A Cityless and Countryless World
An Outline of Practical Co-Operative Individualism
Henry Olerich
[A condensed and edited version of the book
originally published by Gilmore & Olerich, Holstein, Iowa, 1893 /
CHAPTER 1 - Character, Description and Localities]
The lesson how to make ourselves and others happy underlies all other
knowledge and learning; …
To the contemporaries of Columbus, our modern steamer, which crosses
the Atlantic in about five days, seemed no doubt incredible.
Telegraphy seemed impossible to Washington and his contemporaries; so
did a sixty-mile-an-hour train. But we all find them perfectly natural
and practicable in this age. We have divested them of all mystery, and
have put them under the dominion of an inexorable law, whose operation
our ancestors did not understand. It would be highly presumptuous on
our part to assume that we know all what can be known: that all what
seems to be impossible to us now must forever remain impossible to our
posterity.
You, no doubt, are all familiar with Mr. Spencer's maxim, not
directly, but by successive approximations do mankind arrive at
correct conclusions.
History proves that the persons who have been willing to listen
fairly to the claims of others, even if they appeared impossible at
the time, keeping what they believed to be good and rejecting what
they believe to be wrong, have by far been the noblest and the most
useful to mankind; to them is due the progress of the world.
CONTENTS
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