How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
247/400
- Publication/creation
- London : George Routledge, 1932.
- Physical description
- xiv, 374 pages ; 22 cm
- Contributors
- Wolfe, W. Béran 1900-1935.
- Notes
-
This edition was reprinted in 1933, 1934, 1935, 1937, 1942, 1944, 1945, 1946 and 1948.
Copy 1 Note: 1937 reprint. X158203
- Attribution and usage
-
Wellcome Collection
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The image contains the following text:
devices of the individual family. The State, usually
fifty to a hundred years behind the best scientific opinion,
will awaken to the needs of mental hygiene prophylaxis
for children, generations from to-day3 when the burden
of taking care of its criminals, its insane, its psychopathic
inferiors has become so great that carefully planned
administration and influencing of the young child will
appear cheaper in the end.
When the State awakens to the knowledge which is
now the property of a few far-sighted individuals, it will
no longer subject young children to the pernicious
influences of the family environment, as it no longer
exposes its children to the dangers of contagious disease.
When the old patriarchal idea that children belong to
their parents as if they were so many chattels has been
completely exploded, families which are so discouraged
that they have but a single child will be legally compelled
to give that child a social environment after the age
of two years, and continue that group influence until the
end of his formal education.
Most of the social side-shows are directly derived from
the vicious influence of family life. Thus we have
egoistic, anti-social ambition as a result of competition
between children and parents, or brothers with older
brothers. Pride, and its derivatives, snobbery, bigotry,
intolerance, are similarly products of exaggerated and
artificial conflicts between the family, or the family group,
and the rest of society.
The cult of personal greatness, the elevation of
“ uniqueness ” and “ being different ” arises out of the
sense of inferiority born of family competitions. From
the cult of personal uniqueness to the cult of other cults
is but a step. Cultism, whether in social groups or in
religious communities, is one of the most popular of all
social side-shows.
"The Normal Uses of Individualism
Opportunities for individualism abound to-day as
much as they ever did, and individualism will never be