|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 24
Although it is a still further digression from the main purpose of this
paper, I must permit myself a few words on another point relating to the
strictly medical claims of the plan of "universal periodic medical
examination." It is natural that its advocates say nothing about the
danger of errors in diagnosis; everybody knows that this danger exists,
but sensible men do not allow it to deter them from consulting a
physician; in this, as in other affairs of life, they do not cry for the
moon, but do the best they can. But it seems to be wholly overlooked by
the advocates of the propaganda of "universal periodic examination" that
the extent of this danger under present conditions affords no indication
at all of what it would be under the system they contemplate. Its cardinal
virtue, they constantly proclaim, would be the detection of the very
slightest indication of impairment: "The task before us is to discover the
first sign of departure from the normal physiological path, and promptly
and effectually to apply the brake." The consequence must necessarily be
that for one case of false alarm that occurs today there will be a score,
or a hundred, under the new r�gime. For, in the first place, the
individuals seeking advice will not be, as they now are in the main,
selected cases in which there is some antecedent presumption that there is
something wrong; and secondly, the examiner, bent upon the one great
object of overlooking nothing, however slight, will give warnings which,
whether technically justifiable or not, will in great numbers of cases
have a wholly unjustifiable significance to the mind of the subject. Who
shall say how many persons will thus be made to carry through life a
burden of solicitude about their health from which, if left to their own
devices, they would have been wholly free?
But it is not my design to find fault with this scheme as a matter of
medical benefit; if I have ventured to point out some drawbacks, it is
only by way of showing that, even from the strictly medical standpoint the
cult of uniformity, of standardization, of mechanical perfection, is not
free from fault. But the great objection against that attitude of mind
which is typified in the appeal to the analogy of machinery is far more
vital. Our only interest in a machine is that we shall get out of it as
much, and as exact, work as possible. Our interest in our bodies is not so
limited. We may deliberately choose to forego the maximum of mechanical
perfection for the sake of living our lives in a way more satisfactory to
us than a constant care for that perfection would permit. Even the most
ardent of health enthusiasts--unless he be an insane fanatic--draws the
line somewhere. What he forgets is that other people prefer to draw the
line somewhere else. They choose to run a certain amount of risk rather
than have their health on their minds. To compel--whether by legal means
or by social pressure--every man to take precautions concerning his own
body which he deliberately prefers not to take; to make impossible, in
this most intimate and personal of all human concerns, the various ways of
acting which the infinite varieties of temperament and desire may
dictate--this would be such an invasion of personal liberty, such a
suppression of individuality, as would strike us all as appalling, had we
not grown so habituated to the mechanical, the statistical, measurement of
human values--to the Flatland view of life.
* * * * *
What gives to these movements that I have been discussing the character
which I have been ascribing to them is not so much the specific things
which they severally aim to accomplish, but the spirit in which they are
carried on, and perhaps still more the spirit, or want of spirit, with
which they are met. It is not that a balance is falsely struck between the
benefit of the concrete, circumscribed, measurable improvement aimed at
and the injury done to some deeper, more pervading, and quite immeasurable
element or principle of life; it is that the balance is not struck at all.
The subtler, the less tangible, element is simply ignored. It was not
always so. It was not so in the last generation, or the generation before
that. The phenomenon is one that is closely bound up with the ruling
tendency of thought and action in all directions; it is not an accident of
this or that particular agitation. Perhaps in no direction is it more
convincingly manifested than in the prevailing tone of opinion, or at
least of publicly expressed opinion, in regard to the objects and ideals
of universities. That in the present state of the world's economic and
social development on the one hand, and of the various sciences on the
other, "service"--that is, service directly conducive to the general
good--should be regarded as one of the great objects of universities, is
altogether right; that it should be spoken of as their _only_ object,
which is the ruling fashion, is most deplorable. The object of a
university, said Mill, is to keep philosophy alive; yet it would go hard
with the present generation to point to any one more truly and profoundly
devoted to the service, the uplifting, of the masses of mankind than was
John Stuart Mill. Were he living he would recognize, as thoroughly as the
best efficiency man of them all, that the universities of today have
opportunities and duties which were undreamed of half a century ago. But
he would know, too, that in those activities which are directed to the
promotion of practical efficiency, the university is but one of many
agencies, and that if it were not doing the work some other means would be
found for supplying the demand. Its paramount value he would find now, as
he did then, in the service it renders not to the ordinary needs of the
community but to the higher intellectual interests and strivings of
mankind. That so few of us have the courage clearly to assert a position
even distantly approaching this--such a position as was mere matter of
course among university men in the last generation--is perhaps the most
significant of all the indications of our drift toward Flatland.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|