowadays, no longer speak the same language. They no longer mean the same things, or convey the same ideas, when they speak Of Happiness, Beauty, Order, Right, Freedom, Liberty, Justice, etc. The frame has gone. The common culture has been replaced by a congeries Of pseudo-cultures, all in active con?ict. The consequence is that the all-important words Of this class have fallen out of place in the design Of life they have no unifying whole in which they can find a stable position, they are. At a loose end, so to speak, and they can be used not as intelligent missives, but only as missiles between isolated groups and parties that are doomed to eternal con?ict.
A word at a loose end, however, is a word devoid Of definite associations and therefore Of meaning. Can a word devoid of meaning be used as a missile? Certainly it can, provided that it be given, despite its loss of an intellectual appeal, sufficient motive power to provoke an emotion. But of this anon.
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